Peter Malnati favors new designated event model for everyone

ORLANDO – Not long after the PGA Tour board of directors finished a meeting at Bay Hill Club and Lodge on Tuesday night that lasted more than seven hours and transformed the Tour for years to come, Peter Malnati sat down and poured out his feelings in a journal entry.

“I had to get that stuff out of my head,” he said. “I just couldn’t believe how much I had transformed my view on what we were doing.”

Until recently, Malnati, who is one of five player directors on the Tour board, had been adamantly opposed to the concept of instituting eight designated events with no cuts and reduced fields for the best players, which would mean fewer playing opportunities for the rank and file, or as some like to say, the Peter Malnatis of the world.

Malnati knew his 180-flip would also shock many of his brethren so he sent what he wrote to several of his fellow players. On Friday, he sent a copy to Golfweek and said, “Just print that, print it for me, let the world see that. Because I think everyone thinks that we’re screwing up and I really actually don’t think we are.”

So, here’s Malnati’s journal entry:

After Golfweek had a chance to read his thoughts, Malnati expounded on several of the key decisions and what went into them. (He did podcasts with Fire Pit Collective and No Laying Up that are worth listening to as well.)

“It was the only way to protect the little guys,” he said of supporting the Tour’s vision for the future. “If I fought for 120-man fields, we’re going to end up with eight $20 million events on Tour and however many, you know, 26 $2 million events on Tour; it just wasn’t good. When I saw the numbers, you couldn’t ignore it. Like you couldn’t ignore what the (regular event) fields were going to look like if designated events had 120. Again, we don’t even need to have that good of an imagination. All we need to do is look at Honda this year and see it obviously got screwed with the schedule.”

What has been the initial reaction to Malnati’s journal entry?

“Probably similar to what you might see on Twitter. But it’s amazing how quickly like I got guys that I really thought would firmly hate this and be like, ‘Oh, I get it, it’s actually going to be OK. I thought there were going to be more designated events,’ ” Malnati said. “This is hard to digest because it’s a big departure. And it seems on the surface, like it’s only good for the big guys. And I just think having given it a week to…