The criteria by which fields are assembled on the PGA Tour is considerably more byzantine than over on LIV Golf, where competitors require only the blessing of Greg Norman and amoral ambivalence about the abuses and butchery of their princely benefactor.
The Tour’s official list has 39 exemption categories, ranging from the obvious (winners of majors and the FedEx Cup) to the arcane (PGA Section champions, players with 300 career made cuts). They’re ranked by priority and not every classification is used at every event. The Zurich Classic, for example, used 20 categories to compile its field, a trickier construct than usual since the tournament is comprised of 80 two-man teams.
The most opaque criterion has always been sponsor invites, in which those who write the checks are granted tremendous latitude in deciding who gets the call for a handful of spots. As a general rule, that’s fair. Sponsors ought to have a say in drawing attention to their tournaments and not be hostage to filling tee times from a pre-determined pecking order of pedestrian pros, even if the basis for extending invitations appears parochial.
In February, Ricky Barnes was gifted a spot in the WM Phoenix Open — a designated event with a $25 million purse — for no apparent reason other than that he lives locally and is popular with the event organizers.
But an exemption category intended to benefit a tournament can also be a detriment when improperly applied.
When two-time PGA Tour winner Michael Thompson was added to the field at the Zurich Classic, he chose as his team partner Paresh Amin, a 43-year-old military veteran with a beggarly record on mini-tours, and who shot 42-over-par in Q-School for the Mackenzie Tour.
“He’s become my really good friend,” Thompson explained to my colleague, Adam Schupak. “I haven’t had any success with a partner in the team format. If I was going to play a team event, I wanted to be with someone I really liked. He’s trying to play professionally and I wanted to give him a chance to experience a PGA Tour event, meet the equipment reps, meet the caddies.”
In the opening round of best ball, when scores are typically lower, the pair managed only a 71 that placed them 77th among the 80 teams. A 75 in Friday’s alternate shot format dropped them another two spots.
“These guys out here obviously have an advantage over me,” Amin told the Times-Picayune, the local paper in New Orleans. “They’ve been doing it their whole life….
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