The WM Phoenix Open is the best-attended tournament on the PGA Tour with hundreds of thousands of fans stepping foot on TPC Scottsdale each year in hopes of securing their spot at the iconic ‘stadium’ 16th hole.
It’s an historic tournament that has witnessed some memorable moments like Tiger Woods’ hole-in-one on the 16th in 1997 and Scottie Scheffler‘s maiden PGA Tour victory, yet it currently showcases an example of a problem Brian Rolapp is trying to fix.
A number of big names are missing this week’s tournament, for various reasons
(Image credit: Getty Images)
World No.5 Russell Henley has also opted out of the tournament, with just four of the world’s top-10 committed. That doesn’t sound like too big of a problem, but the upcoming tournaments will likely have eight or nine of them.
The current PGA Tour schedule is the reason for this, as the event finds itself in a tricky spot right before two big $20m Signature Events, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and Genesis Invitational.
Scheffler clearly loves the Phoenix Open and has the right, and bank balance, to build his schedule however he sees fit, but the majority of star names will automatically give these full-field events a miss when there’s back-to-back lucrative Signature tournaments on the horizon.
The total purse this week is a healthy $9.6m but that pales in comparison to the $20m up for grabs in each west coast event over the next fortnight.
The schedule is the big thing Rolapp is working on along with the Future Competitions Committee that Tiger Woods chairs, with unconfirmed reports of a shorter, streamlined PGA Tour season on the horizon where all tournaments would carry the same purse and points.
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