It has increasingly been the greatest weakness of the PGA Tour: Too few tournaments with the best players in the world in the same field.
For years, the best players have congregated at the four major championships, the Players Championship and the World Golf Championship events. Beyond that, tournaments including the biggest events have fought to get the best players in the world in their field.
That changes, at least to a degree, with the sweeping modifications the PGA Tour announced Wednesday. With some details still to be hammered out, we know the new PGA Tour will hold 17 events with purses between $15 million and $20 million. In addition to those 17 events featuring all 20 of the top players, each player will also add three other PGA Tour events to their schedule, though not all 20 players will be in the field of those events. It is likely four of the elevated tournaments will rotate around existing events, sharing the wealth of the top players from year to year.
It’s a concession by some players who have wanted to operate independently who are now thinking about the PGA Tour as an organization that requires its membership to provide a greater level of support than they have in the last few years. You can think about it as circling the wagons in the face of the LIV challenge, but it is a big deal for the tour and for fans.
More: Are you ready for a radically different PGA Tour? It’s coming, one way or the other
The news does leave a few questions. For instance, how can the tour get all of this together by January of next year? Changes were coming, but those changes will start in just four months.
Locally, the questions include whether the American Express, the PGA Tour event in La Quinta, California, will be part of the elevated Tour events. With 13 events already identified, at least two of those tournaments are on the PGA Tour’s West Coast swing. The Sentry Tournament of Champions in Hawaii is the first event on the seven-tournament West Coast swing, and the Genesis Invitational hosted by Tiger Woods in Los Angeles is the last of those seven events.
Big events in the west
Does that leave room for a third big event on the West Coast? Perhaps, but it could be that the PGA Tour and CBS see the Farmers Insurance Open in San Diego as a better option, especially with Tiger Woods’ history at the South Course at Torrey Pines and the course’s history as a U.S. Open venue.
Two important elements are in favor of the desert tournament….
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