Winter comes early on the PGA Tour. Late August, usually. There’s an unseasonable interlude every couple of years thanks to a Ryder Cup, or a brief glimpse of sunshine from an elite field, like at this week’s CJ Cup, but this is a mostly desolate stretch for those among us who neither know nor care who is pitching for the Patriots against Auburn.
Which isn’t to say there’s no product. The CJ Cup is the fifth of nine PGA Tour events in the post-playoffs fall, all of which have provided fans worthy winners and ample entertainment while benefitting communities, sponsors and players alike. But that owes more to the happenstance of competition than because fall golf is considered appointment viewing.
Throughout the nine years in which the Tour has used a wraparound schedule, it has maintained a painfully democratic insistence that every tournament has equal stature, an understandable position to adopt when corporations are signing checks for the privilege. Fans know it’s not true though. Fall events have come to be defined by who chooses to work, or more often, not work. With 15 of the world’s top 20 golfers in action, this week’s CJ Cup is an outlier. Next week’s Butterfield Bermuda Championship feels like a Head Start program for journeymen and rookies by comparison.
What limited star power there is at Port Royal comes in the form of 56-year-old John Daly, who has made two cuts in the past seven years and none in more than four. On the flip side, the field also includes Robert Garrigus, a man deemed too mediocre even for LIV’s depthless first wave of recruits. (Garrigus recently denounced Billy Horschel as a “douchebag,” but since it wasn’t Horschel who volunteered as a stooge for the Saudis only to be snubbed from a line-up oversubscribed with no-names, the sole inaccuracy here is the direction in which the charge of douchebaggery is being leveled.)
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Fall golf on the PGA Tour suffers from a macro perception grounded in micro reality—that it lacks star power and meaning. Rory McIlroy reinforced that when asked a few days ago what fall should look like. “Football,” he replied. If McIlroy doesn’t care, why should you? Of course, his was the privileged response of someone who doesn’t need to be out making a living among the falling leaves, but it illustrated the competing needs within the PGA Tour—to be a platform for accomplished superstars, and to…
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