ORLANDO, Fla. — For all of you casual golf fans out there who don’t really understand the PGA Tour’s revolutionary new format that begins next season, just think of it in terms of college football.
Beginning next season, the PGA Tour will essentially be split into the Power 5 and the Group of 5. The star golfers will be raking in the big money and getting all of the perks — sort of like Power 5 juggernauts Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State and Clemson. The rank-and-file golfers — the ones who really don’t matter to the average fan — will be demoted to second-tier status just like Group of 5 programs such as Coastal Carolina, Boise State, USF and FAU.
For the first time in history, there is a clear line of demarcation between the haves and have-nots on the PGA Tour. As you would expect, this has created quite the controversy on the Tour, which always has prided itself on being the ultimate meritocracy. But that all changed just before the Arnold Palmer Invitational teed off on Wednesday when PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan sent a memo to players outlining a series of 11 “designated” events that will have bigger money and smaller fields beginning next season. Many of these designated tournaments, which will include the game’s top stars and eliminate many rank-and-file Tour players, will not include 36-hole cuts.
Full disclosure: As a golf fan, I love the PGA Tour’s new format. It’s always irked me that all of the game’s marquee golfers never competed against each other in any of the Tour’s regular weekly stops. Starting next season, we will get a chance to see the Tour’s top 70 or so players go mano-a-mano in nearly a dozen regular tour events.
The national narrative is that these smaller fields and no-cut tournaments are simply copying the format of the rival LIV Tour even though the PGA Tour has had a handful of no-cut events (see World Golf Championship tournaments, Tournament of Champions, etc.) for years. In fact, of Tiger Woods’ record of 142 straight tournaments without missing a cut, 31 came in no-cut tournaments.
That said, there’s no question the PGA Tour’s hand was forced last season when big-name Tour players and major winners such as Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and Cam Smith jumped to LIV. And you better believe there are many LIV players now snickering at their PGA Tour counterparts (see Woods and Rory McIlroy) who have portrayed the LIV defectors as a bunch of money-grabbing malingerers.
Who will ever forget what Tiger said last year about LIV’s no-cut, guaranteed-money format?
“What these players are doing for guaranteed money, where is the incentive to practice?” Tiger said. “What is the incentive to go out there and earn it in the dirt?”
That PGA Tour money Tiger bragged about being earned “in the dirt” is now being served and guaranteed on a silver platter. Don’t kid yourself, the PGA Tour’s decision to increase the number of no-cut, limited-field, big-money tournaments is a convenient way to channel more money to the Tour’s top players, keep them happy and stop them from defecting to LIV.
Of course, this isn’t how it’s being presented by the PGA Tour and its top golfers. They are saying it’s mainly being done for the good of the game and because it’s what the fans want. Maybe that’s part of it, but even current PGA Tour member James Hahn — a rank-and-file golfer who last year was a director on the Tour’s Policy Board — called the PGA Tour stars disingenuous in an angry interview with Golfweek.
“I’m gonna say exactly what 99.99 percent of fans said about players leaving for the LIV Tour: If our players just said, ‘We’re doing this for the money,’ I would have a lot more respect for them,” Hahn railed earlier this week. “But how they’re covering up what they’re doing and trying to make it a thing about sponsors and fans … I think that’s all BS.
“Right now,” Hahn added, “they’re just covering their ass and saying everything that the PGA Tour basically has trained them to say … and try to make it not about money when everyone knows 100 percent it’s about more guaranteed money being funneled to the top players in the world. … For them not to say that it [money] is not the No. 1 reason why they’re making these changes — it’s very, very hypocritical.”
Welcome to the Group of 5, Mr. Hahn, who sounds eerily like former UCF athletic director Danny White, who used to rail against the Power 5 elites that control the College Football Playoff and the money and influence that comes with it. White’s stance then was that the College Football Playoff was actually just a “Power 5 Invitational” for the top conferences and brands in the sport.
Isn’t this essentially what Hahn is saying about these “designated” tournaments that next year will eliminate about 50 rank-and-file players who now get to play in events like the Arnold Palmer Invitational? Under the new rules that will be implemented next season, past winners of The Arnie like two-time champion Matt Every would have never even been in the field.
In all fairness, the PGA Tour has made allowances for a few rank-and-file players to earn their way into designated events. And with all due respect, it’s not like golf fans are buying tickets or turning on the TV set on Sunday to watch Matt Every going back-to-back at The Arnie. The PGA Tour is correct in its assessment that golf fans, sponsors and TV networks pay big money to see the stars such as McIlroy and Jon Rahm.
The PGA Tour is now no different than any other sport in paying its superstars as much guaranteed money as possible. There’s a reason Steph Curry is guaranteed more money than any other NBA player. There’s a reason Aaron Rodgers is guaranteed more money than any other player in the NFL. There’s a reason Aaron Judge is guaranteed more money than any other position player in Major League Baseball. And, yes, there’s a reason Alabama’s Nick Saban is guaranteed more money than any other coach in college football.
Just as Alabama, Georgia and the rest of the Power 5 big boys call the shots in college football, the PGA Tour is now ruled by its own version of the SEC.
With all due respect to the rank and file, you have just been relegated to Conference USA.
