Come with me now to a world that looks completely different from our own; where the debate about whether the PGA Tour’s much-vaunted Players Championship should be a fifth major was settled long ago in the affirmative, and where we’ve spent 50-plus years accepting that it’s part of the gang of five. You can construct your own backstory… I like to imagine that sometime in 1973, Deane Beman strolled into Cliff Roberts’ office and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, Don Corleone-style.
FROM THE MARCH ISSUE: Laying out the case for the Players Championship becoming an official fifth major – or not
Unlikely as that seems, we all have our head canon, and that’s mine. The point is, don’t trouble yourself with reality here – let’s skip right to a world where not only was the Players added as the fifth major from its inception 52 years ago, but all the same people won.
Here are 11 ways we’d view golf differently in that strange new world.
1. Rickie Fowler and Matt Kuchar are major champions
There are a lot of guys we could have led with here, but Fowler and Kuchar are head and shoulders above anyone else in their status as “almost” men. Fowler’s 13 major top-10s, and Kuchar’s 11, would no longer be the headline of a story about disappointment, but a footnote. It would have been especially poignant for Fowler, who won in 2015 after finishing top five in the other four majors in ’14 and suffering a series of heartbreaks. For “Kuch”, having that win in 2012 would have taken the sting out of the bizarre events with Jordan Spieth at Royal Birkdale five years later. Everything we know about these two would be different.
2. Calvin Peete is the first African-American major winner, and somehow even more legendary
Peete is already one of the lesser-sung heroes of the game, both for his pioneering career (12 PGA Tour wins) and the almost ridiculous driving accuracy that earned him nicknames like “Xerox” and “The Machine”. But he also won the 1985 Players, which in our fantasy world would have made him the first African-American major champion, beating Tiger’s Augusta win by 12 years.
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3. Craig Perks joins the fluky major winners list
There’s a shocking scarcity of truly fluky winners in Players Championship history – almost everyone has at least a couple other professional wins on the résumé. The only real exception is Craig Perks, who bagged his one and only PGA Tour win at the 2002 Players. The Kiwi was extremely shaky that day, barely hitting any fairways and missing two very short par putts, but he chipped in twice in the last three holes and rolled in a long birdie putt to win by two shots. He’d join the likes of Ben Curtis, Shaun Micheel and Todd Hamilton as the most unexpected majors winners in golf history. (Tim Clark is probably the only other name here that comes close to fluke status, with just one other tour title, but the 2010 Players winner was around long enough that he avoids that label for us.)
4. The overall career majors list is pretty much the same… with a couple exceptions
Or I should say, the order of the career majors list would be the same, at least at the top. Jack would have 21 instead of 18 (this new world still is only counting pro majors), Tiger would have 17 instead of 15. They’d still be 1-2, and because Tom Watson never won the event, positions three to T-7 (a large group of men with seven majors) would look exactly the same. The only real change in the top 10 is that Phil Mickelson and Lee Trevino would have one more each, bringing them up into that T-7 group with seven majors instead of six. They’d be joined there by Rory McIlroy, who would go from five to seven, while Scheffler would jump from four to six, joining Nick Faldo in the new T-15 category.
5. We probably think of Greg Norman at least a little differently
Photo: J.D. Cuban
Maybe he’d still be, first and foremost, the most infamous ‘lead-throw-awayer’ in the game, but in 1994, he shot an aggregate 24-under 264, which continues to be the 72-hole tournament record. It would go down as one of the most dominant performances in major-championship history, and might take the sting out of… well, everything else. (Also, the one thing we kind of ignore here is, would a win like this have made everything else easier? Alternatively, would its existence as a major have made everything harder for Norman, Fowler, Kuchar, et al?)
6. Xander Schauffele no longer holds this major record
Speaking of Norman, remember Schauffele’s 21-under performance two years at Valhalla, setting the major scoring record in relation to par? That’s now up in smoke, because Norman’s 24-under still beats it by three shots. The good news for Schauffele is that his 263 total still beats Norman by a shot for lowest 72-hole major score. Elsewhere on the records front, Tom Hoge (2023) would join Xander (twice), Shane Lowry, Rickie Fowler and Branden Grace as the only players to shoot a 62 in major-championship history.
RELATED: If ‘history’ is your argument for why the Players Championship shouldn’t be a major, try again
7. Eight other players become major winners
Along with Fowler, Kuchar, Peete and Perks, we’d look back on the following as one-time major winners thanks to their Players title: Mark Hayes, Mark McCumber, Jodie Mudd, Fred Funk, Stephen Ames, Clark, K.J. Choi and Si Woo Kim.
8. Gary Player is robbed of his career Grand Slam
The only players with all four current majors but no Players Championship win are Ben Hogan, Gene Sarazen and Gary Player, but Hogan and Sarazen never played in the Players, so you can’t ding them. Gary Player did, 10 times in fact, but could only ever muster two top-10 finishes, with his best effort coming in 1980 (T-8). The three others with career slams – Jack, Tiger and Rory – all won multiple Players Championships. We would very much prefer if someone else could break the bad news to Mr Player.
9. The Tiger Slam? It’s now even better
Photo: Stan Badz
The most famous achievement in modern golf would now be even more impressive in the Players-as-a-fifth-major-world, because in the midst of his historic hot streak, Tiger also captured the 2001 Players Championship. That fits neatly into the run that began at Pebble Beach in 2000, and would stand as the fourth leg of the new five-leg Tiger Slam, just before its thrilling conclusion at the 2001 Masters a month later. Why is it that these theoretical exercises somehow always make Tiger look better?
10. Cam Smith becomes the great LIV test case
There were five Players Championship winners who went to LIV Golf, including chief defector Phil Mickelson. Three of the others were Martin Kaymer, Henrik Stenson and Sergio Garcia, all of whom belong squarely in the “older European grabbing a final pay cheque” category, and would have been pretty easy to exclude. The other was Cam Smith, who won 2022 Players and was very much relevant and in the prime of his career. Unlike the other majors, the Players is fully controlled by the PGA Tour, which means they would have had to take the extraordinary step of banning Smith – who signed with LIV later that year – from competing in a major he’d won just months before. Imagine the drama! The head-spinning implications! The other majors managed to figure out ways to include the best LIV players and avoid any questions of illegitimacy, but the Players would have had to make the boldest move of all.
11. A major would have been cancelled after the first round for the first time ever
We’ve had majors cancelled outright (the 2020 Open most recently, but plenty more due to war), but we’ve never had one cut short in the middle. The 2020 Players would have been the first, curtailed after one round due to the explosion of COVID. And like the ’94 Expos, first place in the National League before the strike took effect, day-one leader that year Hideki Matsuyama could forever tell everyone that he should have a second major.