PGA Tour CEO \u2014 and successor to Jay Monahan as its commissioner, it was announced Tuesday \u2014 Brian Rolapp took the stage and announced sweeping changes to the structure, cadence, and go-forward planning of men\u2019s professional golf.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And the resulting update has the RBC Canadian Open at a crossroads.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Starting in 2028, the PGA Tour will have two tracks, the working titles of which are the Championship Series and Challenger Series. The former will feature upwards of 24 events \u2014 inclusive of the majors, The Players, and international team competitions \u2014 and will run from February to August (10 of the 15 events have already been lined up) and will boast US$20-million purses, 120 players with cuts but no alternates, sponsor exemptions, or Monday qualifiers, and a reimagined post-season (with match play and a new-look Tour Championship hosted at a \u201crotation of prestigious courses\u201d).\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Challenger Series will be played concurrently with the Championship Series and will have 144-player fields with the opportunity for those on that circuit to qualify up to the Championship rung (and with relegation a possibility as well) at the end of the year, or by winning multiple events or a major.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The changes were met with a fairly solid response online. We\u2019re still 18 months away from the start of the 2028 season, so there is still much work to be done, said Rolapp and Tiger Woods \u2014 who made his first public appearance since his arrest on DUI charges on March 27 and is the chair of the PGA Tour\u2019s Future Competition Committee.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis work was never about any one player or person,\u201d Woods said. \u201cIt was about bringing together different perspectives, having honest, hard conversations, and thinking boldly about what is best for the game that we all love.\u201d<\/p>\n
While it seems evident which events will, for sure, be sitting on which competition tracks, the Canadian Open could go either way.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For now, a spokesperson from RBC said there is \u201cno update,\u201d and a spokesperson from Golf Canada said there is \u201cno comment at this time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Golf Canada CEO Laurence Applebaum told The Globe and Mail on Thursday his organization is \u201caligned\u201d with the PGA Tour and its process moving forward, but acknowledged the Tour has \u201ca lot of work ahead of itself.\u201d Indeed, while Tuesday\u2019s announcement was fulsome on overarching plans, it was light on specific details, including qualifications and any tournament-specific updates.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I have learned is that Canadians want to see the best in the world,\u201d Applebaum told The Globe, \u201cand they want to see Canadian players competing against them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
If the RBC Canadian Open were to become part of the Championship Series, that would mean the bank would have to pony up nearly $50 million in sponsorship dollars, since it already is the title sponsor of the RBC Heritage, a Signature Event on the existing schedule. There\u2019s no reason why it couldn\u2019t find an entity to partner with (the Heritage is also \u2018presented by\u2019 Boeing) for the Canadian Open, which is the third-oldest tournament in men\u2019s professional golf.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But going to the Championship Series would eliminate part of the soul of the event.<\/p>\n
This year, 21 Canadians teed it up at TPC Toronto at Osprey Valley. If this were a Championship Series event, only four \u2014 Nick Taylor, Corey Conners, Taylor Pendrith, and Mackenzie Hughes \u2014 would have earned their way in via their positions on the FedExCup standings last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s unique for us, being a national open. If you can\u2019t play in it, that\u2019s going to be a big bummer,\u201d Nick Taylor said at the Canadian Open two weeks ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Canadian contingent isn\u2019t necessarily alone in this. Scottie Scheffler and Jordan Spieth, for example, have long supported their local Dallas Metroplex events, both of which are likely to drop down into the Challenger Series of events.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rolapp confirmed Tuesday that golfers who earned the right to play the Championship Series would not be allowed to play tournaments that are on the Challenger Series \u2014 a scenario they \u201ctalked a lot about.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s important to zoom out and look at what we\u2019re trying to accomplish. We\u2019re trying to build the best competitive model we can for our members and for our fans and ultimately for our partners,\u201d Rolapp said. \u201cBy definition, we\u2019re not going to fulfill every preference of every stakeholder. I think that\u2019s impossible. But I think what we can do is build something bigger than ourselves, and that\u2019s one of the trade-offs I think we\u2019d have to consider.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we believe that having this Championship Series and delivering to fans the best golfers week in and week out is a goal worth pursuing, and that\u2019s the larger ideal.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The scenarios that exist for the Canadian Open are actually three-fold, then.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first is that RBC either goes all in (on their own or with another entity propping it up) and it becomes part of the Championship Series and Canadian golf fans get to see the best of the best on Tour, but a half-dozen or fewer homegrown talents. The second is that it becomes a Challenge Series event \u2014 perhaps one that does not run during the same week as a Championship Series event \u2014 and it features dozens of Canadians but few, if any, notable stars.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although the former takes away what makes the Canadian Open what it has long been, it\u2019s hard to see a scenario where the key stakeholders of the event accept it dropping to a \u201clower\u201d level, despite Rolapp explaining that was not the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the best way to think about what we’re doing here is that right now we have 47 events at the PGA Tour. We’ll have 47 events going forward. That current model serves roughly 230 players. We’ll serve that amount of players, the same. We are just organized now in a more simple understanding competitively,\u201d Rolapp said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And of course, there\u2019s Rory McIlroy\u2019s comments from last week at the U.S. Open.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAn event like \u2026 the Canadian Open, potentially going to one of these Track 2 (events). Track 2 is a glorified Korn Ferry (Tour) event. That\u2019s what Track 2 is going to be. So, I don\u2019t think the Canadian Open should be one of those,\u201d McIlroy said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The third is an intriguing proposition, given the status of the Canadian Open as a national championship.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As part of Tuesday\u2019s announcement, the top players from the Championship Series will be eligible for a \u201climited series\u201d of elevated international events played in the fall and these events \u201cwill include prominent national opens.\u201d This is set to be delivered in conjunction with the DP World Tour as part of its strategic alliance. But there\u2019s no reason why the conversation couldn\u2019t be had about kicking things off in Canada, where September is the best month of the year to be playing golf.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As it stands, no decisions have been made specifically about the Canadian Open. And, we\u2019re a year-and-a-half away from the new-look PGA Tour to begin.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Until then, however, plenty of time will be spent on bringing the status of Canada\u2019s biggest national golf championship into focus.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PGA Tour CEO \u2014 and successor to Jay Monahan as its commissioner, it was announced Tuesday \u2014 Brian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":756966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-756965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/756966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}