The desire of the PGA Tour suits for everyone to acknowledge the Players Championship as the fifth major, or even the fourth, is the latest display of American golf’s insularity.
“March is going to be major” has been the promo tagline for this week’s knees-up in Florida. To underline the importance, official releases from the event capitalise the event as THE PLAYERS. This seems to be the American way these days, but the small print says this is all arrant nonsense.
The Players is one of the biggest weeks of the golfing year. The Pete Dye design at TPC Sawgrass has challenges and drama, as well as a signature hole. Much like the move to class the Players as a major, officially or otherwise, the par-three 17th is not actually an island, but it NEARLY is and it is a head-wrecker. Bob Tway knows that after putting four balls in the water before making a 12 in 2005.
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It is obviously a tournament that all players want to win, has a big prize pot, and Jordan Spieth says it is harder to win than a couple of majors. But while the American consortium that ploughed $1.5billion (about £1.1billion) into the PGA Tour would no doubt like it to have its own major, conveniently next to the organisation’s HQ on Ponte Vedra Beach, there is no sensible reason for an upgrade.
Over the past few weeks, players have routinely been asked a well-worn question about whether the Players should be a major. Some do, more don’t, but there are numerous reasons why the Players should be left as it is.
For a start, it lacks history. It has only been played since 1974. In golf, where the pace of change is a semi-arthritic shuffle, that is the day before yesterday. If you did make it the fifth major now, it would make historical comparisons irrelevant. There is also the question of whether you would retrospectively crown all past winners, thus making Jack Nicklaus a 21-times major champion?
Spieth believes that Players Championship is harder to win than some of the majors
JARED C TILTON/GETTY IMAGES
Last month Brandel Chamblee, the Golf Channel analyst and occasional provocateur, posited that not only was it the fifth major, but it was the best one. “I would argue that it is the hardest major championship to win,” he said.
The strength of the field is always presented as evidence supporting the major case, but there is an elephant in that room, or at least in Saudi Arabia. Four of the top 41 players are not in Florida this week because of their LIV Golf associations. Brooks Koepka, once of LIV, is in the field but he is now the world No221. The PGA Tour’s bar on LIV players, ruling out the 2022 winner Cameron Smith, undoes much of the marketing blarney. And lest we forget, 99 of the top 100 were at the US PGA Championship last year.
The 17th hole at Sawgrass has become one of the most iconic on the PGA Tour
JAMES GILBERT/GETTY IMAGES
There are two other things to acknowledge. The first is that four majors is the right number. Adding another would obviously dilute the kudos of winning one. The “scarcity” argument is part of PGA Tour chief executive Brian Rolapp’s thinking in streamlining the regular schedule, so he should at least appreciate that. The rhythm of the season is wrong, but that is because the US PGA Championship was moved to May in 2019, which means “major season” is now too short. You can sort that out by moving it back to later in the year.
The other, more important point is that golf needs to look outside the United States. Three majors in the US is enough and probably one too many. You can make a better argument for dropping the US PGA and having a major in Australia, or moving it around national Open venues, than giving the Players extra status.
In 2011 Rory McIlroy and Lee Westwood, the world No1 at the time, skipped the Players. That did not go down well. The NBC commentator Johnny Miller said: “It’s an affront to the championship.” Even Phil Mickelson, then a PGA Tour stalwart, expressed his disdain, exacerbated when McIlroy went on Twitter and flippantly asked Westwood if he fancied a game that weekend.
McIlroy won the Players last year, but there are concerns he will not be able to defend his title after he withdrew from the Arnold Palmer Invitational
COREY PERRINE/REUTERS
McIlroy learnt to love Sawgrass, winning in 2019 and again last year. His participation this week is in doubt, though, after he pulled out of last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational after two rounds because he was suffering back spasms. He has also delayed travelling to Sawgrass to get more treatment.
The loss of McIlroy would be a blow after all the concerted effort to drum up major talk, but the bigger picture is his defence at the Masters. It is only 29 days until the opening shots at Augusta, and McIlroy will not want to jeopardise a real major for a pretend one. The five-times major winner has been in decent if not top form this season, finishing in a tie for 14th at Pebble Beach and second at the Genesis, but if he failed to finish this week alarm bells would ring.
On Tuesday it was the turn of Koepka and Justin Rose to get the fifth major question. “You’ve got to have one big event on the PGA Tour and it’s their staple,” Koepka said. “You’ve got the BMW [PGA Championship] on the DP World Tour, every tour has one big event. I know what you’re trying to bait me into saying, but listen, it’s the Players Championship. Everybody knows it’s a tournament you want to win. It’s the kick-off of the big season of golf.”
Rose added it had grown in stature and was now alongside the Olympics and FedEx Cup. In short, it is big, but not THAT BIG.