February 5, 2026<\/a><\/p>\nThe Players often features the strongest field in golf by Official World Golf Ranking, thanks to the Masters\u2019 inviting past champions, the PGA\u2019s offering spots to club professionals, or the two Opens\u2019 providing a chance for dreamers. And TPC Sawgrass, one of the best golf courses in the United States, has been consistently renovated to provide a stern test for today\u2019s golfers and their equipment advantage. It also features one of the most distinctive golf holes \u2014 the island green 17th.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the Players. Like it doesn\u2019t need to be anything else,\u201d McIlroy said. \u201cLike I would say it\u2019s got more of an identity than the PGA Championship does at the minute.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s also a PGA Tour event, which means no LIV Golf players.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s the biggest nonstarter to the argument, even if you acknowledge that in golf\u2019s history, the four majors have been a fluid concept. At different times, the Amateur Championship and U.S. Amateur were considered top-tier events, and the term \u201cmajor\u201d itself was not widely used until the 1960s. Arnold Palmer is often considered to be a driving force behind the idea that winning these four weeks a year means more than every other week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a traditionalist, I\u2019m a historian of the game. We have four major championships. You know, if you want to see what five major championships looks like, look at the women\u2019s game. I don\u2019t know how well that\u2019s went for them,\u201d McIlroy said.<\/p>\n
McIlroy did say he thinks the PGA should move back to August and deliver on the \u201cglory\u2019s last shot\u201d promise it held then. Since 2019, it\u2019s been in May, which has limited which golf courses it can go to (weather concerns restrict the use of courses in the Midwest or North) and stuffed it between the Masters and U.S. Open.<\/p>\n
McIlroy, the defending Players champion, quipped he\u2019d love to be a seven-time major winner instead of five. But it hints at another complication \u2014 retroactively awarding that status to a tournament that has existed since 1974 and been held at TPC Sawgrass since 1982.<\/p>\n
Would Tiger Woods now be a 17-time major winner? But adding a pair of trophies to his pile actually puts him further away from Jack Nicklaus, who won the Players three times in its first five years.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s messy, and not the sort of thing the PGA Tour can just make happen through sheer force of will, though Rolapp, with his decades of NFL experience, is no doubt aware of how a league can use its weight to make events bigger and more impactful.<\/p>\n
McIlroy is making his 2026 PGA Tour debut this week at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, a tournament he won a year ago for the first time.<\/p>\n