If it feels like the PGA Tour hits the pause button this week, it hasn’t. But after an energetic and engaging Jon Rahm-driven start to the new calendar year, landing at the Honda Classic brings into sharp focus the challenge facing the tour as it settles into its new era of “designated” tournaments.
After two weeks in Phoenix and Los Angeles where all the stars teed it up and Scottie Scheffler and Rahm took turns vaulting to No. 1 in the world with victories, the Honda Classic is feeling the squeeze.
Sandwiched in the middle of a five-week stretch that includes four designated events – the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Players Championship follow – the Honda offers a field with just four players ranked among the top 30 in the world, the highest being Sungjae Im, who checks in at No. 18.
Throw in the fact that this is the final year of Japanese automaker Honda’s long-standing sponsorship of this fixture on the tour’s Florida Swing and it underscores questions about whether the PGA Tour is becoming bifurcated. Suddenly, the Honda’s $8.4 million purse looks small compared to the $20 million and $25 million purses surrounding it.
What happens to the Honda, the Valspar Championship, the AT&T Byron Nelson, the 3M Open and other events that are also likely to struggle to attract the stars who already are committed to the designated events, the majors and the FedEx Cup playoffs?
And what about the future when it seems likely that the designated events will have more limited fields?
What happens to the players who live outside the top 50?
That’s one of the things Peter Malnati wants to know. Malnati is now one of four players on the PGA Tour Policy Board, which governs the tour and will shape its future. He will attend his first board meeting next week while at Bay Hill in Orlando and, before that, Malnati has a phone call scheduled with Rory McIlroy who, along with Tiger Woods, has been instrumental in restructuring the tour model.
“Whether or not my voice matters, I at least want it to be heard because I feel like I speak for the vast majority of the membership on the PGA Tour,” Malnati said.
“I just don’t want to see the tour lose what it’s always had where 10 or 12 guys you’ve never heard of become a big deal, become a star on the tour. If the tour ever gets too small to where the ‘haves’ play each other every single weekend, you’re never going to fall out of that.
“I don’t mind this idea of some stratification on tour with an elite series of events, but we have to get the field sizes right and we have to get the mobility right.”
For years, the tour has catered to the rank and file, but the focus changed last year with the arrival of LIV Golf. It forced the tour to be proactive, and the Woods-McIlroy agenda took hold.
Last week at the Genesis Invitational, Woods and McIlroy gathered with other players like they did in Delaware last summer to talk through what happens next. This is being called a bridge year to 2024, when the tour schedule is expected to look significantly different.
The challenge is in finding a balance between serving the membership as a whole while bringing the top players together more often with bigger stakes.
For years, the tour has catered to the rank and file, but the focus changed last year with the arrival of LIV Golf. It forced the tour to be proactive, and the Woods-McIlroy agenda took hold.
“I think the hardest part of achieving the balance is having a big group accept change,” said Adam Scott, who was recently elected chairman of the tour’s Player Advisory Council. “We’re not very good at that generally, I would say, especially as individual professional golfers that make decisions for themselves most of the time.
“Realizing this is really one of the times of change in the professional game and things are going to have to change and people in all positions on the tour are going to have to adapt to what that is in the future, I think that will be when we can accept that balance.”
The PGA Tour isn’t reducing playing opportunities, but it is restructuring who can play where. McIlroy has made the point that every tour member can play their way into the biggest events by playing well wherever they play.
This week at the Honda Classic is a good example. With most of the stars taking the week off, the leaderboard at PGA National’s Champion Course in Palm Beach Gardens will look different. The tour loves selling itself as the ultimate meritocracy, and maintaining that is part of the challenge.
“I’ve had tons of conversations with guys that are worried about what events they’re going to play next year and all that,” McIlroy said. “The one thing I said: ‘Look, no one’s trying to screw the bottom half of the tour here. If anything, we’re trying to lift it up.’
“I hate calling it a product, but a product that this year’s forecast to do $2 billion in gross revenue, you’re trying to grow that product as much as possible. So the way I’ve tried to describe it is, if you look at, like, the NBA’s trajectory over the last 20 years, they’ve built that league around their best players and their stars, not around the 12th guy on the team. But because they’ve built that league up around the stars, the 12th guy on the team does way better than he used to. So that’s sort of the way I’ve been trying to tell it.”
Those involved say no final decisions have been reached about the structure going forward.
“We are in the process of figuring all that out, and it’s been a variety of different models, different opinions, trying to figure out what is the best product and competitive environment and what we should do going forward,” Woods said.
“Yes, limited fields; what’s the number? Cuts … yes or no? What’s the number? What do we go to? How many players are playing the event? OK, what is the ability to get into the designated events? How is Jay (Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner) able to sell our product to all the different sponsors across the board? There’s so much give and take. It’s still ongoing. I mean, it really has, it’s been difficult.”
Malnati, whose nine-year career has been spent largely among the tour’s middle class, said he is excited to be part of the process. He’s not entirely sure what to expect at his first board meeting, but he feels the magnitude of the moment.
“It will be fun to see where we go,” Malnati said. “It’s an exciting time to be a professional golfer. It’s never been more lucrative and rewarding, but I want to make sure we get it right.”