As the PGA Tour and its Future Competition Committee sort through potential schedule models going forward, the next two weeks will provide some important data points.
Put another way, creating $20 million signature events – the Cadillac Championship at Trump National Doral this week and the Truist Championship at Quail Hollow Club next week are immediately before the PGA Championship at Aronimink – doesn’t guarantee all of the top players are going to show up.
That was the intention three years ago when the signature model was created and players were essentially mandated to tee it up, though Rory McIlroy accepted what amounted to a $3 million penalty for skipping the 2023 RBC Heritage.
There is no requirement for players to compete in signature events now and at this crowded point in the tour schedule – the Masters and the RBC Heritage made it two majors and three signature events in a six-week period – top players are picking their spots.
With CEO Brian Rolapp expressing a desire to perhaps double the number of signature events to 16 in the near future, it won’t assure the participation of all the top players in each of those weeks.
The tour’s return to Doral, where it played for more than 50 years before a 10-year break, is tempered by the fact that McIlroy, Matt Fitzpatrick, Ludvig Åberg, Xander Schauffele and Robert MacIntyre are taking the week off.
It’s the second consecutive signature event McIlroy has skipped this year (he’s not a big fan of Harbour Town). He missed three of them last year and it validates his comments that he intends to reshape his playing schedule.
Next week, world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler is expected to skip the Truist Championship even though he won the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow a year ago.
Unlike NASCAR, where all of the top drivers show up every week, it’s not that way on the PGA Tour, which has its own version of what the NBA calls load management.
In Scheffler’s case, he typically plays the two events near his Dallas home – the CJ Cup Byron Nelson and the Charles Schwab Challenge – after the PGA Championship, which would mean three events in a row and raises a question about whether he will make it four in a row at the Memorial Tournament, yet another signature event.
It means McIlroy and Scheffler won’t tee it up against each other between the year’s first two major championships.
Unlike NASCAR, where all of the top drivers show up every week, it’s not that way on the PGA Tour, which has its own version of what the NBA calls load management. Players decide what works best for them and in an era when $20 million purses are relatively common, the cost-benefit analysis varies from player to player.
“We have a lot of great tournaments. It’s hard to pick and choose which ones we want to play. You [the media] see a lot of the stuff I go through here week in and week out. If there was nobody out here, no offense to you, no media, no nothing, we could play pretty much every week … ” Scheffler said at the RBC Heritage.
“All the activity and hearing your name constantly and playing in front of people, it takes a toll emotionally and mentally, just doing all the stuff we need to do in order to play a tournament. Physically and mentally, I can’t do it especially when it’s either a string of really difficult golf courses together or really high intensity tournaments.
“You look at these signature events, for me to play Doral, Quail Hollow and then Aronomink three weeks in a row is too much. I don’t think I’d be able to be at my best. Doing Bay Hill and Players is hard enough. It’s hard but it’s a good problem to have because we have a lot of great tournaments and it’s hard to pick and choose.”
There are instances, the Zurich Classic of New Orleans last week being one, where the depth of field is limited because of the glut of rich events stacked together. The Zurich event had a $9.5 million purse which five years ago would have been among the richest on tour but now it lands among second-tier tour events.
The reality is most players won’t play six events in a row and most probably find playing five of six weeks a grind, especially with two of them major championships.
Looking ahead, the schedule has the Memorial, the RBC Canadian Open, the U.S. Open and the Travelers Championship, the season’s last signature event, in June. It’s been tricky for the Canadian Open, which has moved around the schedule in recent years, trying to find the right landing spot.
The goal of 15 or 16 signature events plus the four majors, the Players Championship and the playoffs seems destined to create a more stratified tour schedule. In his comments during the Players Championship in March, Rolapp referred to “a first track of elevated events” that will number between 21 and 26 tournaments and a second track of events.
There is a version of that already and, as this year is demonstrating, the top players will continue to pick and choose where they want to play.