Peter Malnati is one of the other guys.
That seems to be just fine with him, and it may be invaluable to the PGA Tour.
Malnati’s tear-stained interview after his victory in the Valspar Championship on Sunday may have revealed more about the man beneath the bucket hat than his performance down the stretch when he held off Cameron Young for Malnati’s second tour win and his first in more than eight years.
In an increasingly star-driven sport that is undergoing generational change without a clear path forward at the moment, Malnati has an everyman quality that serves him well and provides a needed perspective on the tour’s Policy Board as it grapples with restructuring the business model in the wake of the existential threat created by LIV Golf.
There are six player directors on the board: Tiger Woods, Adam Scott, Webb Simpson, Patrick Cantlay, Jordan Spieth and Malnati. Woods is arguably the greatest ever to play; Scott, Simpson and Spieth have won major championships; Cantlay is ranked seventh in the world; and then there’s Malnati.
He has played 259 PGA Tour events, won twice, finished in the top 10 just 13 times and he’s missed more cuts (133) than he’s made (126). In the previous 10 years, Malnati has finished inside the top 100 in FedEx Cup points once: 86th in 2020-21. With his victory, Malnati finds himself in 16th place.
So, when Malnati talks about the tour and all that comes with it, he probably comes from a slightly different perspective than his player-director peers.
At the Players Championship, Malnati tapped the brakes a bit on how much input he and his fellow player directors should have on what comes next for the tour.
“I think we’ve almost swung the pendulum too far in the other direction now after what happened on June 6th,” Malnati said in reference to the stunning “framework agreement” with the Saudis, “where players and the whole organization were left in the dark. The pendulum has swung too far to where players are probably feeling like they have more input than we should.
“So, I think, as it comes back to sort of neutral, I think we’re going to land in a really sweet spot where we have the leadership of the tour doing what they should, which they are, and we have a lot of transparency where the players know what’s going on and are able to give their input.”
Part of the challenge is bringing the best players in the game together more often, which means finding a path back to the PGA Tour for players who opted for LIV’s guaranteed contracts. It figures to be a major sticking point in negotiations between the two sides. Though Malnati said he wants to find a way to get all of the best players together again, he also sees the other side.
Not every event is going to have Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler, Justin Thomas, Ludvig Åberg and, perhaps eventually, Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson in the field. Those regular events, in what has begun to feel like a two-tier tour, must matter, also.
In his champion’s interview Sunday evening at Innisbrook Resort’s Copperhead course in Palm Harbor, Florida, Malnati made that point.
“I feel like this win, this win is, first and foremost, it’s for me; it’s for my family; it’s for my caddie; it’s for my team of people who support me,” said Malnati, whose share of the $8.4 million purse, $1.512 million, was more than he had earned in any previous season. “But on a larger scale, it’s also … it’s for Tampa; it’s for the Copperheads [the organizing group]; it’s for Valspar; and it’s for all the events on the PGA Tour who find themselves in this new ecosystem kind of wondering where they fit and if they matter.
“I said this out there [in the trophy presentation] because I wanted the Copperheads and the people of Tampa and the people from Valspar to know that there are thousands of Peter Malnatis out there who are 10 years old right now, teenagers right now, who dream of playing golf on the PGA Tour, and they want to have the moment that I just got to have. If we don’t have communities that believe in what the PGA Tour does and sponsors who support what the PGA Tour does, we don’t have those moments.”
“Every single event out there felt like a major to me, every single event that I’ve played on the PGA Tour, ever. … I’ve never teed it up in a tour event and not felt, wow, this is, like, I’m nervous, and this is important.” – Peter Malnati
Malnati said he felt compelled to say what he did because he knows there are sponsors and communities wondering whether they’re getting left behind in golf’s new world order. It will be similar at the Texas Children’s Houston Open this week and the Valero Texas Open one week later, a run of three events sandwiched between the Players Championship and the Masters.
There has been a sense of entitlement on the PGA Tour – from the courtesy cars, to the free dry cleaning, to family dining, and, of course, $20 million purses. The top players are free to pick where they make their money. Until now, Malnati hasn’t had that luxury.
The win also takes him to the Masters for the first time. Like others before him, he has turned down trips to Augusta National until he has qualified to play there in April.
“I remember playing on the then Nationwide, now Korn Ferry Tour, in 2015. Every single event out there felt like a major to me, every single event that I’ve played on the PGA Tour, ever. … I’ve never teed it up in a tour event and not felt, wow, this is, like, I’m nervous, and this is important,” Malnati said.
“And 90 percent of us on tour are that way. I’m going to go play next week in Houston, and there may not be the history and the story I may feel something special when I get on the grounds at Augusta – and I hope I do – but I’m going to feel just as amped up on the first tee next week in Houston, because this, playing golf on the PGA Tour for 90 percent of us out here, is a) really, really hard, and b) the realization of a dream.
“I’m in the Masters. That is, that is cool; don’t get me wrong, I’m excited about it, and I cannot wait to set foot on the grounds. That will be amazing. But I think more of what has sunk in to me is, this guarantees me that – this is my 10th season on the PGA Tour – it guarantees me that I’m going to have 12, at least. Pretty cool.”
The same can be said for the 36-year-old guy who wears a bucket hat and plays a yellow golf ball because his son likes it and whose Sunday night celebration included peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with his wife and kids on the way to the airport to fly to Houston and try to do it all over again.