Maybe I have my rose colored glasses strapped on a little too tight here, but I don’t see the 2024 season of the PGA Tour as a tiered system or a segregation of the players with the biggest names. It’s not a lot different from years past. Sure, the purses are increased to amounts that make equaling Tiger Woods’ earnings easy to achieve, but the qualifications into these Designated Events remain very close to what we are used to seeing year in and year out. The Top 50 finishers in the FedEx Cup are guaranteed a spot into the Designated Events. 20 spots remain available for guys to get in if the Tour decides on 70 players as the cutoff. 30 spots if the Tour opens the field to 80 players. “Cutoff’, 8 events won’t have one. Some of us have mentioned this as being bad for golf. But how? No cut events offer guarantees to the Tournament Sponsors, they’ll have the top names there all week. To the fans who can only attend tournaments on the weekends. And, last but certainly not least, as this is the main driver for these changes, it guarantees players a payout even if they are having an off week. That’s the true definition of a Win/Win isn’t it?
Some of us have also mentioned that the full field events will lack start power with the abundance of Designated Events. This is a great argument and if anything can be picked at its probably this. 12-16 elevated events, 8 with limited fields is too many. Certainly some of the top names on the PGA Tour won’t play in tournaments they have in previous years when most are only play 16-18 times a year as it is. But the evolution of players on the PGA Tour and Korn Ferry Tour will make up for that. I’m not saying that they won’t be missed, because they will. Can’t deny that. But, the Tour has always had players coming from behind taking down the biggest names and growing a crowd of fans with the grittiness it takes to finish with a single digit to the left of their name on the leaderboard.
The rising stars. We didn’t know who Max Homa was 4 years ago, yet we all know he deserved the top PIP payout last year. Yeah, sure, Tiger still tilts the scale every time he shows up at an event, but he’s never held the likeability that Max or Rory or Rickie or Jordan or JT do. Tiger just plays golf better than anyone and that says enough about him. Playing better, it just takes one week. One week for you to ELEVATE your status and position yourself well for the Top 70 in points and a path into the marquee events. The new schedule promises to allow guys to get off to a hot start in the fall and carry that momentum over to the start of the calendar year and get inside the magic number. You can’t and shouldn’t escape the need to play good golf. Guys finishing outside the top 120, 70, 30 all know the sting of being on the brink of guaranteed money. Guaranteed GOOD money.
Change is hard, even with Rose as a color for your lenses.
