The drastic changes to the PGA Tour plans for its $20 million designated events announced on Wednesday were largely welcomed by stars such as Rory McIlroy and Adam Scott, and even last week’s feel-good story at the Honda Classic, rookie Eric Cole. But there also were mixed feelings expressed about the exclusivity of the events and how quickly things are moving.

In 2024, at least some of the tour’s designated $20 million events will feature limited fields of between 70 and 80 players and no 36-hole cut. On Tuesday, the Policy Board voted to approve a new structure before PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan made the news official in a memo to members on Wednesday.

As first reported by Golfweek, fields in the elevated events are set to be filled by the top 50 players who qualified for the BMW Championship in the previous season’s FedEx Cup Playoffs, plus the top 10 players in the current year’s FedEx Cup standings not already exempt. Five places also will be available for top performers in non-designated events. Criteria will also consider the Official World Golf Ranking.

Scott, the Australian who was recently elected chairman of the Player Advisory Council (PAC), said the changes could help the tour when negotiating future TV and sponsorship deals.

Adam Scott says there has to be a “give and take” from players on the changes made by the PGA Tour. Darrian Traynor

“These are not overnight decisions made by the board,” Scott told Golf Digest on Wednesday at Bay Hill. “A lot of things are taken into consideration. There are a lot of positive steps being made on the PGA Tour. You’ve also got to look at the big picture, not just what happens next year. What’s best for the product for the next decade, as it moves beyond this TV contract and, and sponsorship period, and into the next one?”

Under these proposed changes, the tour could guarantee when and where the stars will play—but also that the big names will be there on the weekend because of no cut.

“That sounds pretty good to me,” Scott said. “I think there certainly has to be some understanding from all the players that if we’re going to maintain these kinds of prize funds, and think about having any growth, there’s got to be some give and take. Things can’t just stay the same.”

Four-time major winner McIlroy, a player director on the PAC, said it hadn’t been confirmed that all 12 designated events [those outside of the four majors and Players Championship] would do away with a cut. The Northern Irishman said a case could be made to keep a cut at the invitationals—the Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus’ Memorial Tournament in Ohio and Tiger Woods’ Genesis in Los Angeles.

“They have got a ton of history behind them,” McIlroy said Wednesday. “Is there an argument that because of that historical context we try to keep a cut in those events? Maybe. That’s all to be decided.”

There have been some questions and concerns raised about playing opportunities from lower-ranked golfers on the PGA Tour since news of the changes broke.

Kevin Chappell, a one-time PGA Tour winner in 271 starts who currently ranks 191st in the current FedEx Cup standings, tweeted, “The (carrot) sure has gotten bigger, but it seems to have been moved further away from the majority of those playing professional golf. I believe this could lead to shorter but more lucrative careers like tennis.”

Max Homa says he “loves the changes” to the tour’s elevated events. Sean M. Haffey

Chappell, who has made $16.7 million on the PGA Tour, also tweeted, “If your LIV, it becomes easier recruit players. Look for players 51-70 on FedEx list to leave and go take the guarantee elsewhere.”

World No 8 Max Homa finished his pro-am on Wednesday and said he saw mixed reaction.

“I understand the sentiment … about maybe the avenues getting smaller, but the prize is much larger. I’m not so sure I agree with the negative connotation,” he said.

Homa is now a six-time PGA Tour winner and bona fide star. But the Californian lost his PGA Tour card twice and had to regain it through the secondary Korn Ferry Tour. He has seen every tier of pro golf.

“I love the new changes; I could rant on this for a while, which I might,” Homa jokingly warned reporters. “I’ve seen all levels of professional golf. It’s easy to frame these changes as [putting] more money in the top players’ pockets … it’s low-hanging fruit to [call] it a money grab. This is to make it better for the fans. It is a guarantee on who will be at events.”

Brian Harman, who is a member of the PAC, felt the news had travelled fast. The two-time PGA Tour winner told Golf Digest on Wednesday that he found out about the changes via social media while he was playing his pro-am at Bay Hill. He said he needed to read further into the new structure in order to process them.

World No. 2 Scottie Scheffler, the defending Palmer champion this week, was playing on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2019. In January last year, he hadn’t won a PGA Tour event. But the Texan caught fire, winning the WM Phoenix Open, API, WGC-Match Play and the Masters in six starts. He added another victory this year by repeating in Phoenix.

Scheffler made the point that regular tournaments will be more advantageous for some players who don’t qualify for designated events. It has been reported the new-look 2024 schedule would see two designated events followed by three non-designated tournaments. The top five earners in points from the three non-designated stops would qualify for the next two designated events.

“[The] 120 guys in the field [in the Palmer] this year, those 50 additional guys … who may not be able to get into those 70-man fields are going to be playing a lot of other events where the purses aren’t going down. I think it’s going to benefit the membership as a whole.”

Added McIlroy: “You don’t have to wait an entire year for your good play to then get the opportunity; it presents itself straight away.”

The changes were received positively from Cole, a PGA Tour rookie who has less certainty to be in the designated events in 2024. Cole has been a pro golfer 14 years and finally graduated to the PGA Tour for this season. The 34-year-old was a surprising and uplifting story at last week’s Honda Classic, when, in just his 15th PGA Tour start, he took Chris Kirk into a sudden-death playoff before falling on the first hole.

“If you play good golf, you’re gonna get rewarded,” Cole told Golf Digest. “It seems like there’s an opportunity for guys that aren’t in that top 50 to end up being there. It seems like there’s a decent opportunity for the guys who are playing really well right before the designated events to get into them. We’ll just have to see how it ends up shaking out.”

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By Brian Wacker
The PGA Tour is making a change to its sudden-death playoff format beginning this week, according to a memo the organization sent to players on Monday.

No longer will the order of play in a playoff be determined by blind draw. Instead, it will be based on a “first-to-finish, first-to-play” method. For players tied in the same final round group, order of play within the final round groupings will be used.

According to the email, this will allow the tour to expedite the playoff process and allow its broadcast partners to know the order of play in advance. The decision was made following last week’s Player Advisory Council meeting during the Genesis Invitational.

Last week at Riviera, Max Homa and Tony Finau were tied for the lead at the end of regulation. Rather than Finau having to wait to see if he would play first in the playoff, under the new format, he would have known in advance that he would play first since he finished his round before Homa. Finau drew honours anyway before losing on the second extra hole.

This week the tour has two tournaments, the limited-field WGC-Workday Championship at The Concession in Bradenton, Fla., and the Puerto Rico Open.

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By E. Michael Johnson
The precincts keep chiming in on Monday morning’s release of the USGA/R&A Distance Report, and perhaps the most important constituency to hear from has spoken. In a letter to PGA Tour players, commissioner Jay Monahan made them aware of the coming report, detailing its findings and added his take on some of the data, which did not exactly mirror the USGA’s “concern” over distance.

Combined with the statement from PGA of America CEO Pete Bevacqua, Monahan’s words would appear to indicate that two of the game’s most important stakeholders have serious concerns as to whether there is a problem and, if there is, whether something should be done about it.

“Having carefully reviewed the data, we do not believe the trends indicate a significant or abnormal increase in distance since 2003 or from 2016 to 2017,” Monahan said. “Rest assured, we will continue to collaborate and share data with the USGA and the R&A—along with other industry stakeholders—in monitoring these trends, as we have since 2003, and are hopeful our perspectives will align.” While Monahan acknowledged the 2.5-yard increase in PGA Tour driving distance from 2016 to 2017, he also cautioned against reading too much into one number.

“While this may seem significant when taken in isolation, it has not been uncommon over the past 15 years to see significant gains or losses,” he wrote. “Since 2003, there have been three instances where a significant gain was recorded between years, and five instances where the average decreased.” Monahan added that since 2007, when the tour started keeping track of player launch conditions, clubhead speed had increased 1.5 miles per hour on average.

“There is a strong correlation between clubhead speed and the total distance gains seen since 2003,” the letter continued. “We believe this increase in clubhead speed is mostly attributable to a combination of factors, such as increased player athleticism and fitness, physical build of the player, enhancements in equipment fitting and the proliferation of launch-monitoring capabilities.”

Monahan also noted that he has asked the USGA to attend the next Player Advisory Council meeting slated for May during the week of the Wells Fargo Championship.

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By Brian Wacker

The PGA Tour has announced significant changes to its drug policy, saying that it will add blood testing beginning at the start of next season in October. It will also disclose if a player has been suspended for violating that policy for recreational drug use.

Previously, the tour would only acknowledge if a player had been suspended for violating the anti-doping policy for performance enhancing drugs (see Barron, Doug, in 2009).

Publicly announcing a player has failed a test for recreational drugs comes with a caveat, however. Commissioner Jay Monahan, who took over for Tim Finchem on Jan. 1 of this year, still has an option to not disclose if a player has violated the policy for non-PED drug use, depending on the circumstances and severity surrounding the violation, according to Andy Levinson, the tour’s vice president for tournament administration and anti-doping. If the player is suspended for the violation it would be announced.

“On one side I think it’s a good deterrent for guys who could be potentially in that area, and I don’t think many guys are,” said Geoff Ogilvy, a member of the tour’s Player Advisory Council. “Maybe part of the reason why they would be cavalier about it [now] is because they know they could sort of get away with it.

“But as far as disclosing it, the other side is that nobody wins. The player doesn’t win, the sponsors don’t win, the tournament doesn’t win, and the tour doesn’t win.”

In many players’ eyes, however, both changes are largely a win.

Stan Badz

Though most of the drugs the tour tests for can be detected in a urine test, human growth hormone and erythropoietin — more commonly known as EPO — can’t. The move is also more in line with the World Anti-Doping Agency, which oversees, among other things, testing in the Olympics, where last summer the process ran smoothly for players after golf re-entered the Summer Games for the first time in more than 100 years.

The tour will continue to use urine as its primary method of testing with players randomly receiving one test or the other, or in rare cases both. Blood tests will also be administered similarly, following a player’s round and done so in a manner Levinson said that won’t impact their performance. Only about 10 milliliters, or 2/3 of a tablespoon, will be drawn, which is far less than done for a normal visit to the doctor’s office.

Under the revised policy the tour is also adding to the banned list three categories that WADA already disallows — asthma medications, allergy and anti-inflammatory medications, and pseudoephedrine over a certain threshold.

“The more you can test to make sure guys aren’t taking banned substances the better,” said Patrick Reed, who was on the U.S. team last summer in Rio. “And if a guy disappears for six months everyone deserves to know why. If you do something you’re not supposed to do you should be called out on it.”

Though Justin Thomas, also on the PAC, doesn’t necessarily like the idea of getting poked with a needle, he agrees with Reed.

“It might make some guys more aware or make them think about what they’re doing,” he said. “Every other sport finds out.”

As for whether this bit of transparency will lead to other disclosures of fines and other penalties imposed on players by the tour, that seems unlikely. It simply doesn’t make sense.

“Business wise? No,” PAC member Jason Bohn cracked. “And I don’t think it should.”

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