The PGA Tour is making main modifications to its schedule and the way a number of of its occasions are performed as LIV Golf’s second season will get underway.
The PGA Tour ratified a movement Tuesday that reduces fields for eight designated occasions in 2024 to between 70 and 80 golfers with no 36-hole cuts.
The tour has not introduced which occasions will probably be affected, however the majors, the FedEx Cup Playoffs and the Players Championship won’t be included within the modifications.
Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy stroll to the 18th inexperienced through the first spherical of the Genesis Invitational Feb. 16, 2023, at Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, Calif. (Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire by way of Getty Images)
“Over the final yr, we have now spent an enormous period of time exploring learn how to higher place the PGA Tour for continued development,” PGA Commissioner Jay Monahan wrote in a memo. “How to innovate and ship a greater product. How to additional showcase our high performers, whereas staying true to the meritocracy and legacy that outline the tour. How to create a season of consequence that deepens and expands fan curiosity. How to make each event higher and ship extra worth to sponsors, media companions and host organizations — to the good thing about the complete membership.”
Monahan says the tour will “concentrate on guaranteeing purse dimension, elimination of a minimize and FedEx Cup factors distribution to sufficiently incentivize high performers to take part within the designated occasions.”
The modifications “will reward high performers, present ample alternative for play-in from season-long efficiency and totally different intervals all through the season, retain an emphasis on successful and be easy for the fan to know,” Monahan added.
Rory McIlroy, maybe essentially the most vocal PGA voice towards LIV, approves of the modifications.
Patrick Reed, left, and Rory McIlroy, proper, speak on the primary tee throughout observe on the Tour Championship golf event Sept. 1, 2021, at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
“At the tip of the day, I feel with all these designated occasions and this occasion schedule, on the finish of the day, we’re promoting a product to individuals,” he mentioned on the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill Wednesday. “The extra readability they’ve on that product and understanding what they’re shopping for is de facto necessary. It’s actually necessary for the tour. I feel this solves .. that.”
“The product is necessary,” Max Homa advised reporters. “I feel it is easy to border these modifications as a solution to put more cash within the high gamers’ pockets. But it has been made to make it simpler and extra enjoyable for the followers. I do know it is low-hanging fruit to leap on, ‘Oh, that is only a cash seize.’
“It is a assure on who will probably be at occasions, roughly, and leaning extra on the ‘extra’ there. It is extra alternative for the highest gamers to battle it out late on Sundays. Which, you look again at instances of Phil [Mickelson] and Tiger [Woods], the 2 greatest gamers rising up for me watching, and so they had, like, possibly two actual battles. So we’ll have extra of that. We simply had Scottie [Scheffler] and Jon [Rahm] battle it out in Phoenix, and that was superior. Two of the three greatest gamers on the earth going at it, so I feel that is nice.”
Scottie Scheffler poses with the Masters trophy through the Green Jacket ceremony after successful the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club April 10, 2022, in Augusta, Ga. (Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
“I feel it is thrilling as a result of you are going to have the highest guys on the earth enjoying towards one another extra typically,” Scheffler added. “You’re going to have the ability to assure the sponsors that these guys are going to be there 4 days. If you are popping out to an occasion to look at on Saturday and Sunday and, you recognize, if I’m imagining myself as a child, I want to get on the market early.”
LIV Golf was fast to react to the PGA Tour’s modifications.
“Imitation is the best type of flattery. Congratulations PGA Tour. Welcome to the longer term,” the league tweeted.
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