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Only two of the top 30 players in the world were in the 2023 Honda Classic field this past weekend. That’s peanuts compared to the two PGA Tour tournaments that preceded it: the Phoenix Open and Genesis Invitational. Yet because of the Tour’s new structure, all three events had an identity as well as the consequential context that’s often eluded the league and may, in fact, be why it’s in its current position.
Let me explain.
The tournaments at Phoenix and Riviera were title fights. First Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm and Nick Taylor battled down the stretch at TPC Scottsdale — the former two for a chance to add to their borderline historic resumes and the latter for a life-changing victory. The following week at Riviera, Rahm tussled with Max Homa and Keith Mitchell. Homa and Rahm were going for their third win of the season (and Player of the Year driver’s seat) while Mitchell was vying for the biggest victory of his life.
Though Phoenix and Riviera were not substantially different in terms of field strength or perception than the year before, the Tour’s new mandate that all the top players play in the top 13 events solidified both of those events as big-time, big-ticket weeks.
The Honda Classic came down to Chris Kirk, who had not won in eight years, and Eric Cole, who was ranked No. 330 in the Official World Golf Rankings. Hardly heavyweights, but they were playing within the context of something bigger than themselves. No matter the players, that’s extremely compelling golf.
The PGA Tour has a uniformity problem. It, understandably, wants every event to be the same. It pushes for its tournaments to look similarly across nearly 50 weeks of the year. This has massive (and quite obvious) problems. Somewhat humorously, the emergence of LIV Golf has pushed the Tour’s members (i.e. the players) to attempt to solve them.
Though it is not explicit, the PGA Tour is now actually two tours:…
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Source : cbssports
