Pebble Beach Pro-Am will be designated event in 2024, may reduce amateur, celebrity portion, per report

Pebble Beach is changing. It will be a Pebble Beach Pro-Am, not a real golf course like one of the longtime PGA Tour events. will reportedly be presented as a scheduled event in 2024.

Jack Nicklaus, like no one else, broke the news during Honda Classic last week when he noted that Pebble Beach would replace the Phoenix Open as one of 16 scheduled PGA Tour events next season. The 16 players will include four majors, players, three FedEx Cup playoff tournaments, and eight off-season tournaments with a common rhythm: one scheduled event followed by two undesignated events.

This is great news for Pebble Beach, which has struggled in recent years after decades of success. The fields at Pebble Beach have been lackluster for several years, with winners such as Nick Taylor, Tom Hoge, Ted Potter Jr. and Vaughn Taylor appearing in its recent history. The strength of its field trajectory is small.

It’s also good news for the Tour, which can’t host tournaments in a place like Pebble Beach with the quality of the field it hosts. Finally, it’s good news for fans who can now watch the world’s best play in one of America’s iconic stadiums.

It’s been a big week for event news. The Tour announced on Wednesday that scheduled events in 2024 will have a limited number of fields and no cuts. It also removed the mandatory nature of events for top players, instead encouraging players to play them by increasing FedEx Cup points and sticking with the carrot that you must finish in the top 50 in the previous season’s FedEx Cup to automatically qualify. it’s next.

All this probably creates more events than golf. That some of this golf will be played at Pebble Beach is a huge bonus.

Interesting, according to Golfweek report, the amateur portion of the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, which was a staple of the tournament, could be shortened to two days and played on Thursday and Friday. If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the past year, it’s that nothing is out of the box when it comes to PGA Tour changes. This is wise for Tour as a business and has led to a great result for Pebble (at least in 2024).