With all the momentum on their side in 2023, the PGA Tour may have made a mistake in 2024 as the Tour approved changes to several of its major events on Tuesday. The fields at these elevated tournaments will be shortened and the cuts will be lifted starting in 2024, the PGA Tour announced on Monday.
The eight scheduled tournaments in 2024 will consist of 70-78-player fields with no cuts after the completion of the first two rounds.
“These small, dedicated event fields will not only provide our fans with important, unmissable tournaments at important times during the season, but will also enhance the quality of full-scale events,” said PGA Tour President Jay Monahan. memo. “Together, this approach provides a coherent, compelling, consistent and understandable schedule for fans, players and sponsors alike.”
This year’s Phoenix Open, for example, had 132 golfers, but next year there may only be 70-80. The same goes for events such as the Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club and the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill. In addition, the field in Phoenix was reduced to 66 after two days of play, but will not be reduced at all under next year’s rules.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. For much of the past 20 years, the PGA Tour has hosted the World Championships of Golf, featuring many of the world’s top stars in limited-field, no-reduction tournaments. The WGCs have been successful, but have never been so successful.
On the other hand, the scheduled events were organized in 2023 for the participation of all the best players and have been a huge success so far. Although there is still a lot of time ahead, and Phoenix and the Riviera Always good stops, it becomes clear that the separation between labeled and non-labeled events is a good thing. However, that hasn’t stopped the Tour from significantly changing its scheduled events in 2024.
There are certainly some positives to the proposal, which comes into effect in January 2024, namely that golfers who do well in non-nominated competitions (Honda Classics and Valspar World Championships) can qualify for the Phoenix Opens and Genesis Invitations.
Fields at certain events will consist of the top 50 players who qualified for the BMW Championship during the previous season’s FedEx Cup playoffs, as well as the top 10 players who are ineligible for the current FedExCup points race. There will also be five places earned for participating in unassigned events.
This is good because it makes it clear how you can move up and down between them. It’s an amazing context, but the door may not be open wide enough. Andy Johnson from Fried Egg recently proposed that the Tour is played on fields with 100 players, with various exceptions for certain events. I basically agreed with his assessment.
One of the positives of this move, as noted by several people, is that the FedEx Cup race will take on more importance earlier this year than ever before. All of a sudden, the FedEx Cup will be big in January and February 2024, which might not be the case now.
It remains to be seen if certain events will be held at the same tournaments in 2024. There have been rumors that certain events could be moved to other tournaments, perhaps at Pebble Beach or maybe even somewhere like the PGA National, but nothing has been announced for 2024. Bye.
“So far this year has been extremely positive, but we just need to keep the momentum going in that regard,” Tiger Woods said at the Genesis Invitational earlier this year.
Woods was instrumental in getting everyone on the same page in terms of a unified schedule. This response, which took place at the end of last season, was the obvious response of LIV Golf, which … plays tournaments on small courses without cuts.
“This is a big year of transition in 24,” Woods added. Twenty-four will be a completely different timeline, but it’s about the commitment of the players to this idea and this philosophy going forward, and so far it’s been fantastic.”
Source: www.cbssports.com
