The Players Championship appeared to be hugely successful for the PGA Tour, with Rory McIlroy winning the title for a second time after overcoming J.J. Spaun in a playoff at TPC Sawgrass.
After a slow start to the season, the PGA Tour appears to be properly off and running. Many of their biggest stars are back playing, while Rory McIlroy has won twice stateside before April for the first time in his career.
TPC Sawgrass delivered another fantastic tournament, with McIlroy and J.J. Spaun returning on Monday to face off over three additional holes. And the Northern Irishman seemed to step up his preparations for the Masters having won while not entirely at his best in Florida.
But perhaps not everything about the tournament was overwhelmingly positive for the tour.
PGA Tour criticised following the Creator Classic ahead of the Players Championship
There was some disbelief ahead of the event, with TPC Sawgrass hosting the second Creator Classic – which saw Grant Horvat come out on top the night before the Players started.
Interestingly, some fans criticised staging the Creator Classic right before the flagship event on the PGA Tour. It seems that some feel that some of the magic about Sawgrass was lost by the content creators getting the chance to tee it up so close to the tournament beginning.
And one of those who was not impressed by the scheduling was Johnson Wagner, who told 5 Clubs that it was not the right time for that sort of event.
“All these guys, all their stuff is really good on YouTube but they shoot it and they spend two weeks editing it and then maybe it takes them three hours to play seven or eight holes. And they cut it down to a 45 minute to an hour and a half product, that is very easily consumed. I know my son loves watching the Good Good stuff. Speaking of Good Good I had the pleasure to go out Wednesday before the WM Pheonix Open and I got to be on call for their Desert Shoot Out. I was an on course walker and it was amazing, the amount of people who were out there and the passion the fans have for these guys is incredible,” he said.
“It’s not a live television product. There’s too many people and it takes too long. You want to show every shot but you just can’t physically do it live. That is what NBC and CBS and Golf Channel struggle with on a PGA Tour level, there are 144 balls in play at the Players Championship on Thursday and Friday. It is hard to cover every single shot.
“But I guess my main thing that got me so upset is that the PGA Tour for decades has been trying get players, fans and the media to call The Players Championship a major. I felt like Wednesday night was a massive step backwards. I feel like it does [diminish] from that. There was a lot of people out there Wednesday watching, cheering. They had a huge following. A bigger crowd than I ever saw following me at The Players Championship, that’s for sure. But Augusta, the tradition of the par three conditions. Could you imagine a Creator Classic Wednesday evening before the US Open?”
Johnson Wagner has further criticism of the Creator Classic
Wagner was seemingly not done in expressing his frustrations following the Creator Classic.
Of course, pace of play has been a huge talking point on the PGA Tour this year. Fans were furious during The American Express after the final round took the best part of six hours. Meanwhile, there was also plenty of anger during the last round at the Farmers Insurance Open.
The tour appears to be looking into ways to address the problems that they have had. But it did not escape Wagner’s attention that the Creator Classic did not see the participants fly around the back nine by any means.
In fact, it seems that he was quite pleased to see the event overrun as it proved a bit of a point to the tour’s critics.
“One of my main issues with this whole thing was that there are creators out there playing this golf course who have taken shots at the PGA Tour players for their pace of play. These guys were given a three hour window to play eight holes plus a predetermined playoff on 17 of the top three players. They were given a three hour window and it took them three hours and 40 minutes.
“Granted the golf course is brutal and they were playing it pretty far back. But to miss a window by three hours and 40 minutes as you stand there on your high horse dogging at the Farmers Insurance Open that the last group took forever. Well, you know what happened at Farmers Insurance Open, there was a big cut, they were playing threesomes and it was windy on a very hard golf course. So it’s kind of nice to take a shot at these guys saying that you had a window to hit and you missed it by 40 minutes. Are you going to shut your mouth about pace of play on the PGA Tour or are you going to do something to make it play faster?”
There is perhaps reason for the tour to make changes to future events. There is real interest in the Creator Classic, and it is imperative that the tour appeals to new audiences at a time when ratings are not particularly impressive.
But perhaps the answer is putting the Creator Classic on the Monday or Tuesday after the tournament when the main event is out of the way.
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