The recent Players Championship seemed to be an overwhelming success for the PGA Tour, with arguably the biggest name in the field, Rory McIlroy, winning at TPC Sawgrass for the second time in his career.
While the PGA Tour may have preferred the Players Championship to conclude on Sunday, it certainly did not appear to hurt the tournament to have Rory McIlroy involved in a Monday playoff to win the flagship event.
There were a host of interesting storylines, with Scottie Scheffler still struggling to rediscover the magic of 2024 while Xander Schauffele finished last of those who made the cut. Meanwhile, it was remarkable to see Bud Cauley in the mix given some of the setbacks he has had in the last few years.
It was definitely a week which reminded many why the stop at Sawgrass is so significant on the PGA Tour calendar.
PGA Tour urged to push for a significant change to the Players Championship
Speaking on Golf Channel, Lee Trevino backed the Players to become the fifth major, having admitted that he was one of the players who was not at all convinced about the event when it first started out. And it appears that he is not the only person to have changed his mind on the tournament.
Speaking on The Hank Haney Podcast, Hank Haney suggested that it may actually be particularly important for the sport to elevate the Players as they try to get fans to care more and more about their events.
“The one thing you have really got is that you have so many events which are just meaningless. Everybody rags on LIV and they talk on the fact it’s just exhibitions but the PGA Tour is just exhibitions too. Other than the major championships they are all just exhibitions. They have four real golf tournaments and they can go and make them signature events or put more money in the purse. There is no difference in the ratings to speak of between these signature events and the regular events. Okay, maybe it is a little different and there is a little better field but not much,” he said.
“So how can they make tournaments more relevant? One of the easiest ways is to make it a major championship. I have been thinking what do they need to do? It’s easy to come up with problems and analyze problems but how do you come up with solutions? I have said that they need to do something to make it more interesting. The fastest and easiest thing to do to make it more interesting is to have more major championships. I don’t think all of a sudden they will have six or seven or eight but The Players Championship is a big tournament. Everybody knows it’s the fifth biggest tournament. It’s been diluted because you are missing the LIV guys but hopefully that is going to get straightened out if they ever are going to come to an agreement with the PGA Tour.
“And if they do then the field at The Players Championship will be even better than this past week. To have another tournament instead of having four tournaments which are consequential, that just helps golf.
“So I am doing a 360 on this issue and saying that I think they should make The Players Championship a major. And the reason I am saying that is that golf needs help and the fastest and best way to help is to have more significant tournaments and what makes a tournament significant is history and there is a lot of that at The Players.”
What Scottie Scheffler said about the Players Championship becoming more and more like a major
It appears that the debate over whether the Players should become the fifth major will rumble on and on.
Scottie Scheffler made history at the event in 2024 by becoming the first player to ever retain the title. Meanwhile, only Jack Nicklaus has now lifted the trophy more often than the current world number one.
And ahead of last year’s event, Scheffler was asked whether the Players is getting closer to being on the level of being a major.
“I just think that it’s special to us as being members of the PGA Tour because it’s our tournament. It’s our premier event,” he said.
“This is the home of the PGA Tour, and so for us, I think it’s a special place to come back year after year and get to play this golf course and compete with the best players in the world and the best players on our tour, and, yeah, it’s always a fun week to come here and compete.”
But what the governing bodies must not do – despite Haney’s advice – is consider adding several more majors to the calendar. Otherwise, the likes of the Masters and The Open Championship will be in real danger of losing their prestige as the history books quickly get completely rewritten over the coming years.
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