On eve of its biggest event, PGA Tour still battling stiff headwinds

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — The Players Championship is half golf match, half PGA Tour pep rally. This has at all times been the case — or no less than is has been no less than since 1982, when the occasion was first contested on the Tour’s now-immaculate residence monitor, the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass — however seemingly yearly the championship provides new wrinkles and accoutrements that assist remind followers, gamers and media the place they’re.

Attendees who enter the property by means of the Davis Love III (former champion!) gate are serenaded with audio highlights (“Be the right club today!”) from Players Championships previous. Shuffle by means of safety and switch the nook towards the golf course and it’s not lengthy earlier than the highest of the 77,000-square-foot Mediterranean Revival-style clubhouse comes into view, a staggeringly giant nod, full with vaulted wooden ceilings and iron chandeliers, to the successes — some may say excesses — of the PGA Tour. On Tuesday night, nation star Cole Swindell will entertain followers on a stage constructed on the island-green par-3 seventeenth gap. Swindell is bound to play his 2015 hit “You Should Be Here,” which might be becoming, as a result of that’s precisely the message the Tour needs to convey about its flagship match (actually, all its tournaments), maybe this week greater than ever.   

If you’re simply becoming a member of us within the wild world of skilled golf, these are difficult and unsure instances for the Tour. As LIV Golf and its rich Saudi backers have stormed onto the scene and flipped the professional recreation on its head, the Tour has discovered itself in an unfamiliar place: taking part in protection. Yes, it just lately inked an impactful take care of Strategic Sports Group that can end in as much as $3 billion in funding, and, no, the Tour isn’t in any fast risk of LIV Golf swallowing up it fanbase. But the absence of a number of of the sport’s biggest stars at Sawgrass this week — Jon Rahm, Cameron Smith, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson, to call a only a few — is a stark reminder of the place issues stand, to not point out an inconvenient fact with regards to the Players Championship making an attempt to put declare to convening the strongest subject in golf.

This week’s occasion additionally comes within the third month of what thus far has been a comparatively low-wattage yr on Tour. Before world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler blitzed the sector at Bay Hill final week, 4 first-time winners — in Nick Dunlap, Matthieu Pavon, Jake Knapp and Austin Eckroat — had prevailed within the first 9 of occasions of 2024. Each was an awesome story in his personal proper however they’re not the type of names who may entice extra informal followers to flip on CBS or NBC on a Sunday afternoon. Further complicating issues for the Tour is proof that followers are feeling a point of apathy or disillusionment as the sport’s stars have been divvied over two excursions. If social-media commentary is any indication, Tour watchers even have been turned off by the squabbling amongst golf’s energy brokers and constant chatter over eye-popping signing bonuses and different kinds of compensation.

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan will get that, and so do his new workforce of SSG advisors. Three weeks in the past, on the Tour Policy Board’s first assembly with SSG, fan engagement dominated the agenda, Monahan instructed the media Tuesday in his annual State of the Tour press convention at TPC Sawgrass.

“They’re tired of hearing about conflict, money and who is getting what,” Monahan mentioned of Tour followers. “They want to watch the world’s best golfers compete in tournaments with history, meaning, and legacies on the line at venues they recognize and love.”

He added: “Our business thrives when together we’re all laser focused on delivering for our fans. If we fail on that front, we fail on every front.”

To that finish, Monahan mentioned, the Tour has dedicated to imbuing its telecasts with extra photographs, knowledge and mic’d-up segments, and to bettering the “fan journey” for spectators onsite. The Tour is also opening a brand new manufacturing studio in 2025 that, Monahan mentioned, will “bring live golf and other live content to our fans in a more dynamic way, bringing them closer to our players and closer to our sport.”

That all sounds promising, however even a manufacturing directed by Christopher Nolan couldn’t make up for the truth that the world’s greatest gamers stay divided, which has meant weaker fields from Palm Springs to Palm Beach. Monahan insisted that negotiations with LIV’s funder, the Saudi Public Investment Fund, are “accelerating” however that “it’s going to take time,” including, “I see a positive outcome for the PGA Tour and the sport as a whole.” You can forgive these followers who could be feeling much less optimistic than Monahan after 9 months of PGA Tour-LIV talks have produced no substantial updates.   

When Monahan was requested about his response to Rahm signing with LIV and whether or not the Tour is in danger of dropping extra stars earlier than the Tour and LIV may strike a peace deal, Monahan largely dodged the query, saying, partly, “I’m going to focus on the things that I control and we are as an organization and we are as a leadership team and we are as a board, so that’s when I’m focused on.”

The inquiring reporter pressed, however Monahan wasn’t having it, saying tersely, “I just answered your question about what my focus is.”

When Scheffler appeared within the press room a pair of hours later, I requested him whether or not gamers are involved about followers feeling disenchanted by the state of professional golf. “If the fans are upset, then look at the guys that left,” he mentioned. “We had a tour, we were all together, and the people that left are no longer here. At the end of the day, that’s where the splintering comes from. As far as our Tour goes, like I said, we’re doing our best to create the best product for the fans, and that’s really where we’re at.”

Just as you possibly can’t blame followers for having grown drained of the angst in professional golf, maybe we additionally shouldn’t blame gamers for having grown drained of having to reply questions on it. Until the PGA Tour and LIV arrive on a path ahead collectively — that is assuming that day comes — the sport will proceed to dwell in a grey space, with each match exterior of the majors having to simply accept the brand new actuality of fields with some stars however not all of them. That contains the Tour’s marquee occasion, which can determined this week with out the reigning U.S. Open and PGA Championship winners.   

“I don’t think it helps the tournament,” Xander Schauffele mentioned of Rahm and Brooks Koepka’s absence at Sawgrass. “I mean, I think you would like to have those players playing, in an ideal world, but I feel like we’re sort of beating a dead horse in this media room a little bit. The few times I click on the golf to read, we’re definitely beating a dead horse. Everyone kind of knew what was going to happen when they made a decision, and this was probably the highest probability chance of the outcome, which is to have people on different tours at the time. I know the guys are working on getting everyone back together, but in the meantime, I’m kind of on the page of it is what it is.”

Alan Bastable

Golf.com Editor

As GOLF.com’s govt editor, Bastable is answerable for the editorial course and voice of one of the sport’s most revered and extremely trafficked information and repair websites. He wears many hats — modifying, writing, ideating, creating, daydreaming of in the future breaking 80 — and feels privileged to work with such an insanely proficient and hardworking group of writers, editors and producers. Before grabbing the reins at GOLF.com, he was the options editor at GOLF Magazine. A graduate of the University of Richmond and the Columbia School of Journalism, he lives in New Jersey together with his spouse and foursome of children.