Battling a Boredom Problem, PGA Tour Heads into Wounded Players Championship

No tournament in professional golf has been more negatively impacted by the PGA Tour/LIV split than The Players Championship. 

The Players has been considered one of the deepest, if not the deepest, fields in the game. Unlike with the majors, The Players doesn’t have a mix of amateurs, club professionals or sectional qualifying. Getting into the tournament is based purely on long-term merit—The Players regularly has hosted the entire roster of top 100 players in the world with an exception or two for injured golfers. 

The tag of “fifth major” has been discussed over the years, although The Players always seemed to fit better in a singular category unto to itself: a tier below the majors but elevated above everything else. 

It feels different now. 

This week’s edition will be missing three of the top 14 players in the world, according to Data Golf. The depth of talent is challenged as well as eight of the top 43 in the world won’t be at TPC Sawgrass—and that does not include 2022 Players champion Cameron Smith, Sergio Garcia, Patrick Reed, Mito Pereira, Abraham Ancer and others who otherwise would be in the field. 

Those missing players are all on LIV, unable to compete in Tour events. If they could play in Tour events, they would be here this week. 

With the top players in the world only convening during the majors, golf’s top four events have only been magnified. 

The rest of the Tour schedule, however, has been watered down significantly. And The Players is the crown jewel of those weakened events that are having a tough time maintaining the same juice as past years.

A Season Lacking Momentum

The PGA Tour is off to a slow start in 2024. 

With no disrespect to the winners, we’ve been struggling to find on-course storylines. 

The victors have been Chris Kirk, Grayson Murray, Nick Dunlap, Matthieu Pavon, Wyndham Clark, Nick Taylor, Hideki Matsuyama, Jake Knapp and Austin Eckroat. We finally got a marquee winner with Scottie Scheffler running away at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. 

There are some nice stories within those winners. Dunlap, the first amateur to win a Tour event since 1991, stands out amongst that group. Kirk and Murray have overcome adversity to get back into the winner’s circle. Knapp and Eckroat could be rising stars. 

On the other hand, there has been a noticeable lack of positive momentum. 

Clark won the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, a signature event, in 54 holes after the final round was canceled. The last day could have been exciting if not for weather issues. 

Matsuyama zoomed past a solid but unspectacular leaderboard at Riviera for the Genesis Invitational, arguably the Tour’s best event on the signature slate. 

Bay Hill this past weekend might have been the best tournament we’ve had, and Scheffler sucked any of the drama out of the back nine of that tournament. 

Other than Scheffler, not a single player in the current Data Golf top 30 has won a Tour event this year. 

Who has been the hottest golfer in the world the past few months? Joaquin Niemann, a LIV player who is up to No. 9 in Data Golf despite being ranked No. 76 in the Official World Golf Rankings due to LIV not receiving points. He received an invite to the Masters on the strength of his play in non-LIV events such as the Australian Open. 

Meanwhile, the Tour’s stars have been relatively quiet.  

The Arnold Palmer Invitational was another example of the game’s elite mostly struggling. Collin Morikawa, Matt Fitzpatrick and Tommy Fleetwood were among a small group of players to miss the cut. Rory McIlroy, Viktor Hovland, Patrick Cantlay, Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth and a host of other stars were totally absent from contention. 

The only top 10 player to earn a top 10 finish at Bay Hill was Scheffler. And while it was a satisfying clinic of golf to watch, it was also the first time in eight months that one of the Tour’s best three players by Strokes Gained won an official Tour event (McIlroy and Xander Schauffele are the other two). 

Will that change? Of course. Sometime soon we will inevitably wind up with an exciting tournament. 

One of the best things the Tour could have is if Scheffler or another player starts dominating. That is a distinct possibility if Scheffler continues to putt as well as he did last week. 

But on a broader level, the Tour’s product has bordered on boring. The talent pipeline is still strong and the competitive depth is still tremendous—but the top players and best tournaments are not delivering enough. 

While LIV’s TV ratings are lagging behind the Tour’s ratings—LIV’s broadcasts are on par with a mediocre ACC basketball game on the same network—the Tour is off to an unpleasant start with ratings in 2024. 

Last year’s Cognizant Classic (then the Honda Classic) drew 2.4 million viewers on NBC for a Kirk victory over Eric Cole. This year (which was hampered by a weather delay) that dipped to 1.4 million. 

The Waste Management Phoenix Open final round ratings were the worst in more than a decade. 

Genesis Invitational final round ratings fell a few percentage points relative to last year. 

I don’t think there is any question that the beginning of this season has been far from ideal. It’s created an interesting situation where people are still talking and engaging with pro golf at a high level but not necessarily watching the actual broadcast. 

The Tour could desperately use a Players Championship where multiple stars are in contention coming down the back nine on Sunday. 

The Tour is Missing Personality

One area where LIV has really hurt the Tour is by taking some of the game’s most interesting personalities. 

You may not like Bryson DeChambeau or Reed—but they absolutely move the needle as much of the audience “hate-watches” the tournament. 

A lot of us watch when golfers make us feel something, positive or negative. 

The Tour is getting light on golfers who fit one of those categories. 

Some of the reason the Tour is getting diluted is a law of averages. If you take eight of the top 43 players out of the event (plus several other known commodities outside of that range), then you are bound to have less exciting tournaments on average. 

How often have you thought about Cameron Smith in the past year? Only at the majors, if he plays well.  

He won the Open Championship at St Andrews. He won The Players Championship. He was a top 10 golfer in the world who played the game differently than most star players, relying on his short game rather than bludgeoning courses off the tee. 

Having him in contention to win a tournament adds to the excitement. He was a character in the game. 

Now Smith is No. 46 in the world, even when considering his performance in LIV events. The golf world barely thinks about him. 

That is a huge loss. Multiply that scenario by a dozen or more other players—multiply it by Jon Rahm, Tyrrell Hatton and others—and we have quickly reached a point where the Tour can be dry. 

Does it have a chance to be exciting? Yes, but great tournaments are more of an outlier at this point. 

Parting Thoughts

The cracks in the PGA Tour have started to become more pronounced. To say the obvious, the Tour is in an increasingly untenable position. It’s not sustainable. 

I’m sorry to be cynical. I love watching golf more than most. It just hurts to see it like this. 

After the proposed Tour-PIF “merger” that hasn’t happened, a lot of the tournaments feel unimportant and flat. 

The working theory has been that majors are only going to matter more over time—but the buildup to those events might become less captivating as we move forward. 

I’m not suggesting people will stop watching tournaments like the Masters but it helps when there are competitive, star-studded leaderboards creating context going into majors. 

It feels like we have a star power shortage that could negatively impact all of golf. 

What are your thoughts? Let me know below in the comments.