No PGA Tour golf, no drawback with this week’s version unpacking the circuit’s plan to chop subject sizes and taking part in alternatives, and a breakdown of the autumn schedule’s future.
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A senior second. With subsequent week’s PGA Tour Champions finale in Phoenix, Arizona, looming, and a uncommon bye week for the PGA Tour, it’s apropos to acknowledge one of many fall’s finest feel-good tales.
Tim O’Neal’s path to his breakthrough victory on the over-50 circuit had taken him to just about each nook {of professional} golf and when the 52-year-old began the ultimate spherical on the Dominion Power Charity Traditional two weeks in the past, he was eight years faraway from his final victory on any main tour.
“I don’t know. It was simply the way it was imagined to occur, I assume,” mentioned O’Neal, who gained his first PGA Tour Champions occasion with a closing 65 on the Nation Membership of Virginia to qualify for subsequent week’s Charles Schwab Cup Championship.
For a participant who spent his whole profession toiling on the cusp of the most important leagues, O’Neal’s breakthrough is the autumn’s finest story.
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A brand new period. Tuesday’s memo outlining the proposed plan to chop subject sizes at almost each Tour occasion together with a corresponding discount in unconditional memberships was obtained with blended evaluations, however there have been some who embraced the final thought of the plan, if not the execution.
“We must always have accomplished this a very long time in the past,” mentioned one Tour participant.
One of the best instance of how bloated the Tour membership had develop into will be traced to the circuit’s precedence rankings, which set the order for the way fields are crammed. There are at the moment 44 classes on that record, from main champions to “veteran members.” Underneath the proposed plan, that will be lowered to 23 classes with an general discount in full memberships of about 20 p.c.
If authorized later this month on the yr’s last coverage board assembly, the plan would lower the variety of full exemptions to the highest 100 — down from the highest 125 —from the earlier season’s FedExCup factors record; the highest 20 — down from the highest 30 — from the earlier season’s Korn Ferry Tour factors record; and likewise cut back the variety of sponsor exemptions and open qualifying spots at some occasions.
The purpose behind the modifications was to seek out “superb subject sizes” which might enhance tempo of play, storytelling and hold occasions on schedule. The plan would, in keeping with the memo, additionally present a extra stage taking part in subject for many who do have full standing.
The Tour’s transfer to enhance the product within the face of competitors from LIV Golf and the introduction of personal fairness into the skilled sport is each comprehensible and admirable, however tectonic sifts just like the proposed plan virtually at all times include unintended penalties.
Watching the autumn. Earlier than the Tour interrupted the information cycle with Tuesday’s memo, the dialog was being dominated by the destiny of the circuit’s fall schedule.
Due to the Tour’s return to a calendar-year schedule, the autumn is in a form of limbo with nearly all of high gamers taking this a part of the season off whereas others scratch and claw for standing and taking part in alternatives subsequent yr.
It’s the autumn’s lack of spark, mixed with sponsor handwringing, that has clouded its future.
Final month, Shriners Youngsters’s Hospital introduced it was ending its title sponsorship of the Las Vegas Tour cease and Wayne-Sanderson Farms prolonged its sponsorship of the circuit’s Mississippi occasion for one yr after initially asserting it might not be again as a title sponsor after ’24.
It’s additionally price noting that RSM’s deal to sponsor the Sea Island, Georgia, occasion and the Bermuda Tourism Authority’s settlement, a co-sponsor of the Bermuda Championship, are each up after the 2025 fall.
Tour commissioner Jay Monahan has loads of gadgets on his to-do record however the present panorama suggests fixing the autumn ought to be a precedence.
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Gaslighting. Tucked into Tuesday’s 17-page memo to the Tour membership, was additionally loads to be questioned.
In response to a number of members of the PAC, there was a transfer to offset the lack of taking part in alternatives by increasing signature-event fields, which just lately instituted a flooring of 72 gamers.
If, for instance, these fields have been expanded to 80-90 gamers it might actually soften the blow of the proposed new actuality and, in some minds, assist stage the taking part in subject.
That suggestion, nonetheless, was a non-starter with Tuesday’s memo claiming, “any modifications [to signature-event field sizes] at this stage could be disruptive and will improve fan confusion.”
Fan confusion? Turning a 72-player subject into an 80-player subject isn’t any extra complicated than taking a 156-player subject and making it a 144-player subject, proper?
The case for the proposed modifications additionally felt like a little bit of gaslighting, with some mentioning the historic retention charges of Nos. 21 by means of 30 from the earlier yr’s Korn Ferry Tour level record have been lower than the gamers who completed Nos. 1 by means of 20.
Given a big sufficient pattern measurement this is able to at all times be the case with higher gamers, relative to the sphere, at all times outperforming, and it’ll proceed to be the case underneath the proposed plan with Nos. 1 by means of 10 more likely to outperform Nos. 11 by means of 20.
There are many attention-grabbing parts to the brand new proposal, however a few of Tuesday’s rollout felt contrived.
