I like it.
I think this is going to make it a lot harder for Norman and his team to snipe the top players with all the changes and PIP guarantees + the repercussions for joining the LIV tour.
The LIV tour did it’s job in making the PGA tour a better place to watch the best players in the world. I’m pretty sure that’s what Mickelson wanted from the start.
What’s everyones thoughts on this?
I just want more betting opportunities LOL
Probably want the fields to be more depleted than they are now so that we get more bright green on those wagers
Licking my chops on the non-Super Series events already, I hope none of them fold due to lack of sponsorship
Ideally a few more would go to LIV so that the Super Series events would be more tasty too
Looking to bet on LIV too, hopefully more books pick them up. Same goes for the Asian Tour and the International Series
Not sure whether these changes will result in greater profits but fingers crossed!
I think if they are just elevating existing events with bigger purses / points, then that’s great. My worry is this talk of making these events smaller fields (presumably with no cut). I think as a golf fan and for betting / fantasy, full-field events are way better and more entertaining, so I hope they keep as many events as possible in that standard format.
I know everyone thinks the PGA Tour needs to ‘innovate’, but I’m actually pretty happy with the status quo. Obviously there are certain things they need to do combat LIV (i.e. increase compensation for the top guys), but I don’t think pro golf can be re-invented in a way that’s going to make it that much more compelling. The reality is that non-major golf is boring 98% of the time, and absolutely incredible the other 2%. And I think you need that 98% to get the 2%, to build the story and set the stage for exciting finishes. It’s possible that bringing the top guys together more often will be good, but I don’t think it’s a guarantee especially if they go the route of limited field sizes. Part of what makes golf unique is the underdog element – for 4 rounds it’s possible for the 500th ranked player to beat the top players in the world. I don’t think you get that in other sports really, so I wouldn’t want to see that go away for the PGA Tour.
I would just like to echo the sentiment that replacing full field events with limited-field, no-cut events would be a mistake. The problem with the Valspar or 3M (just to pick two weak events) is not that there are 144 players, it is that 135 of the players stink. Full field events with all of the top players actually playing would be awesome.
I just wanted to add that Cam Young said something illuminating in one of his post round pressers at the Tour Championship. When asked to pick a highlight of his year, he said his T2 at the Sanderson, because that finish was largely what allowed him to get into other events (he was actually an alternate at the Waste Management). When considering how the tour may be improved, perhaps they should consider not making it so hard for good up and comers to get into fields.
Two names that stick out, that may not even be able to secure tour cards despite clearly playing at a high enough level are Gotterup and Piercon Coody. That makes no sense! If you look at the list of guys with cards secured for next year, these two guys are straight up way better than most of them, and certainly have more potential.
This is a long-winded way of saying that the tour should focus on strengthening the fields from top to bottom, by making the top players actually play, but also ensuring that guys 70-140 are the best guys as well, not just people retaining their cards and status through weird rules and exemptions.
Why do you think Gotterup and Coody deserve cards? Yes, they are good players, but this isn’t a professional team sport where managers can just decide to promote players to their main roster because they can tell they are good enough. In pro golf there is a fair system in place to qualify for the PGA Tour. If you win a couple times early in the KFT season and then stink it up for the next 8 months, you still deserve a card even though you almost certainly won’t keep it in the next season. Looking at Coody and Gotterup’s profiles, their pro performances are solid but not incredible. I think they will likely be solid pros but it’s no guarantee. They have an opportunity to get through the Finals, and if they were really elite guys (e.g. +1 or better) that would be very likely to happen (we had Hovland at 89% to get through a few years back).
If you are actually good enough to play on the PGA Tour (e.g. a +0.5 skill level guy) you’ll get there within a year. I don’t think it needs to be much faster than that. In Cam Young’s case, there is no way he wouldn’t have ended up in a very strong position by the end of this year given how well he was playing.
I think the Tour does have a problem with how they fill out their fields, which right now allows lots of terrible past Champions to get in instead of young guys like Gotterup or Coody. But then at the same time those young players may not want to forgo KFT starts for PGA Tour starts when they are trying to earn a card through the KFT season. So the season-long aspect of earning a card negatively affects how PGA Tour fields are filled, and that’s not great.
But I’m not sure exactly what the best solution is. I do think you have consider fairness in all of this. The distinction between players on contracts for sports teams and professional golfers playing for themselves seems important; even if everyone knows golfer A is better than golfer B, that doesn’t mean we should just give A his PGA Tour card over B if he doesn’t have the results yet. The KFT Finals strikes a nice balance here – anybody who is pretty good as an amateur / young pro should be able to get into the Finals (through sponsored KFT or PGA Tour starts), and then they have 3 events to prove themselves. I’m tempted to say tough luck if they can’t get through the Finals.
Basically I think that their elite play at the college level being completely ignored does not make any sense to me-- especially now that the tour has to directly compete with LIV for young guys.
I will have to look at the numbers, but Gotterup made 6 of 8 cuts on the PGA tour, and was in the mix to win one week. Coody has a win on the KFT. So the fact that they even have a chance to get their cards despite only participating in 25 percent of the season tells me they are clearly playing at a high enough level.
More broadly, what I am trying to get at is that on the margin, the PGA tour should move towards lubricating the rise of top players. Scheffler had to spend a full year on the KFT-- why? Zalatoris was playing at the level of a top 25 player in the world for a full year on the KFT-- what the hell were they doing keeping him down there?
Players with conditional PGA tour status for next year include: Paul Barjon, Chase Seiffert, Roger Sloan, Ben Kohles, Aaron Baddeley, Jonas Blixt, Bo Van Pelt (!).
They have this status not due to good play, but because they had conditional status last year and were able to get into events over more deserving KFT players. You bring up what is my single biggest problem with the KFT, which is that players are penalized from a points perspective for playing in more competitive events!! Making the cut at the US Open not only doesn’t help you get your card through the KFT, but can actually hurt you because you are not playing the opposite field KFT event!
In my ideal scenario you would not have yearly status, but a running points system that is coherent and considers PGA tour, Euro Tour, and KFT events. I personally would like to see the tour go in a direction where if you make the cut one week, you are in the event the next week. If not, the field is filled out based on whoever has the most points (determined by their most recent play). If you are not in, you can play the KFT event, and try to rack up points to get into the next PGA tour event you can.
EDIT: I had been loose with words in using “status” and “having a card” interchangeably— I don’t think Gotterup and Coody are better than the majority of guys with cards, just the majority of guys with some kind of status.
I got a little side-tracked and didn’t post what I was going to post originally. (I apologize for the deluge of forum posts-- I have covid and am quarantined in a hotel room so I literally have nothing else to do).
Here are my ideas for changes that the PGA tour should make to its schedule. In what follows, no practical considerations are taken into account whatsoever, and I am pretending the LIV tour does not exist. I am not thinking about sizes of purses.
Jan: AT & T pro am becomes the AT & T Championship. No pro am. 36 holes of stroke player qualifying to find the top 16 guys, and then 4 rounds of matchplay. Pebble and Spyglass would host. Basically this event is a shell of its former self and need to be revitalized.
July: Make the Irish Open a co-santioned big-money event, play it at a sick course. Same thing with the Scottish. Make July a real links season.
August: Bring the Western Open back to life. Make it an actual open like it was traditionally. Play it at Medinah, OFCC, etc.
Sept: Bring back the Barclays. This event was good, and played at cool courses in metro NYC (the largest golf viewing market in the USA). This time of year is amazing for golf in the northeast.
October: Give everyone the month off, since all these guys do is complain about how hard their job is and strenuous their schedule is. Once this in instituted, fine players 100k for complaining about their schedule. This money can go into a fund that gets paid to normal people who work normal jobs in an effort to try to reduce the absurd insult of listening to these guys complain week-in week-out.
November: Make the Australian Open a co-sanctioned, big money event, and play it at Royal Melbourne as often as possible.
Just looked at Coody’s numbers and honestly not that good-- so I am fine with him not getting status but Gotterup needs to be up next year.
Just a couple random thoughts…
I think Match Play is pretty much a dead format apart from the Ryder Cup; golf performance is random enough already, adding in the h2h element of match play just makes it a total crapshoot. I’m not sure if you saw this but someone on Twitter looked at how a Match Play format would have played out at the Tour Championship: the final would have been Matsuyama over Wise, and Rory and Scottie would have been knocked out in the second round. I don’t think there is a better format than 72-hole stroke play. Every event that deviates from this is a total joke from a fan and betting perspective (Zurich team event, Barracuda Stableford, even the handicapped Tour Championship…). I’ll admit these were bad events to begin with, but I don’t think these new formats will do well no matter the course or field (relative to being played as a normal stroke event). PGA Tour wins are few and far between even for the very top guys; when you turn these events into gimmicks it reduces the prestige of the event and the calibre of the win. That’s the worst part about the Tour Championship having starting strokes: it doesn’t count as a real win anymore in most people’s minds. Every PGA Tour win is big – Rahm winning the Mexico Open was still meaningful earlier this year.
The other suggestions I mostly agree with: having the FedEx St. Jude replace the Barclays sucks. I went to past Barclays at Plainfield and Bethpage Black, and they were both good atmospheres and courses.
Regarding the fluid movement between PGA and KFT… it would be tough on players that can’t plan their schedules at all. I think you need yearly status, maybe just make it easier to fall off the PGA Tour for these older farts who have fallen off a bit.
edit: Ironically I forgot about the WGC Match Play when listing events with different formats. I actually do like that event now, but it is typically a snooze-fest by the time you get the final 4 unless you catch lightning in a bottle have 2-3 top guys. Even you discounted Scottie’s win here in another thread!
I agree that 72 hole stroke play is the best way of determining who the best player is in a given week, I am just trying to think of a way to spice up what should be a great event at two iconic courses. I think match play is a format that allows you to use two courses so that was my reasoning. I personally like watching match play (the US Am and the Dell WGC are two of my favorite events to watch) but I know that is not a universal opinion.
Also Gotterup and Coody really lighting it up this week…
Match play at Tour championship would be a terrible idea.
I like the idea of the FedEx regular season leaderboard winners (maybe top 15) getting a guaranteed spot in the tour championship and then having it start as a regular stroke play event.
We got lucky this year with Rory charging through the pack but guys like Sam Burns and other guys starting 15 shots back have literally no chance to win this event so what’s the point even having them in the field?
Tour Championship will continue the current format for the foreseeable future because of this year’s event which is unlucky for us as fans. After a few more years of it being a snooze fest maybe they will change it up.
I think the whole KFT Finals thing needs to be reconsidered too
I’m sure there are actual rules that decide the fields but from a fan’s perspective I’m seeing like 50 guys who haven’t played the Korn Ferry Tour all year magically get into the final series and have like 20% chance of getting one of the remaining 25 slots
It kind of reminds me of DP World Tour’s “Race to Dubai” where like 30 guys from the PGA Tour who played in 0 European Tour events magically get into the Tour Championship and get a chance to win the big prize
Honestly from a fan’s perspective the 64 players single elimination match play was the best thing ever
Filled out those brackets every year and it was busted without fail within 2 rounds. Didn’t prevent me from filling another one out the following year
From a betting perspective it was absolutely awesome. Longshots everywhere and everyone has a legit chance
Besides there are 47 other weeks where the Top 30 players get all the spotlight. Seeing the #62 seed beat the #45 seed in the final was just awesome to watch. That was the same year that #1, #2, and #3 all went out in the first round!
Here is an idea I had for a hybrid Stroke Play - Match Play format, kind of borrows from the US Amateur
Thursday & Friday:
Rounds 1 & 2: 36 holes to narrow down fields from 156 to 48
Saturday:
Round 3: 18 holes to narrow it down to 16 + ties (You can finish it in 5 hours by using the shotgun start)
Round 4: 18 holes to narrow it down to 4
Sunday:
Semifinals & Finals, Match Play