FORESTVILLE, New York – The PGA Tour Fall season is here but the big question is “who’s watching?”
And now in January there’s a new product on the block called the TGL League, which is a mystery to many, including me. Does any real golf fan care about a golf league featuring indoor golf, hitting off mats, simulated and pros claiming to be representing an area of the country, with some who haven’t been there in years.
What is PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan thinking? Isn’t it time to right the ship not keep going off course in a convoluted direction.
Now news comes that the PGA Tour is cutting Monday Qualifiers, reducing the number of of tour cards and reducing weekly fields making the tour a more “elitist” sport than it already is. Is this a good business model?
The PGA Tour appears to be walking a fine line and they might be falling off the cliff in the near future if they don’t figure out an agreement with LIV Golf & the Saudi Arabia PIF.
Let’s start with the fall season. I like that the Tour continuously has tournaments for its players to keep them synced up for the regular season. The big issue here is who is playing. Barely any big names play during the fall season, so who’s watching? The no name players get a chance to compete for serious cash on the PGA Tour without having even a small percentage of the best players in the field, seems a bit out of place to me. And the winner goes to the Masters and no one has ever heard of him before.
Meanwhile the mega-millionaire big name players are enjoying the fall season – since PGA Tour has no offseason. Are the big boys practicing their indoor games hitting balls of a mat?
That sounds so fun right? Watching the best players in the world hit a ball into a screen, I can’t think of a better way to ingest the sport we love. The TGL League is set to begin on January 7th, 2025 and consists of six teams of four PGA Tour players. Each session is 15 holes long (that’s weird) and is broken down into two sessions. One nine hole alternate shot session between three players and one six hole session of straight up singles. There is a short game area that simulates real life golf with a changing green complex. Basically the players will hit into the large simulator screen until they are less than 100 yards away from the hole, and then turn around and play into the short game area to finish off the hole.
I can’t say I dislike this addition to professional golf until I can actually watch some footage and see how interesting it is, but on the surface it looks like a gimmick that costs a whole bunch of money to see the best players hit a golf ball in a controlled environment. It’s like the PGA Tour slaps Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy together and says, “Come watch this BS to make us some more money because we need it.” It’s not for the fans or by the fans one bit. The PGA Tour always has their hands in the cookie jar despite claiming to be a non-profit.
Take the upcoming LIV Golf vs PGA Tour match called “The Showdown” for example featuring Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler vs. Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau. Arguably the four biggest names in golf on either the PGA Tour and LIV Golf. In what appeared to be an organized get together, where McIlroy said to Golfweek to “energize the fans” and “contribute to a goodwill event that brings the best together again.”
Golf Journalist Dan Rapaport tweeted “No mention of the PGA Tour or LIV Golf in the press release…That’s because this was organized without the tours. That’s been the message from the players: this is for the fans, and we don’t need the tours to produce something for the fans.”
Wrong. If only you were correct Mr. Rapaport…The PGA Tour still has to give “its blessing” per the media rights to McIroy and Scheffler. Even when the players try to use their own platforms to produce content and entertainment, The PGA Tour is still there with their hands out, greedy for more.
The cherry on top is Jay Monahan, instead of addressing the growing pile of problems the PGA Tour is in, the Tour’s policy board is about to vote on the qualifications of being on the PGA Tour in November. The proposed changes include “the reduction in field size, the elimination of 10 Korn Ferry Tour graduate cards, a reduction in full PGA Tour cards from 125 to 100, the elimination of the two sponsor exemption spots, and the elimination of two Monday qualifying spots.” (Ryan French Mondayq.com)
If implemented these changes would be enforced at the start of the 2026 season. Big news for anyone trying to make the Tour – it’s about to get even harder. This does NOTHING to help any of the issues that need to be addressed, in fact it makes it worse. Now the PGA Tour will be even more of an elitist sport, where there will be no underdog stories, no surprise Danny Willett winners, and no more diversity. Therefore, not as much drama and not more entertainment value.
The direction of professional golf is saddening and it pains me to write about everything that is going wrong. Yes, corporations and PGA Tour sponsors care about money, few care about the PGA Tour product or the millions of fans that feed them their profits.
At the end of the day it’s capitalism in motion and The Tour has lost it’s edge, especially now with many sponsors questioning its return on investment!
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