FORESTVILLE, New York – The 2024 PGA golf season is over – finally. Fall is here, pumpkin spice lattes and football are back, and the professional golf season feels like it ended months ago after Scottie Scheffler won his fifth or sixth tournament of the year; I don’t know. The big question is: How can this change? Professional golf is too exciting, too entertaining, to have each season stumble head over heels across the finish line leaving fans unsatisfied and yearning for more flavor.
First and foremost the year that Scottie Scheffler had was almost untouchable. Seven wins, the first to do that since Tiger Woods, below a 69 scoring average per round, and the FedEx Cup Champion with extra cold foam to top it off. Seasons like this do not happen often even for the top players, but it made for a lackluster playoffs for entertainment purposes.
My last article about the FedEx Cup Playoffs detailed suggestive changes to the format that would help propel the PGA Tour to a freshly entertaining end to the season, creating more drama and twists so the players have to be on top of their game at all times to win. The next step to this restructure would be to redo the entire schedule in general. Where is the creativity? Each week is the same, with arguably the same stakes and the same results barring the majors and signature weeks.
It is time to spice it up, and no I don’t mean a new schedule with multiple different formats every other week, but a sprinkle here and a splash there. Match play has to come back. At least two, maybe even three tournaments should be match play. Or the first 36 holes are stroke play, like the U.S. Amateur, and the remaining players duel it out on the weekend in match play.
How about more 2-man tournaments like the Zurich Classic in New Orleans? Four days, two players, with best ball and alternate shot. What about introducing worst ball and shamble formats into the professional mix? Imagine a 2-man team playing worst ball scramble on the first day, and then playing a shamble; where each player plays their own ball to the hole after choosing the best drive from the team. Scores would be completely different and strategy would be too.
I know that professional golf traditionally is a one-man sport, but the possibilities are endless with more team or duo events. Why not reward two players the same for beating an entire field of other professional duos like we would in a stroke play format now? There would still be enough stroke play events during the season to differentiate the best players from one another.
We have already seen this on the LIV Tour, with the combination of single player and team events all in one. The individual has incentive to play for themselves as well as a season-long team race, and it gives golf another component for fans to lock into. This needs to happen on the PGA Tour with their own personal creation to separate from the rest.
The bottom line is the PGA Tour needs to take risks to add some seasoning to a bland meal. The structure and opportunity is there to test new formats (maybe during the PGA Tour Fall Season) to see if the interest is there for the players and fans, and to work out the kinks. No other sport has the possibility to play multiple formats that tweak the game like golf does. Let’s create some new “drinks” to expand the fans palette beyond the safe and comforting flavor of the traditional “pumpkin spice.”
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