For years, the artist formerly known as the Honda Classic was one of the must-watch stops on the PGA Tour. Held at the difficult PGA National, the Honda Classic served as the opening for the PGA Tour’s Florida Swing and annually welcomed the game’s best. Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, Adam Scott and Rickie Fowler are all past champions. Tiger Woods, Justin Rose, Sergio Garcia, Brooks Koepka and others have teed it up on several occasions.
In the mid-2010s, the Honda Classic, now called the Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches, attracted top players, many of whom call Florida home, by offering a chance to play a difficult course for a purse that was in the same ballpark as stops at Pebble Beach, Riviera and Bay Hill. The Players Championship used to be held in May, which meant the Arnold Palmer Invitational wasn’t held until the back end of March, and the Honda had a nice spot between Riviera and the WGC at Trump Doral. With purses in the $6 million range and players only playing select West Coast events, the Honda Classic held its own and was a popular tournament.
But times began changing in 2019 when the Players Championship moved to March, and the Arnold Palmer Invitational was slotted between it and the Honda. PGA National still commanded a good field until LIV Golf arrived and the Signature Event model was introduced in 2023. Suddenly, the Cognizant found itself following two West Coast events with $20 million purses, and in front of the API ($20 million purse) and the Players ($25 million).
That change left the Cognizant in a lurch. With top players all teeing it up in the $20 million events, its field started to bleed and it now finds itself with an uncertain future as new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp and the Future Competitions Committee, led by Tiger Woods, look to reshape the PGA Tour’s schedule with “scarcity” in mind.
The Cognizant’s tenuous place in the PGA Tour’s future schedule was further highlighted Monday when Ben Griffin, Adam Scott and Jacob Bridgeman, three of the top betting favorites, all withdrew from this week’s event. This week’s Cognizant will feature just one player in the top 30 in the world (Ryan Gerard) and just eight of the top 50. Brooks Koepka, Billy Horschel and Gary Woodland will tee it up, but for the most part, the buzz has been lost from an event that used to signal the start of the run to the Masters.
“It’s a bummer,” Thomas said after last night’s TGL match of the Cognizant’s weaker field. “It’s one of those events that has fallen at an unfortunate time in the schedule. I think it’s both a great thing and a bad thing of our schedule, how great it is and the amount of great golf courses that we go to.
“It kills me that I can’t play Torrey Pines every year. Like Torrey Pines South, to me, is such a great golf course. It fits my eye so well. I like the North Course, but I can’t play in it every year. Or Colonial is an event in the past where — I love Colonial. I think that golf course is incredible, but I can’t play four or five in a row.”
The Signature Event model has done its job, but it has also segmented the PGA Tour into a group of star-studded, limited-field events and full-field events that attract occasional stars but are mainly used as a way for players to play their way into the bigger events. It’s why Fowler played in the Cognizant last year but isn’t teeing it up this year after punching his ticket into all the Signature Events. It’s why Koepka, who is not eligible for sponsor invites to Signature Events this year, is in the field this week. It’s also a home game for him.
World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler has played three tournaments in a row and four in five weeks. He’s taking the week off with two more March starts on deck. Several other big names have played three in a row and all have played the past two weeks. With the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Players on the horizon, choices have to be made. The Cognizant is on the other end of those decisions.
“It’s tough with any tournament on the PGA Tour schedule, outside of Signature Events, due to a multitude of reasons,” Horschel said at TGL. “We had this issue before the Signature Events were around. We’ve always had this issue. A decade ago, this event was unbelievable with the field, but where it fell in the schedule was really good for a lot of the guys that lived here. … This field has sort of been up and down the last couple years. When you’ve got so many events on the PGA Tour schedule and you’ve got guys trying to figure out where they’re going to fit, it’s tough to fill a field.
“It’s not just Cognizant. A whole bunch of tournaments are struggling.”
Rumors about a potential new PGA Tour schedule, which is expected to start in 2027 with tweaks to come the following year, have dripped out over the last few months. Woods has said that the FCC, which includes Patrick Cantlay, Adam Scott, Camilo Villegas, Maverick McNealy and Keith Mitchell, along with a number of business executives, has considered numerous ideas to please players, fans, and sponsors. By all accounts, the goal for Rolapp, Woods and the FCC is to trim the schedule to 22-25 events, play in the biggest markets, start around the Super Bowl and end before Labor Day. Own the summer, take some weeks off, have all the top players playing, make the Tour more competitive and avoid going up against the NFL calendar. Fewer cards, fewer starts, more buzz. Limited, scarce, simple and competitive.
You get the point.
Those charged with shaping the PGA Tour’s future will ultimately decide the fate of tournaments like the Cognizant. But as the PGA Tour continues to become a more tiered system, with the haves and have-nots more clearly defined, the writing might already be on the wall.
Less is more, and eventually, there are only so many seats at the table.
