While some PGA Tour pros are wondering if more players should be included in the Signature Events, Rory McIlroy wants to make the PGA Tour more exclusive.
After the second round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational, one of the curcuit’s $20 million events which has a field of just 69 players, McIlroy said he wants to double down on the PGA Tour’s new structure.
“I’m all for making it more cutthroat, more competitive,” he said after a second-round 70 at Bay Hill. “Probably won’t be very popular for saying this, but I’m all for less players and less Tour cards, and the best of the best.”
His comments only underscore the current debate over how much the PGA Tour should prioritize its stars over the rank-and-file members.
After debuting the designated events last year, eight tournaments with $20 million purses, the Tour changed its entire model by elevating those events further by limiting the fields to between 70 and 80 players, with new ways of qualifying for them. The fields are made up of the top 50 in the previous year’s FedEx Cup standings, the top 10 players in the current year’s standings not otherwise exempt, the five best performers from recent non-Signature Events, current year winners and top 30 OWGR players not otherwise exempt, in that order.
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But so far, only one of the four Signature events that have been played, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, has had a full field of 80 players. This week’s event at Bay Hill started with just 69 players (meaning Nick Dunlap played the first two rounds alone).
The small field comes as the PGA Tour is struggling to get all of its members into some of its other events. The Korn Ferry Tour now awards 30 PGA Tour cards — down from 25 plus an additional 25 from the Korn Ferry Tour Finals — while the top 10 players from the DP World Tour and five players from PGA Tour Q-School also earn membership now. All of these categories are sorted with the top 125 in last year’s FedEx Cup Fall rankings, and dozens of other categories to create the PGA Tour priority ranking.
Currently, more than 200 players hold what is considered “full” membership on the PGA Tour, with dozens more holding conditional membership.
Last year’s leading points-getter on the Korn Ferry Tour, Ben Kohles hasn’t gotten into any Signature Events and missed out on the popular WM Phoenix Open. None of the DP World Tour graduates except Mathieu Pavon, who won the Farmers, had played in one until Sami Valimaki teed it up at Bay Hill this week.
PGA Tour Q-School qualifiers are having an even tougher time. Harrison Endycott, who medaled at Q-School last December, is making just his fourth start of the season this week’s Puerto Rico Open, being played opposite the API. He was 9th on the alternate list at last week’s Coginzant Classic.
The PGA Tour has already expanded the field sizes for the Valspar Championship and Valero Texas Open to accommodate more players.
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But McIlroy’s idea is that there should be even fewer membership categories and thus fewer members, although he restated his position Saturday admitting he didn’t know the exact number.
“I haven’t thought about it that hard,” McIlroy said. “I’m all for more cutthroat and more competitive and trying to give pathways to the younger generation. So, through Korn Ferry Tour, through PGA Tour U, through … I just feel like there’s a lot of categories on Tour that people are sort of still benefiting off what they did like five or ten years ago.
“I feel like the most competitive professional golf tour in the world, you should have to come out and prove yourself year after year after year.”
This week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational also features a 36-hole cut, though five of the other seven Signature Events do not.
“But if it’s important enough — if it’s that important to Tiger and Jack and if Arnold were alive, if it was important enough for him, then it’s their tournament, at the end of the day, and they can do whatever they want,” McIlroy said. “I could have went either way, but if it’s important enough to those guys, then we’ll have a cut.”
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Just 10 players were cut at Bay Hill this week, with the top 50 and ties advancing, plus anyone within 10 shots of the lead. The next Signature Event, the RBC Heritage, is held the week after the Masters and will not have a cut. Nor will the Wells Fargo Championship or the Travelers Championship.
Ironically, smaller fields and no cuts — among other differences — were some of the main selling points of the PGA Tour’s main competitor, LIV Golf. McIlroy, until very recently, was a strong critic of the Saudi-backed Tour but softened his stance in recent months.
On Saturday, he pitched another similar concept to LIV Golf, a global tour.
“I would say take the best events from all over the world and try to create something through that, because those events still have history and legacy and tradition and all the things that are still very important in golf,” McIlroy said. “I think there’s been some experiments with creating new tournaments out of nothing, and I don’t know if they have really captured the imagination of the general public.”
