I’m Enjoying The New PGA TOUR Schedule

I’m Enjoying The New PGA TOUR Schedule

Halfway through the Majors, I find that I am really enjoying the new PGA TOUR schedule. The relatively breakneck pace from the Players through the PGA Championship has been exhilarating. I no sooner got over Tiger’s win in Augusta than it was time to thrill at Koepka’s second PGA Championship. Three more weeks and it’ll be time for the US Open at Pebble Beach.

Then the Open, and the Tour Championship, and the entire thing is done in time for sports fans to shift their focus to football.

The current PGA TOUR schedule is pretty much exactly what I suggested two years before it was announced.

In this schedule, every month from January to August has a big event:

• January: Tournament of Champions
• February: The WGC
• March: The Players
• April: The Masters
• May: The PGA Championship
• June: The US Open
• July: The Open Championship
• August: The TOUR Championship

Throw in some of the other big name events, such as the Pebble Beach Pro-am, the Phoenix Open, The Palmer, The Memorial and it feels pretty intense.

In my mind, the only thing that could make the new schedule better is if the TOUR abandoned the wraparound schedule. I’m a huge golf fan, but I just can’t drum up any interest in the No-Name Challenge Presented By I Never Heard of It featuring players from the bottom 30% of the list. If I were a potential sponsor, I wouldn’t like my spot on the calendar.

There’s simply too much golf at this point. For that matter, I also think there’s too much baseball (go back to 154 games), basketball and hockey. College football is headed in that direction as well, with 41 bowls (about fifteen bowls too many). Just wait until they decide to do a 16 team playoff.

If the Fall PGA TOUR schedule is to remain, I’d like to see the PGA TOUR experiment with alternate formats: Team play, Stableford, Celebrity pairings and perhaps even mixed play with the LPGA and Champions Tour. Offering something different would make me pay more attention.

The PGA TOUR’s math wizards surely can figure out a way to scale the money and points so that players on the bubble can still earn money toward keeping their cards.

Less is often more.