By Eliminating Some Cuts, the PGA Tour is Dropping a Piece of Its Identity

The essence of Tour is qualifying for the weekend. But with more weekends now guaranteed for stars, John Hawkins sees what's lost more than what's gained.

It’s not about Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicklaus. It isn’t about Tiger Woods or any of the current top-tier players referenced by PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan during his hour-long media briefing Tuesday morning at TPC Sawgrass, a session that featured the bossman’s usual blend of brand-thumping vision and stout conviction.

Monahan can cover a lot of ground in 63 minutes, and this was certainly fertile turf. More changes to the Tour schedule, all earmarked for 2024, all of which are based primarily on recommendations from its biggest stars. It’s a dangerous precedent, this catering to the demands of the workforce, but LIV Golf is a dangerous foe, and Monahan is plenty smart enough to know who’s buttering the bread in this era of $3.6 million first-place checks and evil persuasion from the Middle East.

The commissioner was doing just fine until about a half-hour in, when somebody asked him about the abolition of a 36-hole cut at the eight designated tournaments next season—a fairly transparent response to LIV’s cut-free competitive culture. The question was framed as such, to which Monahan replied, “I would ask you, do you think we really look the same?”

Well, no, but the similarities are stronger than they were a week ago. “You know, the PGA Tour has always had limited-field, no-cut, 72-hole stroke-play events,” he added, at which point Monahan rattled off three statistical trinkets in support of the cutless edict. Palmer supposedly won 23 times at gatherings where nobody was sent home after the second round (the actual number is believed to be lower). Nicklaus picked up seven victories in a no-cut format. Woods piled up 26 of his 82 career wins on weekends still carrying a full field.

Of course stars like Max Homa like the PGA Tour's new format. But is the game better for the stars getting guaranteed money via more cut-free events? :: Reinhold Matay/USA TODAY Sports

It’s a classic apples-and-oranges defense made by a man who is an expert at selling his point—flawed reasoning at a time when reality has never been harder to grasp and precautions are taken to prevent the battleship from further leaking. Icons need no motivational stimulus in pursuit of success; they wake up every morning with a full tank of the stuff. Pro golf has always been and forever should be a sport of competitive consequence: you play like bleep, you go home to sleep. What makes our game different—so unique, so special—is that every player, regardless of pedigree or historical profile, must perform better than half of the entrants over the first 36 holes to get paid, let alone have any chance of winning.

Guaranteed money becomes an even trickier proposition when there’s so much of it to go around. Not so much because it breeds complacency, but the reward it provides to everyone simply for showing up. Yes, financial compensation is staggered greatly according to the final outcome, but the overall concept of pressure—the ability to produce at a premium level under immense competitive duress—can only diminish due to the simple fact that every player leaves town a winner in terms of fiscal gain.

Palmer, Nicklaus and Woods didn’t play for the money, but a lot of guys do. Otherwise, LIV Golf wouldn’t exist. Legacy, not leverage. Monahan’s pet phrase has begun to take a beating as the slugfest with the renegade faction rages on. That’s not to say angry rank-and-filers such as James Hahn have a leg to stand on when it comes to protesting the Tour’s exclusion of its own middle class, but Monahan is blowing smoke when he claims that the 150th-ranked player in the world has a much better chance of leaping into the Land of the Elite than a lot of people think.

If it’s not a closed shop, the door has a couple of padlocks on it. Those who make a hundred grand for a relatively weak finish at Hartford, which now enjoys elevated status, will surely collect more OWGR/FedEx credit than a similar result would yield at a lesser Tour event. Strength of field alone promises as much, which means a bunch of guys will have to stink it up on a regular basis to perpetuate any realistic turnover between the elite corps and the non-qualifiers.

Getting wealthier off what you did last year, or even earlier this year, has never been what the Tour is about. You should have to prove yourself to a certain extent every time you tee it up. When you’ve been given a reserved seat on the golden bus, however, the issue of worthiness isn’t nearly as dire. Max Homa can talk all he wants about how fabulous the 2024 structure will be, glowing over the notion that fans watching at home will get to see the stars duking it out a lot more often—it’s just another way to advocate a false economy.

Of course Homa loves the new blueprint. Do you really want to watch the same all-too-familiar faces tangle for the same $20 million purse every week? This isn’t some network sitcom with an entrenched cast of characters, many of which appear in every episode. This is a professional sport. One of the best ever created until someone came up with the idea that a tour pro can open with a couple of 78s and still make $125,000 because he finished T3 at some star-deprived tournament 14 months ago.

If the system ain’t broke, you don’t fix it because you can’t—it already works. You don’t even think about picking up a wrench, and since LIV Golf has already said it won’t try to pick up any more stray cats until after it concludes its 2023 season, you don’t need a hammer, either. Not unless you want to pound people over the head with a product suddenly content to confuse the essence of excellence with the power of the almighty dollar.