PGA Tour schedule still about good golf

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Fresh off a sevenhour board meeting that reshaped the PGA Tour’s future, Commissioner Jay Monahan was standing in a breeze way at Bay Hill last week when Adam Hadwin walked by and asked him what was coming. Monahan assured him there would be good news on the way.

“For everyone?” Hadwin asked.

Monahan put some of those concerns to rest on Tuesday that radical changes to the PGA Tour schedule would not create a divide among the stars who play in small fields for big money and everyone else.

And he took exception to the notion the PGA Tour simply copied Saudi-funded LIV Golf by having 11 designated tournaments that don’t have a cut.

“Do you think we really look the same?” Monahan said. “The players that are competing in our events in this new format next year will have earned the right to compete in them.”

Some details have not been worked out, while others have not been announced.

Still to be determined are eight of the designated events that will offer a $20 million purse with a field of no more than 80 players. Jack Nicklaus said two weeks ago Pebble Beach would be one of them, and the tour has said events with tournament hosts — Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods — would be among them.

Monahan pointed to a signature difference to LIV Golf, which has 48 players who make up 12 teams for the entire season. He said every PGA Tour member would be able to gain access to elite events by competing in all the other tournaments.

Key to the system is turnover.

“The model right now would suggest that roughly a little north of 60 percent of the players in the top 50 will retain their position, so more than a third will not,” he said. “That was an important element to the changes that we’re making. We wanted to make certain that there was real consequence and there’s real promotion, there’s real relegation. I think that accomplishes that.”

Monahan declined to acknowledge that changes were prompted by LIV Golf, which has taken away 36 players from the PGA Tour with offers of signing bonuses, small fields, a team concept and $20 million purses, with $4 million to the winner.

For all the changes, Justin Thomas said it still came down to good golf.

“When every single one of us signed up to play golf, you knew that the better you played, the better tournaments you were going to be into, and the worse you played, you may not even have a job anymore or you may be on a developmental tour or whatever it may be,” Thomas said. “None of that is changing.”