PGA Tour goes for 2 at Muirfield
Dedicated path to the Tour created for NCAA student-athletes
The course Jack Nicklaus built is getting golf’s version of a doubleheader.
The PGA Tour has reached an agreement with Workday Inc. to be title sponsor of a one-time tournament at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio. It would fill a gap in the schedule created by the cancellation of the John Deere Classic. The John Deere is to return to the schedule in 2021. In a memo sent Tuesday afternoon to players, the tour said the new event would be July 9-12 and held without spectators. The following week is the Memorial at Muirfield Village, with spectators still a possibility.
The name of the tournament was not mentioned, along with other details such as the size of the purse.
But it said the field for the first event would be 156 players, allowing the Memorial to return to its elite status as an invitational with a 120-man field.
Workday, a financial management company based in Pleasanton, California, already has a presence in golf through player endorsements with Phil Mickelson, Davis Love III, Matt Kuchar, Brandt Snedeker and Matt Fitzpatrick. It also has contracts with Stanford alum Casey Danielson and Lauren Kim in women’s golf.
Still to be determined is what role Nicklaus would play in the first event. He is the tournament host of the Memorial, which dates to 1976 and has become one of the premier events on the PGA Tour schedule. Tiger Woods holds the record with five victories at Muirfield Village. Patrick Cantlay is the defending champion.
Muirfield Village also has hosted a Ryder Cup (1987), Solheim Cup (1998) and Presidents Cup (2013). The club is confident the course can hold up to two tournaments in two weeks.
It also allows the PGA Tour to stay in its “bubble” during a return from the COVID-19 pandemic. The tour is to resume next week at Colonial in Fort Worth with no spectators or hospitality on the course at least for five weeks through the Workday event.
NEW PATH TO TOUR: The PGA Tour now has a dedicated path for student-athletes from the NCAA, with an emphasis on students.
The tour’s policy board in March approved the plan rolled out this week. It’s called PGA Tour University, and it’s designed for the top NCAA Division I players to have access to the Korn Ferry Tour or the satellite tours in Canada, Latin America and China once school is out.
Eligible players, however, have to complete at least four years in college.
Over time, this likely won’t apply to the elite in college golf, who usually don’t make it past their sophomore year (Tiger Woods, Justin Thomas, Matthew Wolff) and are good enough to get sponsor exemptions and can head to qualifying options at the end of the season.
But the timing for it given the COVID-19 pandemic couldn’t be better.
Golf has such a short season from being shut down the last three months that the Korn Ferry Tour will not send the top 25 players to the big leagues until 2021, and there will be no qualifying tournaments at the end of 2020. Several college players who contemplated turning pro are going back to school, even seniors who have been granted an additional year of eligibility by the NCAA because of the pandemic.
“By focusing our efforts on players who have completed a minimum of four years, PGA Tour University will not deter from the college game while ensuring its graduates benefit from their maturity and experience,” Commissioner Jay Monahan said in a statement.
The top 15 finishers from the final PGA Tour University ranking list after the college season will get status. The leading five players will be exempt to open, full-field Korn Ferry Tour events until its postseason (typically seven or eight tournaments). They also will be exempt into the final stage of Q-school for the Korn Ferry Tour.