Lure of long shot makes game better
McIlroy wants PGA Tour to shrink its membership
Twenty-two years ago, Craig Perks, a little-known New Zealander in the midst of his third PGA Tour season, shocked the golf world with a fantastic finish to win the lucrative Players Championship.
Ranked outside the top 200 in the world, Perks, in Sunday’s final pairing at TPC Sawgrass, was three over par through 15 holes with seven bogeys on his scorecard. Nevertheless, the 35-year-old stood one shot back of the lead held by Stephen Ames.
Playing on the game’s biggest stage, Perks proceeded to push his second shot on the par-5 16th toward the water, but he caught a lucky break when greenside rough gobbled up his ball and prevented it from bounding over a bulkhead into a hazard. From there, Perks chipped in for eagle to tie Ames and then surged ahead with a 28-foot birdie conversion on the islandgreen 17th. To cap the madness, Perks chipped in again, this time for par on the difficult 18th, and won by two shots. He beat Tiger Woods, the tournament’s defending champion, by seven.
“You’re unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable,” Woods told Perks during the trophy ceremony.
Though that adjective is the most overused in golf, it fit the moment. How had Perks, a journeyman pro who had only won professionally on the Hooters Tour before that week, pulled off such magic in the most pressure-packed 45 minutes of his life? There was some luck involved, sure, but those balls fell into the cups of the last three holes with perfect pace, showing Perks possessed both a deft touch and nerves of steel. It is among the best stories the tournament has produced.
Why the history lesson? Because if certain modern-day PGA Tour stars had their way, long shots such as Perks — who never won again and retired five years later to become a Golf Channel commentator — would not be teeing it up Thursday at TPC Sawgrass. Or any event, for that matter. Last week, at the limited-field Arnold Palmer Invitational,
both Rory McIlroy and Wyndham Clark expressed a desire for the PGA Tour to shrink its membership. Clark said he would like to see only 100 card-carriers, with the bottom 20 each year relegated to the Korn Ferry Tour. McIlroy said he’d like to see the tour become “more cutthroat, more competitive.” He added: “I’m all for less players and less tour cards, and the best of the best.” He prefaced that comment by acknowledging it wouldn’t be popular.
I’ve always liked McIlroy. I like watching him play and I like hearing him speak. But his comments and those of Clark reeked of an inflated sense of self-worth, surely brought about by the obscene amounts of money available to top golfers these days. Because while McIlroy and some others (Clark not among them) are a draw, none spike viewership on their own. Not the way Woods once did, that’s for sure.
What golf fans love is the inherent theatre of the sport: two or more golfers doing battle down the stretch of a course that could just as easily yield birdies as bogeys, the onus to pull off a shot resting on the shoulders of individuals, not collectives. The game’s razor-thin margin of error, even at the highest level, determines success or failure when it matters the most. The Is it better when those vying for titles are stars, as it was during the 2022 Open Championship when Cam Smith bested McIlroy? Yes. Is it entertaining, for a different reason, when it’s a rookie such as Nick Dunlap trying to make history or a once-forgotten veteran such as Camilo Villegas penning his own sweet story? Absolutely.
Why remove such golfers from the equation? Why limit such opportunities when those who have played their way into the highest positions on the PGA Tour’s pecking order might play only half the events on the schedule? Why show such disregard for golfers who are perhaps one break away from becoming stars themselves? What is the benefit of fewer golfers when there are so few needle-movers as it is?
No, the PGA Tour doesn’t need to become more of a closed shop. If McIlroy and Clark want that, they can wait some 20 years to play on the senior tour. If it exists then.