OApparently, Cameron Smith is at a loss as to what to do Thursday through Sunday when the Players Championship takes place at TPC Sawgrass Stadium in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. The Australian golf pro won this major event last year and has played every year since 2017. But like all his peers who switched to the Saudi Arabian-funded rival series LIV Golf, he will not be allowed to compete in the PGA Tour’s climax this week.
His contradictory statements make it clear that this ban bothers him. First he told the American magazine Golf Digest that he wanted to devote himself to his hobby of fishing these days before he went to Orlando next week for the second “Saudi tournament” of the year. But just a few hours later, fans on Twitter were able to listen to an interview with the 29-year-old British Open champion, in which he put it quite differently: “I’ll definitely watch it on TV. I think it’s a great event. I used to watch it when I was a kid.”
Since living in Jacksonville, his American home, is only a 45-minute drive from TPC Sawgrass, he is even considering mingling with the fans: “I would like to go. I don’t know how it would go down, but even if I go out there and watch and walk around in the crowd, it could be pretty funny.”
PGA Tour sticks to the hard line
Whether you still call this tournament with the highest prize money in the world – the total prize money is 25 million dollars (around 23.7 million euros), the winner receives 4.5 million dollars (almost 4.3 million euros) – the unofficial fifth major of the year can seems doubtful. Not only Smith, the title holder, is missing and cannot defend his success.
In addition to the Indian Anirban Lahiri and the Englishman Paul Casey, who took second and third place in 2022, major winners from previous years such as the Americans Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed are not allowed. They are among a total of 31 professionals who were still there last year but are excluded from all tournaments on the PGA Tour as defectors.
While the LIV stars are eligible to compete in the four majors, as are all who meet the qualifying criteria, the PGA Tour remains firm on its policy on LIV golf. Jared Rice, Tournament Director of the Players Championship, said of those missing, “The play of all our past champions speaks for itself. But 2023 is about the players that will be here. We have our eyes on the product that is once again the best field in golf.”
He justifies this by saying that 43 of the top 50 in the world rankings are in the field of 144 professionals. Also missing from the top ten is Smith, who has slipped from second to fifth, perhaps in part because LIV Golf’s invitational tournaments don’t count towards the pecking order. This has angered the series’ leadership so much that last week they publicly debated whether to withdraw their application for inclusion in the Official Golf World Ranking (OWGR).
But even before this season highlight of the PGA Tour, the fight against the competition played an important role in the run-up, which caused almost all of their 48 tournament participants with million-euro contracts to convert. The changes that the tour decided at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando last week would not have happened without pressure from LIV Golf, as confirmed by both Spain’s world number one Jon Rahm and Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy.
Early Tuesday morning, McIlroy, as chairman of the players’ advisory board in the Ponte Vedra Beach clubhouse, informed around fifty of his colleagues that in 2024 only eight of these “designated events” would take place without a cut and that the number of participants would be between 70 and 80 players. The top 50 from the past FedExCup, the PGA’s annual standings, are automatically included in the field. The remaining places are open to professionals who can qualify through good performances in the past few weeks.
In addition, sponsors may issue a few invitations. “We remain a merit-based competition,” said McIlroy. The crowd favorite will start the first two rounds on Thursday and Friday with Rahm and the American Scottie Scheffler, a fitting three-way battle, because each of this trio can become number one in the world rankings with a win.