"Designated Tournaments"

Sean Martin of Golfweek reports on a leaked memo suggesting that the PGA Tour’s Player Advisory Council will consider a "Designated Tournaments" proposal spotlighting struggling events as required play stops for top players.

“Having the players play more events is going to be good for the PGA Tour, period,” said Paul Goydos, a member of the PAC. “The hard thing is figuring out how to do it without pushing too hard. We are independent contractors. That’s a difficult problem to get around.”

The concept that will be presented at the PAC meeting is called “Designated Tournaments,’’ according to a memo sent to players and agents, a copy of which was obtained by Golfweek. When questioned about the initiatives outlined in the memo, Goydos told Golfweek that the concept would involve designating a handful of events each year and mandating that top players play in at least one of those targeted events.

For example, this proposal may mandate that the top 50 players on the PGA Tour money list play at least one of five selected events, likely events that have struggled to attract top-ranked players. The “designated’’ events would change each year.

“‘Designated Tournaments’ . . . is designed to help with strength of field at a number of events,” Rick George, PGA Tour executive vice president and chief of operations, wrote in that memo.

It would also seem to be a nice add-on for the PGA Tour to take into television negotiations that figure to be short on leverage. Assuming some of these designated events survive. But at least we know Colonial will be around for another year.

Martin also explains how this is not a new concept to the tour.