2024 WM Phoenix Open: Big-name stars withdrawal highlights big issue for PGA Tour
There is a surprisingly impressive field at this week’s WM Phoenix Open. Or perhaps it would be better to say Was Amazingly impressive area. World No. 4 Viktor Hovland withdrew from the event on Monday, and World No. 5 Xander Schauffele followed him shortly thereafter. And while Phoenix will still feature five of the top 15 players in the Official World Golf Ranking – including World No. 1 (and two-time champion) Scottie Scheffler – the opening week departures were a reminder of yet another loss for the PGA The Tour has been compared to LIV Golf.
The PGA Tour-LIV debate is heated again after a great weekend for LIV that included Jon Rahm’s debut and a four-hole playoff between Joaquin Niemann and Sergio Garcia. it was legitimately good golf, and unfortunately for the PGA Tour, it happened on a weekend where the final round of its Pebble Beach Pro-Am was canceled due to weather. It was a good break for LIV and a poor performance for the Tour.
One aspect of both leagues that has been highlighted over the past few days is that a product is a known quantity; You know what you are getting. Other? Not so much.
Whatever you want to say about the way LIV Golf does business, one feature of its league that matters a lot is how few events it plays and how players are contracted to play them all. . When the league moves to Las Vegas this week and then to Hong Kong, Australia, Miami and Singapore later in 2024, all of its players will be there. We already know this, which is a good thing for fans of the league, whether they’re attending in person or watching on TV.
The PGA Tour, for a number of different reasons, does not maintain that level of consistency. Take this week’s WD for Hovland and Schauffele. Suddenly, two of the top five players withdrew from the event they signed up to play in, meaning that event – despite its annual status as one of the best weeks of the PGA Tour year – There has been a big shock. The two players who replaced Hovland and Schauffele (combined OWGR wins: 19)? Victor Perez and Alexander Björk. Good golfer but hits hard.
That’s the hard part about having an unofficially divided league but not Formally Divide one. What the Tour has created is a series of 12 signature events where all the top players will almost always appear. But in between – the tournaments that aren’t signature events like the Phoenix Open and the Charles Schwab Challenge – are treated almost like practice time for the top players. Obviously, they could take or leave these events.
Hovland withdrew to work on his swing before the Genesis Invitational, and although it is unknown why Schauffele withdrew, I would not be surprised if given his poor T54 performance at Pebble Beach last week. The reason for this was also the same.
Then, there are 12 events on the Tour where that won’t happen. That wouldn’t have happened last week at Pebble Beach. It won’t be at the Genesis Invitational at Riviera next week. But there are also 23 events where this will happen. For fans, lumping all these events under one league is confusing. And while that’s not necessarily the Tour’s biggest problem at the moment, it’s still an advantage for LIV Golf compared to the Tour.
This isn’t unique to golf either. The NBA has been facing this problem for years. Fans get excited to see their favorite players while they are in a given city, but on game day they discover that one or more of those players will be sitting out to get some much-needed rest.
In the short term, it’s not a big deal. How many people were going to the Phoenix Open to watch Schauffele now won’t go? Probably zero. However, in the long run, it is better for fans to know what fluctuations they are getting into the schedule. This is just expectation setting and product management 101.
So, while both of these withdrawals were understandable and didn’t make any huge waves in the golf world, to me they symbolize a bigger problem for the PGA Tour (and again, the Tour is not alone in this), which is the league. Holds too many events and doesn’t pay enough attention to the fact that scarcity increases excitement, even if it means formally splitting the league into two.
