Given the PGA Tour’s impressive history manufacturing nomenclature and figuring out how to brand things that don’t need branding, there is little doubt they will eventually have a name for whatever we’re supposed to call “regular” events. Those are the ones that are not Signature (formerly Designated formerly Elevated), like this week’s Sony Open. 

For a massive organization usually beholden to byzantine bylaws and obsolete traditions, the PGA TOUR has undergone rapid and impactful change over the last few years, a stark contrast to their formerly glacial pace of progress. The impacts of those changes were often necessary in response to the LIV threat, but there were always going to be unpredictable consequences. 

We have some of those consequences this week at the Sony. The first “regular” event, it’s supposedly going back to its roots as the big rookie debut week at beautiful Waialae. But only about half of the graduates from the Korn Ferry Tour, and none of the Q-school graduates from last month, were able to get into the field. This comes after all KFT grads were apparently told at their “graduation” ceremony that they would have a spot in the Sony field to start the new year, according to a report from Ryan French at Monday Q. Players with a PGA Tour card or some varying degree of status being left out of a field is nothing new. If anything it’s business as usual; completing a field from the different priority rankings has been a puzzle for decades, and it’s never been intuitive or meritocratic. 

But there are two big problems with how the Tour handled this week:

  1. Someone communicated to the players that they would make their season (and likely PGA Tour) debuts at the Sony when they got their card back in the fall. If true — and multiple people have reported this now — that cannot happen without an actual guaranteed place, no matter how sure your models might be that. It exacerbates the sting for a card-carrying member being left out, and also makes your organization appear to be bumbling and incompetent, which isn’t a new look for this org.
  2. The “new” PGA Tour must immediately determine how it’s going to prioritize things. It IS now more of a closed-off shop and players need to understand that up front. The lack of rookies getting access is in part due to the DP World Tour exemptions allotted for strategic alliance purposes. The Tour apparently did not foresee all these exemptions being used. But the DP World Tour slots higher on the priority rankings, helping to eliminate half of the eligible KFT grads. Players being left out of any one event is fine, but a player being routed through the feeder tour, succeeding on that tour, and then getting skipped over thanks to this international alliance seems to be an unintended effect of all the scrambling we’ve seen from Ponte Vedra. It does not sound like the issue has been communicated effectively, and with fewer and fewer chances to earn starts and points under this new schedule, that will only continue unless the Tour fully untangles their messaging on which kind of status really matters most. Players might hate the new rules then, too. But at least they’d know what’s what and why. Lock it up.

KFT grads on the outside looking in was already not a great look for the Tour, but it was made worse by a weather-plagued mess of a Monday qualifier. This all led to a lot of shouting about the Tour being mismanaged, anti-meritocratic, and worst of all dumb and crooked. There are a couple of real problems with the situation, as I noted, but the rest of it is just shouting. It’s an unfortunate situation but some pushback against that shouting is in order. We can’t complain about the product or the structure of this membership organization and then freak out about changes to that structure, however unfortunate it is. The Michigan football team is full of world-class athletes, but how many are going pro? The Tour needs to trim bloat and become more of an elite showcase.

There needs to be a new tour. It needs to be leaner and meaner. This year’s scheme is likely not going to be the final answer, but it’s putting the Tour on that path. There are going to be fewer opportunities for the masses of players down the priority rankings. It may be harder to move up or keep your card. But access still exists. Every time a mule or dreamer shouts about a closed shop, the Tour should be throwing Eric Cole, mini-tour player turned Signature event prince, back in their face. There are some very specific issues the Tour needs to address with the Sony Open miscues, chiefly related to priority transparency and communication. But fewer starts and opportunities for players down the priority rankings over the course of this season is going to be the new reality. Determining access might not be “fair” or even calculated properly in every instance, but these are necessary growing pains on the path to overhauling and modernizing a pro golf tour that absolutely needed it.

This piece originally appeared in the Fried Egg Golf newsletter. Subscribe for free and receive golf news and insight every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.