For the last time in the foreseeable future, the PGA Tour’s Players Championship will be contested during this second weekend of May. I don’t know if it can be called a Mother’s Day tradition, but with the move of the PGA Championship to May commencing next year, the Players will return to its former place on the calendar in late March, two weeks prior to the Masters. Contested annually at TPC Sawgrass, a watery Pete Dye-designed course with an evil streak, the Players historically features golf’s strongest field. It has more top-ranked golfers than any of the four major championships. This time around, the Players will reward its champion with a $1.89 million payday, part of its $10.5 million total purse. It’s a big deal.
First contested in 1974 as the brainchild of PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman, the original Tournament Players Championship was the tour’s foray into the high stratosphere world of golf’s major championships. While the tournaments on the PGA Tour calendar are under the umbrella of the tour staff, the game’s four majors are independently run entities. The Masters is run by the Augusta National Golf Club, the USGA hosts the United States Open, the R&A manages the British Open, and the PGA of American handles the PGA Championship. Beman wanted the PGA Tour to have its own major championship as well.
From its very beginning, Beman was promoting the Players as the game’s fifth major. After all, it paid big bucks, attracted an all-star field and had an array of big-name winners in its formative years. In its first decade of existence, the Players perpetual trophy had a Hall of Fame flavor to it with three-time Players champion Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Lanny Wadkins and Raymond Floyd. Only Mark Hayes was a non-major champion among the first 11 winners. Most importantly for fans of the game, it was contested at the iconic TPC Sawgrass with its island green and history of dynamic finishes.
Talk of the fifth major so concerned Jack Nicklaus that he has stated that he prepared for the Players as intently as he did the four major championships. He thought that the PGA Tour would deem its flagship tournament as the fifth major, regardless of its lack of history and tradition. Nicklaus thought that he should win as many as he could because golfers of the near future would have more opportunities to win more majors each season. An interesting note is that if the Players really was golf’s fifth major, then Jack would have 21 grand slam titles and Tiger Woods would be even further behind with 16 majors.
History and tradition are the primary reasons for preventing the Players from attaining major championship status, but you’ve also got to look at the record book as well. At the turn of the 20th Century, the British Open was 40 years old and the United States Open was a mere 5-year-old. The PGA Championship would be played 16 years later and the game’s newest major was first contested in 1934. The four major championships have been on the game’s center stage for a lot of years. At the conclusion of World War I, there was a quartet of tournaments that featured strong fields and solid purses, namely the Canadian Open, the Western Open, the Texas Open, and the Los Angeles Open. Winning one of those tourneys during the early days of men’s professional golf enhanced one’s golfing resume. Yet while Tommy Armour, Walter Hagen, Sam Snead and Byron Nelson won eight of those early Canadian Opens, so too did veritable unknowns such as Daniel Kenny, Charles Murray and two-time champ J. Douglas Edgar.
So once again we’ve had a week of the talking heads discussing the fifth major. While the professionals of golf’s golden era initially detested Dye’s design of the TPC Sawgrass Stadium Course, the pros of the game’s modern era grew up watching the Players and seeing their heroes such as Greg Norman, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson win on the course built on top of swampland. Because the Players is played at the same site year after year, just like the Masters, fans of the game get used to eagles on the par-5 16th hole, survival at the island green that is the 17th hole, and the diabolical finishing hole with water all down the left side from tee to green.
Often the argument is made that the Champions Tour and the LPGA Tour have five designated majors. Those golf circuits for seniors and women have less than half the history of the PGA Tour and it’s amazing to reflect on what were the majors in their formative years. For example, LPGA Hall of Famer Carol Mann played at a time in the 1970s when there were five majors, namely the Women’s Western Open, the Titleholders, the Women’s PGA, the U.S. Women’s Open, and the du Maurier Classic. Nowadays the U.S. Women’s Open and the Women’s PGA are still majors alongside the ANA Inspiration, the Women’s British Open, and the Evian Championship. Because the men’s tour has always been financially more stable than the women or the seniors, there is a greater stability when it comes to designated major championships. As we said earlier, the Masters is the men’s youngest major with its inaugural tournament contested in 1934. The LPGA Tour was founded in 1950 and the senior members of the Champions Tour initially got things going in 1980. Fans of the game know that Jack Nicklaus has 18 major wins. They can’t tell you how many Nancy Lopez has or Hale Irwin has.
I think when all is said and done, you just can’t go back in time. The Players Championship has never been a major and regardless of all the talk, it never will be nor should it be a major. I know the Masters started a little too late for Harry Vardon and Walter Hagen, but all the greats of the game are judged by their accomplishments at the Masters, the National Open, the British Open, and the PGA. The way I see it, if Ben Hogan or Sam Snead or Arnold Palmer didn’t play in it, then it can’t be a major. There just isn’t room for another grand slam tournament.
Yet there is no doubt that this weekend’s Players Championship will be nothing short of great theatre. The Players does have a history as evidenced by recent tournaments won by Rickie Fowler and lost by Sean O’Hair. There is a very memorable nature to those finishing holes at TPC Sawgrass and sometimes there are moments of brilliance and often there are moments of disaster. Just make sure you don’t put your money on the defending champ, Si Woo Kim. The Players has never had a golfer successfully defend his title.
