|
Nine other tournaments were previously announced as permanently
elevated, with purses between $15 and $25 million: the Sentry
Tournament of Champions, The Players Championship, the Genesis
Invitational, the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the Memorial, WGC-Dell
Technologies Match Play and all three FedEx Cup playoff events.
The Tour will rotate the other four elevated events on a yearly
basis, so Phoenix, the Heritage, the Wells Fargo and the
Travelers won't be as lucrative in the 2024 season.
The move is part of the tour's larger strategy to counter LIV
Golf's efforts to lure away the best players in the world with
record purses. The plan was hatched following a players meeting
led by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy during the summer that
covered how to stave off more LIV defections.
The best players on the PGA Tour have agreed to play the tour's
13 elevated events and the four majors each year in order to
bring them together at the same events more frequently.
The Phoenix Open is a popular tournament among Tour players that
coincides with Super Bowl Sunday. It's known for its raucous
crowds, especially at the par-3 16th "stadium hole," and the
likes of Scottie Scheffler, Rickie Fowler and Japan's Hideki
Matsuyama have won it in recent years.
Two of next year's elevated events -- the RBC Heritage in Hilton
Head, S.C., and the Travelers in Connecticut -- take place one
week after the Masters and U.S. Open, respectively, meaning the
top golfers won't take a week off after those majors.
"Hilton Head and Travelers after majors? I'm not keen on playing
after a major, but I've seen people do it and I've seen people
do well, so there's no reason why you can't," Jon Rahm of Spain
said Tuesday ahead of the CJ Cup in South Carolina.
--Field Level Media
[© 2022 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |
|
