The PGA Tour has announced some significant changes to its schedule starting in the 2024 season and the folks at LIV Golf believe that they are the impetus for the change in structure and payments.
Per Eamon Lynch of Golfweek, the PGA Tour ratified a change to the 2024 schedule that will reduce the size of fields for designated events and also eliminate 36-hole cuts. Those fields will be reduced to around 70-78 players.
The changes will not apply to any of the Tour’s biggest events, including all of the majors, the Players Championship, and the FedEx Cup playoff tournaments.
Presumably, the hope with these changes is to continue to ensure that the Tour’s top players are not only visible more often but that they get paid more, thanks to minimum purses of $20 million at each event.
“The idea is we want top players and hot players,” Rory McIlroy said Wednesday. He also noted that tournament sponsors are now willing to pay with assurances that the biggest golfers will be playing in all four rounds instead of potentially getting cut.
LIV Golf tournaments are three rounds and have no cuts, so they see these changes as something directly lifted from what they’ve been doing.
Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Congratulations PGA Tour. Welcome to the future.#LIVGolf
— LIV Golf (@livgolf_league) March 1, 2023
“Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Congratulations PGA Tour. Welcome to the future,” LIV Golf tweeted on Wednesday.
The big concern for LIV is that the PGA Tour could end up using ideas similar to theirs and then lure back all of the big names who end up not being happy that the upstart is playing to pitiful TV audiences.
