Shriners decision shows PGA Tour has a big fall problem
Shriners Children’s Hospital pulling out as the sponsor of the PGA Tour event in Las Vegas after 18 years is hardly unusual when taken as an isolated event.
Eighteen years is well beyond the normal tenure for sponsors to stick with a tournament with 13 years the average run, according to PGA Tour officials.
But the big-picture view tells a different story: The PGA Tour has a fall problem entirely of its own making.
The tour has, in effect, created a three-tier system for its tournaments,. Las Vegas and the other seven events in the FedEx Fall are at the bottom of the pecking order. It’s actually a four-tier hierarchy if one includes the major championships — none of which are run by the tour — at the top of the chain.
After the majors come the tour’s signature events, eight hand-picked tournaments on the schedule with $20 million purses, limited fields and access almost exclusively to the top players. Created to prevent more top stars from jumping to LIV Golf, these events are great for those at the top, but lock out most of the rank-and-file players that are the heart and soul of the tour. Included in this tier are the three FedEx Cup playoff events, open to the top 70, 50 and 30 players in the points standings. And while anybody can get there on paper, the reality is the top players have a monumental advantage thanks to those signature events. In 2024, only four players who played all of the signature events failed to make the playoffs. That leaves only two dozen or so spots available to the remaining players.
Next come the remaining tournaments on the regular-season schedule which draw a mixture of top players and other members.
At the bottom are the fall tournaments. The tour likes to point out that anybody can play in them, but the reality is the top stars have no need or desire to play once the Tour Championship wraps in August.
The Shriners is a perfect example. No Scottie Scheffler. No Rory McIlroy. No Xander Schauffele. Not even Collin Morikawa, who lives 10 minutes from TPC Summerlin. And the list goes on.
This year, only two players in the top 50 of the world rankings showed up. Not even former champions Patrick Cantlay and Sungjae Im played.
Tour officials told the Review-Journal they have no issues with the fall despite the fact that three of the eight events have sponsor problems. They are only kidding themselves.
It’s already difficult to get attention on golf once football starts, but without some bigger names in these fields, it’s becoming close to impossible. Sponsors are recognizing that.
Q-School
Three Las Vegas players made it through the first stage of PGA Tour qualifying at 13 locations across the country in October.
Hazen Newman, a 2019 Arbor View graduate who played college golf at Oklahoma State, was medalist at a qualifier in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Grant Booth, a former UNR player who spent this season on the PGA Tour Americas circuit, tied for fourth at a qualifier in Murrieta, California. Nathan Maas, a Minnesota native who makes his home in Las Vegas, tied for seventh at a qualifier in Maricopa, Arizona.
They will move on to second stage qualifying Dec. 3-6 at five sites across the country. Final qualifying will be a week later in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
On the women’s side, two Las Vegas players failed to advance from second stage qualifying last week in Venice, Florida. Yana Wilson finished at 1 under, three shots shy of cracking the top 35 to move on. UNLV senior Toa Yokoyama was another shot back.
Greg Robertson covers golf for the Review-Journal. Reach him at grobertson@reviewjournal.com.
