A New Outbreak Of Fifth Major Desperation Syndrome
The PGA Tour signals for The Players to be seen as a major. The move will only backfire and expose a thirst for profit over common sense.
Declaring you’re cool?
You’re not cool.
Reminding people that you’re a major championship?
You’re not a major.
And if you have to unleash an orchestrated ad campaign that’s immediately endorsed by eager-to-shill propaganda partners?
You’re not even close to becoming a major.
Despite a solid start to the 2026 season and one of the PGA Tour’s more iconic events playing out in sunny Scottsdale with a fun Sunday awaiting, the Tour launched a new ad campaign to pimp March’s Players Championship.
“March is going to be major.” So subtle!
The slogan might have been chalked up to a simple alliterative choice featuring “M” words. But then there were the signs of a coordinated hype campaign, complete with supportive affirmation from Tour toadies that suggested otherwise. The hard sell was all capped off by confirming comments from an unnamed Tour spokesperson in response to Golf Digest’s Shane Ryan.
“Fans and players have long discussed THE PLAYERS Championship’s status as a major. We understand that is not for us to decide. Ultimately it is up to our sport and its fans to recognize what the professionals who play the game already know.”
Yes, everyone knows: The Players is a very fine tournament generally held back by identity issues and deep insecurity from never being considered better than one of the big four.
Also? Real majors never need ALL CAPS to let you know they’re majors.
Since moving to TPC Sawgrass in 1982, The Players has been held in March, then May, and now back in early March. After the once-revolving site tournament moved to Sawgrass CC before moving across A1, Ben Crenshaw branded the TPC as Star Wars golf designed by Darth Vader. Jerry Pate saved the week with some epic shots before memorably tossing tournament visionaries Deane Beman and Pete Dye into a lake. Eventually, tweaks were made, and players accepted the course.
Ever since? The vision has been inconsistent. They’ve overseeded the place, then converted the whole thing to modern Bermuda, and are now back to drenching the place with water and ryegrass in a bid to look more like a certain tournament in April. They’ve harvested deep rough, cut it back to get balls rolling into the pine scrub, and seen the effort at restoring some of the crunchiness undone by all the EVP cooks who wanted to see emerald green on TV.
They also went from a modest, disguised-into-the-landscape clubhouse that put the course and players forward, to a gaudy Mediterranean-ish castle designed by Lord Farquaad.
To the tournament’s credit, The Players has evolved in plenty of great ways over the years. They’ve developed an excellent fan experience and produce a wonderful telecast thanks to its Masters-inspired limited commercial interruptions. The tournament also features traditions unique to Players week that developed organically.
The timing around the most blatant-ever push to bequeath major status on The Players could not be more ill-advised. A tournament that once could make a case for having the best field in golf won’t come close to such a milestone any longer. A PGA Tour membership is now required to drive up the reimagined entrance drive with its Disneyland lighting and memories of once-grand oak trees killed in the name of sanitary driving conditions. Then there is the oddity of multiple former Players champions now finding themselves persona non grata. And since the golf ball goes too far, the 144-player field is dropping to 120 this year because the Tour can’t finish the first round even after Daylight Saving Time.
Not very major-like. Or even major-adjacent. The Players has never been closer to becoming more like the ultimate country club championship and farther from feeling like a major.
The men’s quadrilateral has been secure for 75 years thanks to maintaining consistent identities. They’ve only suffered setbacks by occasionally drifting away from what they do best. The PGA Championship is the least prestigous of the four and has resorted to peddling ad agency-crafted slogans just in case we forgot they’re a major. (Somewhere in a storage closet, they might still have a few “Glory’s Last Shot” and “This Is Major” signs collecting dust.)
The LPGA set a dreadful precedent in adding a fifth major to a group of four well-established championships when they made the Evian a major in 2013. While this may have kept the sponsorship money coming in, the event still plays over a weird French hillside course where it always seems to rain more than the Amazon.
