R&A Needs To Take On The Major Dilemma
With the PGA Championship unlikely to reclaim its August date, the R&A should use 2028's Olympics-driven scheduling to build a case for longer major seasons.
It’s never been more apparent.
Even if well-meaning souls can’t quite put a finger on what seems a bit off.
Golf’s dueling major seasons are too condensed. They would benefit from a better cadence. And the majors need a tradition-driven organization to do what’s right for the Grand Slam.
This year, just 101 days separated the first tee shots and final putts at the men's and women’s majors. And the women have five in that short span.
Barely over three months separate The Masters from The Open. The same goes with the women’s majors that wrap up with Sunday’s AIG Women’s Open.
Yes, everything could stay the same, and the majors would be healthy despite getting caught up in the absurd LIV v. PGA Tour purse wars. The Grand Slam events likely grew in stature when non-major weeks were watered down by LIV’s arrival. And expanding the major season would have a greater benefit for the prestigious Tour and national Open events currently sandwiched in the short major season.
“The schedule this year kind of feels like back-to-back-to-back majors every week,” Jeeno Thitikul said on Tuesday at the AIG Women’s Open. “I feel like if we can spread it out a little bit between the majors, [it] should be better for fans, for players.”
Her comments have been mentioned in various ways by everyone from Jack Nicklaus to Rory McIlroy and just about every elite professional who appreciates how much the biggest events fuel the professional game.
The current schedule “compaction” started seven years ago with the PGA Championship’s move from August to May. The women’s game created an equally tight window starting in 2023 when Chevron and NBC moved the old Dinah Shore from late March to late April.
The condensed major season issue keeps coming up for good reason: it’s not benefiting anyone. We’re seven years in since the PGA’s move to accommodate the PGA Tour Playoffs©. The PGA has survived in May with issues related to venues and agronomy.
Despite the PGA of America gift-wrapping August and the Tour having had years to take advantage of the opp, the PGA Tour is again laying the groundwork to detonate the Playoffs© with no signs of a clear vision (Cypress Point! Pine Valley! Match play, maybe-perhaps!).
Since the various Tours have been wrong about pretty much everything of late, they shouldn’t be trusted with the major-cadence matter. Tour players have been clueless and even dishonest about various matters related to the governing bodies they seem to unfairly loathe, starting with 2019’s revamped rules. More recently, distance matters have seen players drive narratives contradicting the fact they agreed to a process, then whined incessantly after a decision was made to appease their corporate overlords. They’ve dragged major purses to places they should not have gone, as recently proven by LIV’s last-ditch financing effort valuing purses at $10 million for small-field events.
Tours can no longer be counted on to be good stewards of the game and, in the PGA Tour’s case, never will be in the new for-profit era.
The PGA Championship once had August practically to itself on the big-time American sports calendar. In recent years, football has begun to start earlier and the Little League World Series has taken on millions of new fans with little else to watch. The LPGA Tour is also just as unlikely to de-major the Amundi Evian birdiefest after selling it Grand Slam status to keep the purse money flowing. But as a fifth major, the Amundi Evian has made a mess of the LPGA’s schedule by forcing its way into a slot after the KPMG Women’s PGA and before the AIG Women’s Open. Top players do not value it like the others and Olympics-eligible players are unlikely to get near it in 2028.
So it’s up to the R&A to take the initiative.
At the very least, the R&A should publicly and forcefully stake out the possibility of permanently playing The Open a week or two later than its current mid-July date. They would also signal a need to push back the AIG Women’s Open to mid-August. If nothing else, the R&A would at least gauge the reactions from fans, players and media partners ahead of 2028 when we’ll see August conclusions for the R&A’s two majors.
