\n<\/p>\n
Next week\u2019s PGA Tour event, the Cadillac Championship, is just the latest in the Signature Event series \u2014 the limited-field, $20 million free-for-alls that 99% of pros desperately want to play in. And there\u2019s good news for that super majority \u2014 technically, two sponsor exemptions have not yet been finalized.<\/p>\n
Normally, by the Saturday prior, most Signature Event fields are set. You have the top 50 from the previous year, a handful of winners from this season, the 10 players not already in who have played best this year and five others who have played best recently. On top of that, as has become controversial<\/a>, there are always four sponsor exemptions which, quietly, are not always decided until the last minute.\u00a0<\/p>\n The reason is obvious: if a player can qualify on his own, it\u2019s decidedly better optics for them and their game than using a sponsor exemption. For the sponsor, it\u2019s a great scenario, too, because their list of choices is always longer than four. Any player from the sponsor\u2019s unpublished priority ranking who plays their way in just allows Sponsor Choice No. 5 to join the field.\u00a0<\/p>\n This actually happened for RBC and its post-Masters Heritage tournament. During Masters week, Max Homa was included as a sponsor exemption on the Tour\u2019s internal field list until he played well enough at Augusta National that he qualified for the Heritage without needing a sponsor invite. It\u2019s a win-win \u2014 Homa gets in, and RBC gets to invite another of its favorites. They went with Wyndham Clark, Tony Finau, Billy Horschel and Marco Penge \u2014 the order of which is not made public.\u00a0<\/p>\n This retelling matters for next week\u2019s tournament, a newly created Signature Event at an old-time Tour course, Trump National Doral<\/a>. Only Joel Dahmen and Max Greyserman are listed as sponsor exemptions at the moment \u2014 both worthy choices, neither of which will earn their way in at the last minute like Homa did, after missing this week\u2019s cut at the Zurich Classic. They\u2019ll be joined by two others, to be decided Sunday evening, a selection that isn\u2019t finalized because \u2026 there are some big names on the verge of being an alternate, and there are fewer big-name players interested in playing, period.<\/p>\n Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, Bob MacIntyre, Ludvig Aberg and Matt Fitzpatrick \u2014 all ranked in the world top 15 \u2014 will be skipping next week in Miami. (For McIlroy, it\u2019ll be the second Signature Event skipped this season.) All together, it\u2019s the most significant voluntary departure of talent any Signature Event has seen to date, and there\u2019s an extremely obvious reason: most pros are okay playing three events in a row. But some definitely don\u2019t want to play a major championship in that third week.\u00a0<\/p>\n As ever with the PGA Tour\u2019s Rubik\u2019s Cube-scheduling dil<\/a>emma, there isn\u2019t one specific element to blame for this issue. And once you solve for one side of the cube \u2014 like finding a new, massive sponsor commitment. That\u2019s a positive! \u2014 you can easily disrupt the other sides. In the simplest sense, the Cadillac Championship didn\u2019t exist last year. When pros build their annual commitment list, this spot feels more like a surprise than anything else. It is also situated directly prior to another Signature Event, the Truist Championship at Quail Hollow, which sits directly prior to the PGA Championship in Philadelphia. It feels skippable if the other weeks don\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n By and large, most top pros have settled on a schedule of 22 to 26 events. That way, they\u2019re playing no more than half the calendar year. Brian Rolapp is painfully aware of this number, as are the billionaire investors of his product. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, one of the pro game\u2019s biggest investors, is also very aware. Rory McIlroy bluntly told him that \u201c26 weeks\u201d maximum for top pros during a meeting a few years ago. A Tour that gets top pros to play 22 to 26 times can be a commercially great product, so long as those 22 to 26 events are \u2026 the same events. But that remains the quandary of the moment: which events fit in that 22- to 26-event schedule, and how<\/em> do you place them throughout the January to August calendar so you can get McIlroy to show up as many times as possible. Sticking a Signature Event the week before a Signature Event that sits the week before a major is not<\/em> in the Tour\u2019s future. You can count on that.\u00a0<\/p>\n The distribution of these top events \u2014 \u201cTrack 1\u201d events, as they\u2019re likely to be called in the future<\/a> \u2014 will not appease everyone, but until they are cemented into sensible places on the calendar, there will be trickle-down results like top pros voluntarily skipping. That is to say nothing of Texas-based players who want to play the two weeks following<\/em> the PGA Championship, at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson<\/a> and Charles Schwab Challenge. Scottie Scheffler will be defending his title at the former \u2014 and at the PGA Championship, too \u2014 but he is not in the field for the Truist Championship, another $20 million free-for-all the week before the PGA. Different pros have different priorities \u2014 we know that. But it has bred an intriguing reality: between the Masters and the PGA Championship, three Signature Events will have been played. McIlroy and Scheffler will have never competed against each other once.\u00a0<\/p>\n One problem the PGA Tour needs to solve:<\/p>\n Three Signature Events between Masters and PGA Champ. Hilton Head: Rory OUT, Scottie IN\n
ZERO featuring BOTH Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler.<\/p>\n
Doral: Rory OUT, Scottie IN
Quail Hollow: Rory IN, Scottie OUT<\/p>\n