Every player on the PGA Tour wants to win it. Very few will call it a major. Everyone agrees it’s special. But most can’t say it’s as special as the four tournaments that make up golf’s Grand Slam rotation.
When the Players Championship begins Thursday at the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, tour members will compete for $25 million and their most prestigious trophy. That’s a lot. Whether there should be more to winning the tour’s flagship event—whether or not they are playing in a “major” championship—has been revived as a topic of debate, initiated by the tour and its tournament promotional campaign proclaiming “March is going to be Major.”
Well, the major dance card already is full, with the Masters in April, the PGA Championship in May, the U.S. Open in June and the Open Championship in July. Why are there four? That’s the established number going back to the days when Bobby Jones chased the Grand Slam and successfully achieved the feat by winning the Open and Amateur titles in the U.S. and Great Britain in 1930.
Thirty years later, Arnold Palmer, after winning the 1960 Masters and U.S. Open, identified the modern Grand Slam as consisting of the Masters, the two open championships and the PGA, which was their chronological order at the time.
Tiger Woods completed his “Tiger Slam” consisting of four major victories in a row at the 2001 Masters, but no one ever mentions that before he finished off that the historic feat, he had won the Players Championship two weeks earlier.
Or we can just adopt the Jeff Sluman rule. Reasoned the former PGA champion in 2013: “When you go to Denny’s and you order the ‘Grand Slam Breakfast,’ they don’t give you five things, do they? They give you four.”
There is no getting around the fact that the Players is of major importance. It’s a very big deal in the game. Likely no professional golfer alive would contend that the Players isn’t significant. The money sure is.
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The follow-up question to this conundrum is, who should decide if the Players is a major? And if it is, then another question follows: Would there then be five majors in men’s professional golf—as there is in the women’s game (and also on the age-restricted PGA Tour Champions)—or should the Players supplant one of the four traditional majors?
“It’s a weird but accepted thing that those tournaments are the four majors,” said Michael Kim. “If the general public thinks that, then that’s kind of the way it works. The Players is, I think, just as big as some of the other tournaments. It’s just a public perception thing.”
Nah. It’s an accepted thing because it has more than 100 years of history behind it.
“It's a major when they say it's a major,” said Xander Schauffele, who owns two, the 2024 PGA and British Open. “Is it the best field in golf? Probably. Is it a championship course? Probably. Is it a major? No, because it's not designated as one, but I mean, could they make it one? Probably. I don't think the majors would like that very much if we had our own major on the PGA Tour, but it's a big event. Everyone treats it as a big event. It feels like a big event.”
When he says "they" make it a major, to whom is he referring? The tour?
"No, you have to work with the bodies of golf. I'm saying ‘they’ as in the USGA, the R&A, Masters, the PGA. It would have to be a come-together kind of thing. But I mean, golf is ... I'm for tradition as well. We've had four majors for the longest time and maybe if you go even further back, there were more [and] less. I'm not sure. But traditionally speaking, since I've known about golf, and even just prior to that, it's always been four. It [the Players] is major-esque.”
Truth be told, there is only one group who can declare the Players a major, and Schauffele is part of it. Shouldn’t the guys who compete for these titles decide? Perhaps. So we asked them their thoughts on the matter. Golf Digest polled about two dozen tour members, and here is how their vote shakes out:
• It’s a major: 5
• It’s not a major: 16
• Undecided: 2
“It's not a major for me. [But] saying it's not a major doesn’t, like, demean it in any way, and it doesn’t make it any less big than what it is,” said England’s Tommy Fleetwood, winner of last year’s Tour Championship. “It's always been the Players Championship, and I think we’ve called it the fifth major forever. I think four majors sits perfectly and the Players has its own identity and its own ... place on a pedestal in the game, and I think that’s just what it is. I don’t think anybody will ever speak any less about it because it’s not a major.”
Fleetwood is onto something there. The Players can claim its own category, if you will.
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Here is what other tour members have to say about their flagship event:
Ludvig Aberg: “It’s the fifth major, right? There are four major a year, obviously, and the Players Championship is just this unbelievable tournament apart from them. It is one of my favorites in terms of … it's got that feel of a big, big tournament. Is it one of the four majors? No. But is it a great tournament? Absolutely. That’s what I think.”
Collin Morikawa: “I honestly don't know if I've made up my mind, because I've thought about it. But here's one thing is, growing up, you dream about winning majors. I also dreamed about winning, like, the L.A. Open, Genesis. And honestly, you look at your career and you want to win the Players. So I think when it comes down to it, you ask any single person out here, when you retire, would you want to win you want to have the Players on your resume? Absolutely. It's no doubt. So I don't know if I can answer that. I'm kind of going around it. It sits very, very high. Does it make sense to me? I don't know if I have a yes or no answer. But it's something that absolutely I think you want to win. [And] I think every single player on the PGA Tour has it very high on his list.”
Joel Dahmen: "I say it's a major. I say that because I look at the strength of field and the golf course, and it's one of the toughest tournaments to win. I think it's the strongest field we have all year. You look at the list of winners there and you have all different styles of golfers, but just about every big name has won it."
Jhonattan Vegas: “When you look at fields, in my opinion, it's the best field in golf. So to win the golf tournament, you have to beat the best field in golf. And you want to call it a major, you don't want to call it a major ... that's going to be up to debate. I feel that when it comes down for us to win that golf tournament, it definitely is a major-type victory.”
Jordan Spieth: “Technically speaking, no, it's not a major, but I would consider it harder to win than a couple of the majors, I think. It definitely is for me … at least it has been.”
Patrick Rodgers: “[The Players is] the hardest to win and requires probably the most skill. A well-rounded game. Accuracy, distance, shot control, short game, putting. The U.S. Open, I feel like, can get so funky sometimes that it’s not always the greatest winner. There’s a lot of fortune involved in that. The PGA at times can be on some easy, softer golf courses. Whereas if you win the Players, that’s a great validation of the work that I would have put in.”
Daniel Berger: "No, I don't think it should be a major. It's a great tournament. It's on a great golf course. It's our flagship event, and everyone wants to win it. It's special. But it is not a major. We have four of those already."
Billy Horschel: “I've said it for probably a decade plus. Me, personally, I think it's a major. I think it's 50 years of history. It's an unbelievable tournament, the support it gets from the community, the way it's looked at in the world of golf, maybe outside the world of golf, the golf course itself, I think it's amazing. I haven't won a major in my career, and if I was able to win a Players, I would count that as a major. Now, it may not be counted in other people's eyes, but I feel it's an event that warrants a status like that. If I was able to win the Players Championship before my career is over, I mean, I probably could walk away into the sunset and be a very happy man.”
Additional reporting from Christopher Powers
