If you’ve kept up with the ever-evolving PGA Tour schedule changes over the past few years, you’re probably smart enough to know that a Signature Event means big money and a lot of star players. And you would be right, but when you look at the field for this week Cadillac ChaChampionshipyou will notice that some notable names are missing.
Five of the top 15 players in the world are skipping this week’s tournament Trump National Doral — the PGA Tour’s first time at the Blue Monster since 2016 — which is the most major players to miss a signature event in their short history.
World No. 2 Rory McIlroy, No. 3 Matt Fitzpatrick, No. 9 Xander Schauffele, No. 12 Robert MacIntyre and No. 14 Ludvig Aberg are all out this week.
So what gives? The answer is quite simple.
After the Masters was a Signature Event at the RBC Heritage, followed by the Zurich Classic, this week’s Cadillac Championship and next week’s Truist Championship, which gives way to the PGA Championship at Aronimink outside Philadelphia. That means the first two headliners of the year booked three Signature Events in four weeks.
For the past two years, the CJ Cup Byron Nelson, which is not a signature event, was played at this venue. But the Mexico Open, played in February the past two years, was dropped from the schedule this season. The Cadillac Championship took its place and settled here.
“This year is a little bit of an exception I think,” Adam Scott said Tuesday from Miami. “This is an added event. Ideally that wouldn’t be the way. … I think we should get through this year and hopefully the schedule will look a little more balanced next year.”
With the late addition, this has been a strange and strange stretch of golf – even for players who are paid millions to do it for a living. But every player has their own unique formula for peaking at the most important moments. Burnout is their worst enemy. This part of the schedule has forced some to get creative.
McIlroy is out because, well, he won the Masters, and now he’s breathing, like last year. But he is likely to return next week to a course where he has had plenty of success. Fitzpatrick leaves after playing three straight weeks – and winning the last two events he played in, the RBC Heritage and last week’s Zurich Classic.
World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler is this week’s headliner but is skipping next week’s Truist Championship at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte.
Scheffler said he usually doesn’t like to play the week before a major. Plus, he’s playing week AFTER PGA, as he is the defending champion at the CJ Cup in Texas, where he lives.
“Having three of our biggest events in a row, depending on the time of year, if this was another time of year, I’d probably play all three,” Scheffler said Wednesday. “But when you have a major championship like the last one, I think it creates a different kind of cadence for it. The major championships are just the hardest events. When you look at the courses we’re playing for our Signature Events now — I think it was a couple of years ago that we did Jack’s (Muirfield Village) and the US Open, I like it physically and mentally for two weeks. I won the Memorial and I got beat going into the US Open. That’s how I adjusted it my schedule to be like that, maybe a week before it’s not wise to go out there and beat myself up a bit.
Scheffler also discussed the demands of a major week versus a regular tournament week. He said, understandably, everything has improved for big weeks. There is more activity in the venue, more fans and more people screaming. The mental block is much more intense.
“Doing that day after day, week after week, when you’re doing it multiple times in a row, it can be challenging,” he said. “In order for me to perform and play my best, I have to have time off. That’s something I’ve learned as my career has progressed how important rest is to me, and it’s not always about spending as much time as I can on the golf course preparing. It’s more about doing what I can in the allotted time so I can prepare and go home to the tournament and rest.”
Justin Rose won at the Blue Monster in 2012. This week is his first start since the Masters, where he led on the second nine on Sunday only to finish in a tie for third.
“I looked at this period coming up and I think something had to give, for sure. For me, it ended up being RBC, especially what happened after Augusta,” Rose said Tuesday. “I felt like I knew what was coming, I knew what a big streak was coming, obviously the PGA Championship was going to be on the back of that three. For me personally, after the Masters, I feel like I needed that extra week to reflect and recover in this big streak. So yeah, when you have to miss big events to prepare for other big events, it’s not ideal.
“Obviously this event was added late, I think the structure of the kind of elevated structure of events that we had,” he continued. “This is obviously a new edition, so it had to fall somewhere. I’m sure there’s a group of players and people, the Competition Committee or whatever it’s called, looking at best practices going forward. So I’m sure there’s been a lot of talk about our program next year, the year after, whatever it is. I’m sure this time frame will improve.”
As Rose says, this conflict likely won’t last long. Next year’s schedule will likely right the wrong – the Tour would prefer its top players play Signature event — and PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp has great ideas for the upcoming tour schedule as well.
If we’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that we can’t get too used to this schedule by sitting still.
“If you all walk with me every day of the tournament and see what we have to do to play a week, doing it four weeks in a row, I wouldn’t be able to do my best,” Scheffler said. “So when I show up to a tournament, I want to be able to play my best and I have to set my schedule a certain way and, you know, the chips fall where they fall.”
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