When odds for this week’s Cognizant Classic were first posted on Monday morning, three-time PGA Tour champion Ben Griffin was listed as the rightful favorite, followed closely by Genesis Invitational winner Jacob Bridgeman and Adam Scott, a Masters champion.
Within a few hours, everything had changed.
Nope, public money didn’t move other players to shorter prices than each of them. And no, the oddsmakers didn’t suddenly decide to mix things up.
By late Monday morning, all three players had withdrawn from the tournament, leading to a “next man up” philosophy in the betting markets, which is usually reserved for football teams dealing with injuries to the starters.
On social media, there were resounding criticisms – mostly of the “don’t hate the player, hate the game” variety.
It’s not the fault of these players that they need some downtime in the wake of PGA Tour signature events over the past two weeks and another next week, followed directly by the Players Championship.
Instead, the unfavorable comments are more about the system itself, one which continues to divide the PGA Tour into two separate entities – limited-field events with superstars and full-field events with very few of them.
Personally, I’ve struggled to discern whether the current structure isn’t still an upgrade over the previous one, which included more full-field tournaments, but fewer opportunities for the best players to be competing against each other at the same time.
Way back in 2022 and beyond, the upper-tier players could simply pick and choose the events they wanted to play based on course fit or kids’ vacation or anything in between.
These days, those players are still free to play anyplace, anytime, but unless they want to go full ironman, breaks are a necessity and skipping events such as the Cognizant Classic makes the most sense from multiple standpoints, not the least of which is financial.
I suppose the proper perspective after seeing multiple withdrawals from this week’s event is to be thankful that these still exist. Full-field tourneys with a 36-hole cut used to be the norm on the PGA Tour, but that’s no longer the case – and it could be changing even more.
Alterations to the schedule are expected for next season and will very possibly be announced during CEO Brian Rolapp’s press conference in advance of next month’s Players at PGA Tour HQ in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.
The signature event model is essentially that more is less – “scarcity” as Rolapp has defined it – which could mean a more condensed schedule of limited-field tourneys featuring only the best of the best.
Consider it the PGA Tour’s answer to the age-old question: “Why don’t they just make the entire plane out of the black box?”
Monday’s late withdrawals not only irritated oddsmakers who had to recalculate the betting markets and fans who wanted to watch some bigger names, but likely again helped confirm the ideas of those in HQ who continue to question whether inferior tournaments without big-name superstars only serve to quash all previous momentum.
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