Mexico Open at Vidanta
It has been an interesting couple of weeks across the entire golf world. In the past few weeks, we’ve had first time PGA Tour winners, a very exciting LIV event in Australia, and major changes to the developmental tours across the Americas. The least surprising of these is the LIV event. The LIV golf tour was bound to have an electric event and Australia was the perfect place and here’s why.
As we all know Australia is pretty far from basically everything. If you are traveling from anywhere in North America, South America, etc it takes 18-24 hours to get there. With that being said, there aren’t many professional events held in Australia. LIV golf however saw that untapped market and exploited it. On top of that untapped, excited market of fans, the faces of LIV golf coincidently are from the land down under. Cam Smith and CEO Greg Norman are two of the top Australian players in history and they were sure to draw major crowds. As the week pressed on Talor Gooch recorded two very impressive rounds of back to back 62’s to get to 20 under through two rounds. Now I've watched a ton of professional golf and this is the first time I've seen back to back 62’s. Ultimately, Gooch won as he finished at 19 under par. This was Talor’s first LIV Golf win of his career and a very large paycheck along with it his trophy. At this point in LIV’s lifespan, it's safe to say that despite what golf media says people are actually attending events. Although it is their first event where they drew tens of thousands of fans it's a positive trend for the future of LIV. As the future of LIV gets a well needed push the PGA Tour decided to make a major change themselves.
Prior to two days ago the tour operated with two developmental tours, PGA Tour Canada and Latin America. As their names suggest, these tours are played throughout Canada and Latin America. While these two tours were great there were always issues. For starters money, these tours do not provide a living wage and if you live in the continental United States the travel cost to get to places like Peru and Nova Scotia are pretty hefty. Moving forward the PGA Tour has now decided to combine both tours with the hopes that it turns into a much more effective and productive feeder tour for the Korn Ferry Tour. The major changes following this merge include one long season beginning in February, which will be considered the Latin America swing and that swing will conclude in May. The North American swing will begin after May. This is the most important part because having just one tour it will allow the tours to provide bigger purses which means more money to be made by the players. This also avoids any scheduling conflicts and allows players much more flexibility. At the end of the season, 10 Korn Ferry cards will still be given out just like the top 5 on each tour would have received before the merge. All in all, this is going to be a game changer for young professionals chasing their dreams. Moving forward PGA Tour Americas will begin in February 2024.
Although these changes are huge, the PGA Tour is facing a crucial part of their season and needs to make some waves. As we’ve seen in the past Rory McIlroy, the poster child for the PGA Tour has been MIA. After his missed cut at the Masters and timely withdrawal from yet another elevated event, we haven't seen or heard from him. On top of that many players have expressed their lack of energy after being on the road for 6-8 weeks in a row and being forced to play in many of the elevated events. Now the idea of forcing the players to play in elevated events is great, the problem lies in scheduling. Having elevated events directly after majors is not smart. Luckily most of the top players would have had two weeks off because of the Zurich and Mexico Open before they head to The Wells Fargo Championship. With the major season in full swing the top players need all the rest they can get. It should be very interesting to see what will unfold with Rory as yet another elevated event approaches. Nonetheless, the Mexico Open starts tomorrow and fan favorite as well as world number one Jon Rahm will be looking to win the event in back to back years.