Lynch: The PGA Tour is right to cut players and fields, but the wrong guys are making that call

Pity nan PGA Tour’s proletariat, who are now fretting astir 2 votes successful November that could jeopardize overmuch of what they consciousness entitled to. Some of them mightiness moreover beryllium little wary of a erstwhile California charismatic than they are of a prosecutorial Californian. After all, Kamala Harris doesn’t overmuch attraction astir reshaping nan PGA Tour, but Patrick Cantlay judge does.

On Nov. 18, Cantlay and his chap Policy Board members will ballot connected an extended slate of proposals that will person an tremendous effect connected rank and record Tour members. Potential changes see reducing fields successful astir regular tournaments from 156 competitors to 144, and successful galore cases 120; cutting nan number of afloat exempt players from 125 to 100; slashing by one-third nan number of cards earned via nan Korn Ferry Tour; and reducing aliases eliminating Monday qualifiers, which grant 4 spots astir weeks.

Some players will spot an unfair narrowing of pathways to make a living; others will invited a toughening of competitory standards. Either way, it represents revolutionary alteration for an statement whose members revere Adam Smith but are accustomed to seeing their workplace tally arsenic though Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were nan commish.

Capitalism for thee, socialism for me!

Unlike astir caller innovations — signature events, equity ownership grants, immense maturation successful prize money — these latest proposals aren’t a antagonistic against LIV Golf but alternatively a reflection of nan PGA Tour’s caller for-profit status. After all, who prizes streamlined simplicity much than nan backstage equity investors players took connected committee 10 months ago?

The Tour’s longstanding raison d’être — creating playing opportunities for members, an nonsubjective connected which its executives were bonused — is dead. Remaking a complacent merchandise for a competitory marketplace intends it’s now astir earning opportunities. Every connection is defensible, if debatable. (Except nan elimination of Monday qualifiers; that’s nan eventual meritocracy and ought to beryllium expanded and streamed arsenic additive to nan Tour’s play narrative.) And while it’s easy to qualify these apt changes arsenic different sop to apical stars, nan truth is that immoderate betterment is improbable to ever discomfit nan Tour’s 1 percent.

These proposals emerged from nan Players Advisory Council, a 16-man committee made up of some superstars and journeymen, and they administer an overdue dose of reality. Players are fond of pointing nan digit astatine HQ erstwhile it comes to bloat — not unfairly, it must beryllium said — truthful there’s irony successful nan first announced layoffs being players themselves. Whether successful nan glass-walled offices of Ponte Vedra aliases nan wood-paneled locker rooms connected Tour, excessively galore group are paid excessively overmuch money for excessively little. More than 600 guys person made starts connected Tour this year, and nan mean inside-the-ropes net presently stands astatine $2,030,418. That’s a batch of money for what is, comparatively speaking, a batch of mediocrity.

Finally, nan Tour has reached nan shape of making incremental changes to amended its merchandise alternatively than to slake nan rate thirst of its stars. There’s a agelong measurement to spell — not slightest successful delivering a merchandise that focuses much connected fans than players — but nan truth that due improvements are imminent doesn’t needfully mean nan correct folks are making nan decisions.

The Tour has ever boasted of being a member-led organization, moreover erstwhile it was only nominally so. Since nan backlash to nan Framework Agreement pinch nan Saudis and nan consequent governance reforms, players are now perfectly calling nan shots. In fact, 3 Policy Board members who will ballot connected nan recommendations — Peter Malnati, Webb Simpson and Jordan Spieth — are perilously adjacent to uncovering themselves astatine nan mercy of nan unforgiving caller exception they could usher in.

It won’t hap — not imminently, and astir apt not astatine each — but Tour players request to measurement backmost and defer to executives connected fraught decisions astir eligibility. And if they don’t spot executives to measurement nan greater bully of nan business, they ought to find replacements. If there’s 1 instruction to beryllium drawn from nan past fewer years it’s that golfers will make selfish decisions based connected wherever they are successful their careers, truthful empowering them to find nan expertise of colleagues to gain a surviving won’t extremity well. Just see nan delicate (and legally perilous) decisions that are looming, not slightest permitting nan return of LIV defectors — nan aforesaid guys they don’t presently person to hit to triumph tournaments and FedEx Cup bonuses.

Rank-and-file members squeezed retired of opportunities, sponsors paying awesome convention prices for minor-league lineups, tournaments diminished successful nan schedule abyss betwixt premier events, broadcasters paying for a merchandise they aren’t getting, fans woefully underserved pinch a commodity that is some diluted and repetitive, labor astatine office facing nan imaginable of redundancies — nan collateral harm of nan ‘git maine some’ era is widespread. The only constituency that will look unscathed is those whose greed group it each successful motion: nan elite players.

But moreover those who will beryllium wounded by nan projected changes mostly judge that nan Nov. 18 ballot — dissimilar that different one, 13 days earlier — is simply a foregone conclusion. And necessary. As it has been written, truthful it shall beryllium done.