Scottie Scheffler is one of the biggest stars on the PGA Tour right now, if not the biggest.
Scheffler has shot to stardom over the past few years, and he has been the world’s number one ranked player for 157 consecutive weeks and 192 in total.
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The 29-year-old world number one has won 20 PGA Tour events since February 2022, including four major championships.
Scottie Scheffler has been an almost unstoppable force in the professional game for four years now, and he quite obviously plays a key role in attracting sponsorship deals for the PGA Tour.
Photo by Sam Hodde/Getty Images
Scheffler’s popularity shone through at the CJ CUP Byron Nelson last week, as tens of thousands of fans flocked to McKinney, Texas, to see the world number one in action.
The 29-year-old from Dallas, Texas, is not just adored in his home state, but across the entire country.
The PGA Tour clearly use Scheffler’s popularity as a negotiation tactic with sponsors, but they could be about to make one of their biggest stars unhappy with a decision that is said to be in the pipeline.
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PGA Tour could implement new rule that may anger Scottie Scheffler
The PGA Tour is clearly moving in a new direction in an attempt to get the very best players competing against each other more regularly.
However, one of their alleged plans may well rub Scheffler up the wrong way.
According to Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch, Rolapp may ruffle some feathers with one of his proposed plans for the 2028 season and beyond.
Lynch writes, “Multiple sources say that players eligible for tier one tournaments will be strongly discouraged — if not outright prevented — from entering tier two events.“
So, let’s say the CJ CUP Byron Nelson will be labelled as a track 2 event in 2028.
Photo by Sam Hodde/Getty Images
Will the PGA Tour leadership really tell Dallas hometown hero Scottie Scheffler that he is unable to play in the event?
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If they did not only discourage, but prevent Scheffler from playing at the CJ CUP Byron Nelson, it would undoubtedly create a really unhappy member of their oganization.
Scottie Scheffler is obviously crucial to the PGA Tour’s brand, so they may have to rethink their strategy if they are indeed considering implementing a rule whereby he will not be allowed to play in one of his favorite tournaments.
PGA Tour’s prize funds for track 1 and track 2 events
“Going backwards on purses isn’t an option.”
That’s what one top executive told Golfweek, so the purses for the track 1 events should remain at $20 million.
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Regular event purses usually sit at around the $8.5 million mark, while opposite field tournaments have purses worth around $4 million.
As things stand, it’s unclear whether the track 2 event purses will be closer to the current regular Tour events or the opposite field ones.
These are things that Brian Rolapp and his cohorts will have to seriously think about.
Will sponsors want to commit such huge finances to events that are not guaranteed any star names? The answer to that question is probably ‘no’, so the PGA Tour will have to tread very carefully if they are indeed planning to prevent the best players from competing outside the track 1 tournaments.
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