Will The Players Championship Evolve into a Major?

Like the ground beginning to thaw in New England in late March and the Azaleas blooming in Augusta in April, each and every May, the debate begins raging over whether or not The Players Championship is golf’s “fifth major.”

It’s a routine that’s as predictable as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.

Although there’s no real evidence that The Players Championship has evolved into a major at this time, who’s to say that it will not at some point in the future?

Or even more likely, that a tournament such as The Players will evolve into a major while one of the four current majors loses its stature?

It’s already happened several times throughout history.

In the 1920s and 1930s, and some even say into the 1940s, the Western Open was considered by most to be a major championship.

Late in Walter Hagen’s career, he discussed how he wanted to win one more Western Open. He didn’t say he wanted to win one more U.S. Open, one more PGA Championship or one more Open Championship; Hagen wanted another Western Open title, which is a very telling statement in terms of just how important the Western Open was at the time.

There are some out there who even believe that the North and South Open at Pinehurst was considered a major for a period of time in the '30s and '40s, which is a view that could also hold some weight.  

When Ben Hogan won the North and South Open in 1940, he had arrived at Pinehurst more than a week before the tournament to begin preparing for the event.

Hogan would then defeat the best players of his generation to capture his first significant professional title.

It’s doubtful that even a guy like Hogan who was obsessed with practice and preparation would arrive at a venue more than a week before the tournament began if he didn’t consider that tournament to be extremely important.

Although we now view the Open Championship as golf’s oldest major, there was a period of time between the late-1930s and the late-1950s in which it essentially fell off the map, at least in terms of the interest shown by the best players of that era.   

Hogan attended the Open Championship just once, in 1953, when he won at Carnoustie.

Byron Nelson attended the Open Championship just once, in 1937, when he finished fifth.

Between 1937 and 1959, Sam Snead attended the Open Championship just twice. He tied for 11th in 1937, and he won the event in 1946.

It was Arnold Palmer that really put the Open back on the map when he began attending the tournament in the late-1950s and won the event twice in 1961 and 1962.

That being said, even Palmer skipped the Open in 1964, 1967 and 1969.

In the '40s and '50s, part of the reason why the best golfers in the world stopped attending the Open was due to the costs involved in traveling there and back.

However, one can certainly surmise that, had the Open Championship been considered a truly significant tournament during that time period, they would have found a way to get there.

Hagen found his way there every year but two between 1920 and 1929, a time when travel would have been even more difficult and more expensive.

The Masters didn’t begin evolving into a major until the late-1940s at the earliest, and many believe that it wasn’t truly considered a major until 1960, when Palmer won the Masters and U.S. Open and talk began circulating about his winning the modern-day professional grand slam.

John Feinstein once said during a program on the Golf Channel that “The Players Championship is not golf’s fifth major because there is no fifth major.”

And at the moment that may be the case.

But if history is anything to go by, there may just be a another major that pops up sometime in the next 20, 30 or 40 years.

And who knows? We may then have five majors, or a new event might simply replace one of the four current majors, just as the Masters did with the Western Open and possibly even the North and South Open.

Whether that fifth major or “replacement major” will be The Players Championship, a different event currently on the calendar or an event that does not yet exist remains to be seen.  

But based on history, we do know that a fifth major, or an event stepping up and taking the place of one of the current four majors, is by no means a far-fetched idea.

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