Does The Players Championship Deserve Billing of Golf's Fifth Major?

The Players Championship has all the elements of big-time tournament golf. A remarkable golf course, an always star-studded field and a gigantic purse converge every year to make the PGA Tour-owned event one of the highlights of the annual calendar. What The Players does not, and should not, have is the status of a major championship. Professional golf is just fine with the four they have.

It wasn't all that long ago that the idea of The Players Championship as professional golf’s fifth major had both legs and merit. Some used the term “fifth major” to expound upon the tournament’s lofty status on the PGA Tour. Others used it to actively push for its inclusion among the existing four majors played every year.

Whatever the motive, The Players has undoubtedly been the largest event of the year without a major designation for a very long time. Yet significant changes to professional golf have brought the emergence in popularity of world championship events and a four-event, season-ending playoff on the PGA Tour.

All combined, those events have diluted the “fifth major” argument to the point there can be little case made in support for The Players as a major championship, much less that a "fifth" of any designation is needed.

The fact of the matter is, in today’s ever-expanding international landscape of professional golf, there simply isn't enough separating The Players from at least two of the four World Golf Championship events, a FedEx Cup culminating in a $10 million Tour Championship and even some European Tour events that have gained significance as that circuit has grown in appreciation.

That’s no slight to the popular tournament that former PGA Tour Commissioner Deane Beman put on the map in 1982 by giving it the Pete-Dye designed TPC Sawgrass to call home. For the longest time, the event was played two weeks before The Masters and trumpeted the true beginning of the golf season as the gateway to Augusta National.

It attracts the finest players, boasts a who’s-who of champions and has perhaps the most famous—and infamous—hole on the PGA Tour in the par-three 17th island green. Given all this, The Players didn't need to be a major championship—or a manufactured distinction as one—to be the “major” tournament on the regular tour schedule. Even with a date change from March to May in 2007 and new competition to its top tour stature, the same is still true today for The Players.

What’s also true is professional golf simply doesn't need a change to its current major championship structure. Not because it’s always been four and therefore always should be; that’s a weak argument you won’t find here.

More to the point, the current majors each have their own distinct nature, perfect placement on the calendar and continue to draw the top fields of the year. There is a history unique to each one that no other event on the tour’s regular schedule, including The Players, can begin to match or rival.

Years ago, the quartet was dragged a bit by the PGA Championship, which often had weaker fields compared to the others, due in part to the inclusion of qualifying PGA of America members, and was played on less than compelling championship venues when compared to the others.

During the past two decades, however, the PGA of America has improved the venue selection of its major; has benefited from many top-tier champions, including Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy; and today is firmly entrenched as a worthy fourth major.

In 2003, the Champions Tour, the senior circuit of professional golf, opted to go from its traditional four majors to five by designating the Senior British Open as its fifth. Likewise, the LPGA Tour this year will have a fifth major on its schedule with the addition of the Evian Masters, a long-running Europe-based event that will now be played every September.

The addition of these tournaments to major status makes sense for both tours. It gives the Champions Tour a major outside of the United States and adds a second national championship to its docket of majors.

The LPGA, which already has the Women’s British Open, adds another international event to its majors; a smart move given the recent international talent shift in the women’s game, and the struggles the tour has endured stateside in recent years.

For its part, the PGA Tour already has a major played in Europe, stages a world championship event overseas and certainly doesn't need to elevate the status of its most popular regular tour event to drive up the purse or increase its exposure. In other words, this isn't a case of "what’s good for the goose is good for the gander"; the gander is doing just fine as is.

So for the 40th time, The Players Championship will be held without a major distinction to raise its profile or enhance its importance. As it has since its move to TPC Sawgrass, the event will enjoy global attention, a field full of major champions and otherwise top-ranked players and is sure to unleash the typical drama that has golf fans glued to the action on the Stadium Course’s amazing finishing holes.

The “fifth major” debate will go on, and certainly reasonable minds can disagree; but this week is about enjoying what The Players is rather than what it should or could be. And as it always does, The Players will deliver championship golf in a theater only it can provide.