The concept – some would describe it as a “construct” – of major championships, as we know them today, first gained traction in 1960, when Arnold Palmer was on his way to play the Open Championship at St Andrews after winning the Masters and U.S Open.
Over gin and tonics on the jumbo jet, Palmer mused with his biographer, Bob Drum, that it was impossible for an amateur to make like Bobby Jones and win the “Grand Slam”, which until then was the Open and Amateur Championships of the USA and Great Britain.
Palmer argued that no amateur could ever do it again, and that Drum should write something about it. Drum, as the chief proselytiser of the legend of “Arnold Palmer”, wrote it up thus, and created Palmer’s quotes, as he often did.
And those who read Drum’s stories nodded along. And that’s why the four “majors” are the ones we have today. Because the King said so.
True story – it just happened, organically, this way, that the four major championships of today are what they are. There was no edict from above, no actual authority figure or benevolent dictator sitting in a dusty old library in St Andrews, parsimoniously pronouncing edicts about what tournaments shall be considered major championships and what shall not.
It was just Palmer and a journo, shooting the shit, on the piss on a plane, after which the journo knocked up a few yarns which enough people who worshipped Arnold Palmer – and that was nigh-on everybody – read and agreed with.
Today, people power – and lots of money – appears pretty much the only way for golf to change, and for the PGA of America to relinquish major status of its PGA Championship, as mooted in this link to yesterday's plea to authorities, and this piece here:
Golf, today, doesn’t have a king. The R&A can’t enact a sweeping edict to say what a major golf tournament is, and neither can the thought leaders of the USGA, PGA Tour, DP World Tour, Asian Tour, Australasian Tour, or Middle East and North Africa Tour.
But they can all agree. And Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy and the greater bulk of all golfers can agree that it should be, as Cameron Smith did when he advocated for the separation of church and state in the Australian Open. And Tiger and Rory and Cam, and the greater “union” of professional golfers in the world, should advocate that the fourth major belongs to the world.
Golf also needs a body like tennis has.
In 1925, the governing body of tennis, the International Lawn Tennis Foundation (today the ITF), declared that the four major tennis events would be Wimbledon, U.S Open, French Open, Australian Open. And today, each of these horsemen of the apocalypse attract the world’s best players, and four different countries own tennis for a month.
And that’s why every January the world of sport focuses on the blue courts of Rod Laver Arena. And if that happened with Royal Melbourne, if our PGA Championship was, every seven years or so, the world’s fourth major championship, well, how good would that be for golf in Australia? Answer: that would be magnificent. It would be Olympian.
The Australian Open could be either be that major or be held a week before or after. And both events could be co-sanctioned with the PGA Tour, DP World Tour, Asian Tour, and royally pumped with the same world ranking points as the majors get now. Compete in Australia for a fortnight for the chance to put your name in the history books, along with Fed-Ex Cup and Race to Dubai points, and a whole heap of money. Ka-ching, biatches.
LIV Golf could hold its Festivus in the same month. Put the Australian Women’s Open in there, too. And every year you would replicate this Month of Golf in Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Munich, Hong Kong, Barcelona and King Abdullah Economic City. And, yes, when it’s the United States’ turn in the rota – Charlotte, North Carolina.
Alas, professional golf doesn’t have a benevolent dictator - or an all-powerful King with a creative and influential writer - to make things happen. There’s not a sole governing body. It’s a fractured group of self-interested swinging dicks all bent on carving out as a big a niche as they can.
The smaller tours – our own, Asia’s, even the DP World is becoming one since LIV’s taken so many players and travels the world – do co-operate and co-sanction. And the Saudis are hurling money at the Asian Tour.
But America is owner-operator of three-quarters of elite, professional, “major” golf. And it is not right.
Golf needs many very rich persons to advocate for change for no other reason than the greater good. Someone like the chairman of the Saudi PIF could lobby the PGA of America, which isn’t ruled by a king, but rather a board of directors and a CEO, Derek Sprague.
And then our men and women of means could appeal to their sense of Big Picture. We are the world, and so on. Ask them to change. May help to give them lots of money. Give the PGA of America a snip for coming up with the idea, maybe. I am spit-balling here.
And I can feel you thinking: Please. That is never, ever going to happen. Change is too hard. The status quo is too strong. The history, legacy, too entrenched. The money and thus the power is in America. It’s the economy, Stupid.
And of that there can be no argument.
Yet the PGA of America has changed. And so has their PGA Championship, as we will discover on Wednesday in PART THREE of Matt Cleary’s feature piece which will appear in the June issue of Golf Australia magazine, on shelves Thursday, subscribe now, it's a ripper.
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