We already know that the Hawaii event at Kapalua, as well as the Sony Open, have been axed from the 2027 PGA Tour schedule. What tournament might be next? And what does that mean for professional golf?
The new PGA Tour CEO, Brian Rolapp, has said he wants all tournaments to be Signature Events. So, from a wishful-thinking point of view, it’s easy to say we want all the events to be Signature Events. But from a sponsorship standpoint, is it realistic? Somebody has to raise the money for the purses. Recently, that’s been $20 million per event, which is a lot more than golfers have been paid in the past.
However, there are two issues lurking that no one has brought up, at least until now. One is The Sentry, which was held at Kapalua for 42 years. Its inception is a prime example of what could happen in the future.
The Kapalua tournament was started in 1982 as the Kapalua International, a tournament headed up by Mark Rolfing, who was employed at the resort. He knew many PGA Tour players personally because he’d played collegiate golf. Since golf is a relationship business, and because he’s a personable guy, Rolfing was able to attract a good field. Starting in 1983, the money was also a factor.
The tournament field was not as large as a regular PGA Tour event. However, in 1983, it offered $100,000 for first place, which was one of the largest first-place prizes in golf at the time.
The British Open, for instance, offered approximately $60,000 for first place that same year. The Players Championship, usually the biggest first-place check all season, paid $126,000 to the winner. The PGA Championship offered $100,000. The Memorial Tournament, $72,000. Most tournaments that year paid the winner between $54,000 and $72,000.
The Kapalua International was in what the media called the “Silly Season,” a term Peter Jacobsen told The Golf Show 2.0 podcast that he finds offensive because he has said that there’s nothing silly about raising money for charity, which even the end of season events did.
Regardless, that time of year was called “silly” because it was different than the grind of week-in-week-out tournament golf. Often, there were no cuts, so it was like a paid vacation. Frequently, the golf was played in a different format than in regular four-round PGA Tour events.
Now, the only reason Rolfing could even think about having a tournament was because there was no conflicting PGA Tour event on the week he wanted to hold his new event. Most people had never heard of the conflicting event rule until LIV popped up, but that rule is what gave the PGA Tour its heft in making a schedule and controlling it. Has it decided to open up those weeks for something else?
Kapalua International was small the first year, which was 1982, but it definitely became a bigger deal in its second season. And that same year, 1983, saw the creation of The Skins Game, a special event played Thanksgiving weekend starting in 1983 at Desert Highlands in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Then those events begot others, like the Shark Shootout, The Skills Challenge, the Three Tour Challenge and much later on, the Hero World Challenge. There were others that came and went.
But back to the present.
For the first two weeks of 2027, there are no PGA Tour events that we know about yet. That means anyone with enough money could hold a golf tournament with PGA Tour players and put it on television and/ or streaming services without conflicting with the PGA Tour.
Because that’s what Rolfing did with Kapalua. Did the PGA Tour like it when he did it? Probably not. But there were no rules against PGA Tour players participating in other events so long as it wasn’t during their season and wasn’t conflicting with the regular schedule.
So that begs the second question. Is Brian Rolapp about to offer SSG, the new sports marketing group that came in with $1.5 billion to support the PGA Tour, the first two weeks of January for new events with PGA Tour players? Or is the PGA Tour about to roll out some of their own special events for the month of January, something to keep golf fans engaged?
It may just come down to who is playing and what the game is. Because if your football team is out of the playoffs and out of the running for the Super Bowl, do you really want to watch your archrivals play for a month? Will Steelers fans watch the hated Ravens? Or would they rather watch some great golf played in a warm climate while sitting on the sofa waiting for DoorDash or pizza delivery?
Is there a golf event that can compete with NFL football, maybe in a West Coast time slot? Crazy, you say? I say somebody is planning something, and we just don’t know what it is. The reason is that TV ratings for golf are always best in the first quarter of the year when winter winds are howling, when snowplows are shoveling, when planes are being de-iced, when you can’t go outside without bundling up.
So, whether it’s a Rolfing-like event or some totally new concept from the PGA Tour, it’s unlikely that the folks in Ponte Vedra -- who have fought so hard to get bigger money for the players on the PGA Tour, the kind that resembles the major sports -- are going to walk away from January TV ratings and the kind of eyeballs and money it can bring. Because if they do, somebody else will definitely step in to fill the void. We just don’t know who it will be yet.
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