The RBC Canadian Open will have a new spot on the PGA Tour schedule in 2024.
Announced Monday, next year’s PGA Tour calendar has Canada’s national open moved up by one week, slated to start Thursday May 30 at Hamilton Golf and Country Club and concluding June 2.
This will be the first time in the tournament’s 120-year history that rounds will be played in May.
The 2024 schedule reflects a complete overhaul of the Tour’s event cadence, with PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan calling it “reimagined.”
The PGA Tour returns to a calendar-year season for the first time in a decade when The Sentry tees off in January. It runs until the final week of August, closing out with the Tour Championship, with one week off for the Olympics.
“From The Sentry through the FedExCup Playoffs and into the soon-to-be-announced FedExCup Fall, this new cadence will create consistent excitement for our fans and reward players like never before,” Monahan said in a release.
The Canadian Open will once again be surrounded by some of the game’s biggest events with the biggest paydays. But if Canadian golf fans are treated to another finish like they’ve seen the last few years, then there’s no need for business babble — the tournament will be just fine.
In 2024, the Canadian Open will take place two weeks after the PGA Championship and two weeks prior to the U.S. Open. It will also be played one week before the Memorial Tournament, the “Signature Event” long hosted by Jack Nicklaus with which it swapped places.
Events that were “designated” in 2023 will be called “Signature” in 2024 and will include $20-million purses, redistributed so the winner gets $4 million (all figures USD).
The RBC Canadian Open total purse was $9 million in 2023.
Field sizes for the Signature Events are anticipated to be between 70 and 80 players – the top 50 members from the 2022-23 FedExCup standings (a number that includes five Canadians) plus 15 members who can play their way in via two new pathways the PGA Tour is calling “The Next 10” and “The Swing 5.”
Those 15 spots will all be earned via the in-season FedExCup points list, with The Next 10 selected from the overall season list and The Swing 5 drawn from the top five point-earners from the stretch of three tournaments between Signature Events.
The RBC Canadian Open will represent the final opportunity for golfers to earn FedExCup points to get into both the Memorial Tournament and the Travelers Championship — or to try to solidify their spot in the FedExCup playoffs. For example, this year, multi-time major champion Justin Thomas ended up just nine points out of a spot in the playoffs, meaning the Canadian event could be a prime opportunity for unexpected big names to make a schedule addition.
There has been plenty of naysaying on social media about the Canadian Open date pivot.
When the tournament was shifted to June five years ago, after being played after The Open Championship since 2007 — a terrible spot on the calendar — the move was heralded as a game-changer. It also didn’t hurt that the first year of the change, in 2019, Rory McIlroy won in a route at the same time the Toronto Raptors were making their magical championship run.
At first blush this time around, it seems the PGA Tour is again having its way with the bank, even though RBC is the only two-tournament sponsor on the schedule (FedEx sponsors both the season-long FedExCup and the FedEx St. Jude Championship). RBC has sponsored the Canadian Open since 2008, renewing the deal twice, and certainly deserved better for 2024 — especially with the new go-forward framework between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour, and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) announced during this year’s tournament and still clouded in secrecy.
But what would ‘better’ look like here? There is no real other spot for the event to go. Between the major championship spots being long-locked, with Golf Canada preferring to keep its national open, well, open, and with the event staying in the Greater Toronto Area in the near future, it couldn’t really be at any other time, especially with the Olympics added in.
While it’s not an easy spot, with two signature events and a major immediately following it, it’s not totally foreign for golfers to play four events in a row. Some golfers who may have passed on the Canadian Open to rest before the U.S. Open in years’ past may add it to their schedule and instead skip the Memorial, which is now the week before a major. Plus, for 2024, the Signature Events are not mandatory for top players, unlike this year when they could only skip one without financial penalty.
It should be noted, too: McIlroy, a two-time winner, played four June events in a row in 2019, 2022 and 2023, when he had the Canadian Open on his schedule.
RBC Canadian Open tournament director Bryan Crawford, still riding high from Nick Taylor’s electric, drought-busting win at Oakdale Golf and Country Club this June, understands the complexities of how much went into the schedule’s management. He’s looking at the positives.
“We are pleased to maintain our preferred early June date which has been received extremely well by our fans, host clubs, volunteers, and corporate partners, and has also resulted in record results for the championship dating back to 2019,” Crawford told Sportsnet.
“With the schedule now determined for 2024, we can work collaboratively with RBC and our partners to deliver an incredible return event to Hamilton Golf and Country Club where we’ll proudly celebrate Canadian Nick Taylor as our defending champion.”
The date change was just one question for 2024, as the bank’s involvement in the event wasn’t a sure thing. RBC’s deals with Golf Canada as well as the Heritage in South Carolina were set to expire in December, but a statement from RBC confirmed it has extended its agreement for both tournaments for another year. And, the Heritage will once again be one of the PGA Tour’s biggies, a Signature Event with a $20-million purse.
RBC is involved in many facets of golf in this country, including sponsoring Women’s Golf Day and supporting Golf Canada’s amateur teams, as well as community initiatives like RBC Community Junior Golf and the RBC PGA Scramble. Internationally, it was a global partner of the 2021 Ryder Cup and continues to sponsor a robust lineup of pros who make up Team RBC.
But with the new pro-golf framework still being worked out between the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and the PIF, there was some pause given on what to do next by the bank. Not much has come to light about the new agreement even now, leaving many in golf to continue to wait and see.
“The details of the PGA Tour’s proposal will continue to unfold over the coming months, as regulatory bodies and the PGA Tour’s policy board review the proposed business model,” a statement from the bank shared with Sportsnet said. “We will continue to work with our partners to assess the implications of the proposal, and what approval could mean for RBC’s sponsorship.”
Some questions certainly remain, like how the date may impact the field (could it even be an advantage?) or if the pro-golf landscape will impact who the title sponsor will be. Plus, there is no venue confirmed for 2025 yet.
But, if the golf that’s played at the tournament is anything like this year (or last year, or 2019…) then the outside noise about the Canadian Open will be silenced.
Hello, my name is Jack Sparrow. I'm a 50 year old self-employed Pirate from the Caribbean.
No comments:
Post a Comment