Florida Swing Special Report Tuesday 12 March The Future of the Florida Swing (Move The Players Championship Back to March)

Following the WGC-Cadillac Championship we have reached the half-way mark of the 2013 Florida Swing and I thought it was time to address a few issues about the Florida Swing, how it can improve and should change to create a great build-up to The Masters. On Sunday during Sky Sports' coverage of the Final Round at Doral I heard Butch Harmon say that for many of the players their seasons don't get going until they reach Florida an that it was always said that the season really began at Doral in the past. Well why not make Doral the first stop on the Florida Swing? Beginning the swing in the most southerly major city in the United States and progressing up through Florida geographically from South to North and towards the State of Georgia and Augusta National Golf Club for Golf's First Major.

The Florida Swing should also be expanded to include five tournaments, starting one week earlier than this year and concluding, once again, with the unofficial Fifth Major The Players Championship at Tournament Players Club Sawgrass. These changes would require the PGA Tour to re-schedule one or two of its early-season tournaments but with a new wrap-around schedule beginning in 2013-14 this is probably not that difficult to achieve by moving one of the Hawaii tournaments to the end of the calendar year. The Florida Swing would move from Doral in Miami up the US Route 1 to Palm Beach Gardens and PGA National Resort for The Honda Classic and then cross the state to the Tampa Bay area for the Tampa Bay Championship presented by EverBank at the Innisbrook Resort. The Florida Swing would then conclude as it did for more than 15 years with the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard at Bay Hill in Orlando and The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach near Jacksonville.

This would mean Florida would have five prestigious tournaments in a row played on five genuinely world-class courses which have all been redesigned and enhanced since 2006 to bring them up to world-class standards. This would provide the tour and its members with a superb stretch of golf on courses which test every facet of the game and provide a tremendous few weeks of preparation for The Masters, all close to where the majority of touring professionals live.

The most significant change I would make to the Florida Swing would be to move The Players Championship back to its rightful place on the schedule, in March at the end of the Florida Swing and two weeks prior to The Masters. The Players Championship used to be without question the best tournament in golf, better than any of the Majors and was in many respects the ultimate World championship of professional golf played on arguably the greatest course of the modern era in front of a raucous but respectful gallery in the first couple of weeks of spring.

For many years media and PGA Tour hyperbole labelled the championship as Golf's Fifth Major and there was an annual debate each March, several players said that they felt it was more of a major than either The Masters or the PGA Championship and the debate was great for the championship because it brought even more attention to it during the first few weeks of the season. In 2006 the PGA Tour announced a major structural change to the schedule, concluding the season with the PGA Tour Playoffs for the FedEx Cup in September and moving The Players Championship to May, in an attempt to give the PGA Tour significant tournaments in February (WGC-Accenture Match Play), March (WGC-Cadillac Championship), April (The Masters), May (The Players Championship), June (The U.S. Open), July (The Open), August (WGC-Bridgestone Invitational and PGA Championship) and September (The Tour Championship). This, Tim Finchem believed would enhance the championships reputation, stature and bid to become the fifth Major in golf.

Along with the structural changes to the season and moving The Players Championship to May three further changes were made. An elaborate new clubhouse was constructed, which to be fair is outstanding by all accounts and looks magnificent; major internal surgery was undertaken to the course, keeping the external look the same but changing the characteristics of the golf course by installing drainage that could withstand a “100-year storm”. The brand of the event was also given a major overhaul, with a new logo, new television deal and new broadcast structure designed to run in a similar way to the agreement between CBS and Augusta National to show less adverts and more golf. All of which the PGA Tour obviously decided would help create the biggest championship in golf. The problem for the PGA Tour is they already had it and they didn't realize.

They got so wound up with the fifth major hype that they forgot to sit back and put into perspective what they actually already had. They had a championship which attracted every single one of the world's best golfers every year, something which virtually no other PGA Tour event could do at that time outside of the Majors. They had a golf course which given the conditions could be brutal and punishing, resulting in a winning score of -3 in 1999 and given calm conditions a course where a player such as Greg Norman could shoot a record-low of -24. The Players Championship also had the richest purse in golf, and the most recognizable single hole in the entire world. The Players Championship had absolutely everything and the PGA Tour didn't realize it and made the biggest mistake they have ever made, they ruined golf's greatest championship.

Another reason the PGA Tour moved the event to May was the weather, because of two consecutive Monday finishes in 2000 and 2001, but rather confusingly they went ahead with major surgery and installed supposedly world-class drainage. But why do that if you are moving the tournament to May to avoid the traditional March storms (which by the way have led to only 3 Monday finishes in 26 Florida Swing tournaments since 2007)? The course was supposedly designed to be firm and fast, but I have never read or seen the designer Pete Dye say that and he once remarked that it was a modern Pine Valley. The course, especially over the last three holes, has now become somewhat of a lottery, it is so firm and fast and there is so much water in play that there is as much luck required as skill. The Stadium course at TPC Sawgrass was once known as the ultimate in target golf and it was at its best like that, to trick it up and make the fairways and greens rock hard is detrimental to the course and tournament.

The European Tour schedule in May used to feature (2000) the Spanish Open, Open de France, Benson and Hedges International Open, the Deutsche Bank SAP Open TPC of Europe and the Volvo PGA Championship, followed by the English Open in the first week of June. Fast forward to 2013 and the European Tour now has the Volvo China Open, Tournament to be Confirmed, Volvo World Match Play Championship, Madeira Islands Open and BMW PGA Championship. Many will say “this isn't the PGA Tour's problem”, but it is. If golf is weaker around the world it means the PGA Tour has no competition and interest in the sport from sponsors around the world dies, eventually impacting upon the PGA Tour in the USA.

The Players Championship position on the schedule in May has also led to a few leading players questioning whether they want to play in the championship with the World Match Play and Wentworth coming up in quick succession after Sawgrass and before The Memorial Tournament in the build-up to the US Open. Prior to 2007 all of the world's best players were in Florida anyway as they prepared to play in The Masters a couple of weeks later.

The championship now stands alone, or sticks out like a sore thumb in between the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow in Charlotte, North Carolina and the Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial in Fort Worth, Texas. It has also had a detrimental impact upon the European Tour's schedule, as have the other changes to the PGA Tour schedule in September, all to achieve something which had already been achieved by Pete Dye and Deane Beaman – creating the World's best golf tournament.