PGA Tour players address dramatic changes for first time

The 2023 RBC Canadian Open was a pivotal point for Ben Griffin, the former North Carolina Tar Heel who is currently the 70th-ranked player in the world. He decided to skip that week and practice at home instead, having missed five of his last six cuts. But, like the rest of the golfing world, Griffin was glued to Golf Channel on Tuesday, Jun. 6, 2023, a critical moment in the sport’s history.

“Wow, I can’t believe this is happening,” Griffin said to himself.

Of course, this was when the PGA Tour shockingly announced its framework agreement with the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF). Nobody knew what it meant at the time. Nor did anyone know what the structure of the PGA Tour and LIV Golf would look like going forward. But Griffin learned a valuable lesson that day, one that any pro outside the top 50 in the world should relate to—even now.

Amid the fracas, player meetings, and confusion that day in Toronto, one man kept to himself. Englishman Tommy Fleetwood, who wound up losing to Nick Taylor in a playoff later that week, minded his own business on the range. He hit ball after ball, not worrying about the outside noise.

“I’m not too worried about it,” Fleetwood said that day in an interview with Golf Channel, according to Griffin.

“It is what it is, and I’m just going to focus on winning this week.”

That mindset paid off for Fleetwood because, if not for Taylor’s historic 72-foot eagle putt, he may have won his first PGA Tour title.

Fast-forward to this week. On Monday, the PGA Tour approved a series of changes, which includes reducing the number of members from 125 to 100 players, decreasing the field sizes of almost every tournament, and eliminating most of the Monday qualifiers. Amid these stark transformations, Griffin immediately recalled watching Fleetwood hit balls on the range, focusing on himself and silencing the outside noise.

“I‘ve tried to use that mindset that he’s had over the last year and a half to not get myself too involved with a lot of policies and focus more on my career and what’s at stake because, ultimately, that’s all that matters to me,” Griffin said on Wednesday.

“The policies are going to be what they are, and my goal is to try to win and play as well as I can.”

Other young players are following this mindset, too, namely Steven Fisk, who will make his PGA Tour debut this week in his native Georgia. Fisk finished fourth in the 2024 Korn Ferry Tour standings, thus earning his card for 2025. One of the changes that the tour approved is reducing the number of PGA Tour cards for Korn Ferry Tour graduates from 30 to 20.

“The changes are what they are. Even though a lot of people might say that my position is slightly disadvantaged by some of the changes, I can look at it from a different perspective and see why some of those changes are being made,” Fisk said Wednesday.

Photo by Jennifer Perez/PGA Tour via Getty Images

“Certainly, everything that’s been laid out makes sense. It may not necessarily be what’s best for someone coming out of my category, but I still have so many opportunities next year that if I play good golf, everything takes care of itself.”

Playing good golf will take care of everything when it comes down to the crux of the issue. But great golf may not even be rightfully rewarded. Players will have to shoot lower scores since only so many opportunities will be available.

“I’m not numb to the fact that we’re cutting opportunities, right? It’s not something that sits well with me and doesn’t sit well with anyone in any of those discussions, but all these decisions that get made, they’re all not good or bad,” explained Brian Harman, the 2023 Open Champion who sat on the Competitions and Regulations Subcommittee a part of the Player Advisory Council.

“We’re looking at every single kind of pro and con to every piece that moves around and trying to figure out the most equitable, fairest way to have a great product while providing enough playing opportunities for everyone.”

Harman also talked about how he participated in meetings for the better part of eight months, trying to figure out how to better reshape the PGA Tour in the future. It’s also no coincidence that these meetings—and subsequent changes—come on the heels of an investment from the Strategic Sports Group (SSG), a consortium of prominent sports owners and private equity executives.

“These are really hard conversations because I’ve been on every side of that token. I’ve been 100 to 125, I’ve been 70 to 100, I’ve been 1 to 20,” Harman added.

“I understand how all those blocs feel, and for me to have to discuss how that stuff gets moved around, it’s extremely difficult and uncomfortable. But you just look at all of the information that’s presented, and you do your best to make the best possible decision for the most amount of people.”

Harman used the word “optimistic” to describe the general feeling of players about these changes.

“All the talks that we have all been really positive, and everything that we’ve been trying to do, it’s all forward-thinking,” Harman said.

“I mean, who knows? Who knows? We had the data, we look at everything, you do your best, and then you evaluate after times pass; it’s all you can do.”

But the only thing any PGA Tour pro can do is to take after Fleetwood and focus on their game and themselves. Nobody can control what the tour will do.

So, for a player like Griffin, who is not a top star but a solid player, their only option is to follow Fleetwood’s mindset. You have to block out the noise, work, and practice, and if you do that, the results will come, and everything else will take care of itself.

Griffin has leaned on this principle and ignored the commotion, which has helped him immensely in 2024. He has improved his place in the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR) by 30 spots this year alone and has a chance to vault into the Aon Next 10 this week with a strong finish at the RSM Classic. Griffin also has five top-10s, which includes a T-8 at last week’s Butterfield Bermuda Championship. His best finish, funny enough, came at this year’s RBC Canadian Open, where he finished solo second to Robert MacIntyre.

“It’s not worth being for or against any sort of changes,” Griffin added.

“They are what they are, and my goal is just to play as good of golf as possible.”

Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThrough for more golf coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko as well.