AUSTIN, Texas — It was not all that way back — Tom Kim, in spite of everything, is simply 20 years outdated — however earlier than Kim emerged as one of many PGA Tour’s wunderkinds-in-progress, he would watch the World Golf Championships.
“For positive, 100%,” Kim cheerfully reminisced as he clacked alongside this week at Austin Nation Membership, the positioning of the championships’ match play occasion. “There was W.G.C. in China. There was Firestone earlier than. You had Doral. You had this.”
Had, as a result of as soon as one man wins on Sunday, the championships seem poised to fade away. An elite competitors solid, partially, due to one other period’s tumult has change into a casualty of this one’s.
“Every little thing runs its course and has its time,” mentioned Adam Scott, who has twice gained W.G.C. occasions. Barring a resuscitation, which appears unbelievable given the PGA Tour’s enterprise technique lately, the W.G.C.’s time was 24 years.
The W.G.C. circuit was decaying earlier than LIV Golf, the Greg Norman-fronted league that’s cumulatively showering gamers with a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of {dollars} from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, cleaved males’s skilled golf final 12 months. Two W.G.C. occasions vanished after their 2021 iterations, and a 3rd, all the time staged in China, has not been contested since 2019 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
And because the PGA Tour has redesigned its mannequin to decrease LIV’s attraction, even the Texas capital’s beloved match play competitors has change into weak to contractual bickering and shifting priorities.
“We’ve had nice occasions and nice champions, however the enterprise evolves and it adapts,” Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, mentioned this month, when the tour strengthened its choice to wager its future on “designated occasions” that ought to command elite fields and, in some instances starting subsequent 12 months, be no-cut tournaments capped at 80 gamers or much less. (LIV, whose tournaments all the time have 48-man fields and no cuts, responded with a wry tweet: “Imitation is the best type of flattery. Congratulations PGA Tour. Welcome to the long run.”)
With a $20 million purse, doubled in measurement from 5 years in the past, the match play competitors that started on Wednesday is a chosen occasion beneath the 2023 mannequin. Subsequent 12 months, although, it won’t be on the calendar in any respect, winnowing the W.G.C. to at least one competitors. And Monahan has mentioned it might be “troublesome to foresee” when his circuit’s schedule would possibly once more embrace the HSBC Champions, the W.G.C. occasion in China that would be the final remaining occasion formally present within the collection.
The Chinese language match’s web site has had few updates lately, and an inquiry with the occasion’s organizers went unanswered. HSBC, the British banking powerhouse that’s the match’s title sponsor, declined to remark.
However the PGA Tour’s freshly calibrated distance from the Shanghai competitors is fueling what appears to be an unceremonious finish for the W.G.C., which had been introduced to immense fanfare in 1997, when the tour and its allies had been smarting over Norman’s failed quest to start out a worldwide circuit for the game’s best gamers. The occasions, which debuted in 1999 with a match play occasion that despatched a few of the sport’s greatest dwelling after the primary day, had been meant to entice and reward the elite with out difficult the status of the 4 main tournaments, in addition to to present males’s skilled golf a better international footprint.
It labored for a spell, and 5 continents hosted W.G.C. occasions, a lot of which Tiger Woods dominated. Except for the Chinese language match, although, the circuit had these days been performed in North America.
“The ‘world’ a part of the World Golf Championships wasn’t actually in there,” Rory McIlroy, the four-time main match winner whose W.G.C. résumé features a victory within the 2015 match play occasion, mused in an interview by the apply placing inexperienced.
McIlroy, among the many architects of the tour’s reimagining as Norman’s unfinished ambitions proved extra fruitful this time round, mentioned he had additionally anxious that the W.G.C. occasions had come to lack “any actual that means,” at the same time as they’d been “beautiful to be part of, good to play in and good to win.” The tour’s emphasis on choose tournaments, many executives and prime gamers like McIlroy consider, will lend extra consequence to its season and make it a extra interesting, decipherable and concentrated product that may fend off the assault by a LIV circuit bent on simplifying — its critics say diluting — skilled golf.
“Your informal golf fan is aware of the majors, the Ryder Cup and perhaps the occasions which are near their hometown,” mentioned McIlroy, who’s among the many gamers devising a brand new weeknight golf competitors that’s anticipated to start out subsequent 12 months. “I get it: Skilled golf is a really saturated market with a ton of stuff happening, and folks have restricted time to look at what they wish to watch.”
The Austin match’s finish will, no less than for now, cut back match play alternatives on the circuits which have been aligned with the W.G.C. Although the Austin occasion — which has three days of group-stage play, adopted by single-elimination rounds — has a area of solely 64 gamers, lower than half of the dimensions of final 12 months’s British Open, it has been bigger and extra accessible than different signature match play tournaments.
However given the format’s recognition, it should linger, if rather less, on the worldwide golf scene. The Presidents Cup, Ryder Cup and Solheim Cup will stay fixtures — the Solheim will probably be contested in Spain in September, with the Ryder determined quickly after in Italy — and extra modest occasions, such because the Worldwide Crown girls’s match that will probably be performed in Could, nonetheless dot the calendar.
Some gamers this week appeared extra mournful than others concerning the erosion of the W.G.C. and the decline of match play. Scott mentioned he hoped the tour’s new system would be capable to accommodate the following era of ready-for-stardom gamers from world wide, because the W.G.C. did, at the same time as he mentioned he was not insistent that match play be a staple.
“We don’t play a lot match play, so the type of logic in me questions its place in professional golf, but in addition we’ve obtained to entertain as nicely, and if individuals prefer to see it and sponsors wish to see it, yep, I’m up for it,” Scott mentioned.
He grinned.
“Possibly we must always have some extra, get a bit extra head-to-head and see if guys like one another a lot after,” he provided mischievously. “The 12 months of match play!”
The PGA Tour has not dominated out a return to the format, although it might assuredly be restricted. LIV might additionally ultimately attempt to faucet into curiosity. At an occasion in Arizona final week, Phil Mickelson, a LIV crew captain, mentioned that match play was “actually one thing that we’re discussing as a chance for the season-ending occasion.”
However the W.G.C. seem successfully completed. Kim, the youngest participant this week, was delighted that he had arrived simply in time.
“I performed as soon as earlier than all of it goes away,” mentioned Kim, who has six top-10 finishes in his early tour profession and expressed confidence within the circuit’s course. “I performed as soon as in my life.”
He wandered off to apply. A spherical towards Scottie Scheffler, the reigning match play champion and the No. 1 participant within the Official World Golf Rating, loomed quickly sufficient.
Supply: NY Times