In the new PGA Tour event hierarchy, the RBC Canadian Open doesn’t want to be an also-ran.

By: Jason Logan

On the eve of the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup final last week in Atlanta, where the circuit’s 30 leading players gather annually to vie for huge bonus bucks, Jay Monahan gave the most important press conference of his five-year commissionership.

Amid ongoing PGA Tour member departures for LIV Golf, the Saudi-backed series that’s paid stars outlandish sums to play 54-hole, no cut, big-money events, Monahan outlined sweeping changes that will take place this coming season.

The most important revelation was this: the tour’s top-20 players — based not on golf’s world ranking or the FedEx Cup standings, but on the tour’s Player Impact Program — have agreed to play a minimum of 20 events beginning in 2023.

Of those 20, 17 will be required starts — so long as the player qualifies — including: the four majors; the three FedEx Cup playoff events; the Players Championship; the Sentry Tournament of Champions; the Genesis Invitational; the Arnold Palmer Invitational; the WGC Match Play; and the Memorial Tournament.

In addition to those 13 tournaments, the PGA Tour promised to name four more “elevated” events two months after the conclusion of the Tour Championship. The 20 players must then play another three regular-season tournaments of their choosing.

Importantly, this wasn’t the tour mandating a 20-event minimum upon its star members, but rather the players offering to do so to give golf fans what they want: the tour’s best players — or at least its most popular/searched/mentioned/broadcast — competing against each other more often.

The goal is to quell the tide of big-name defections to LIV with the extra riches that these top players are poised to make, the 17 elevated tournaments set to carry an average purse of $20 million (US). It did not entice Cam Smith to stay; he bolted for LIV after leaving Atlanta.

For Canadian golf fans, the big question is whether the RBC Canadian Open will become one of these premier events, thereby ensuring it a deep and top-notch field every year.

“I think Canada deservers to see the sport continue to go from strength to strength,” answered Mary DePaoli, RBC’s chief marketing officer and executive vice-president. “2019 followed by 2022, these were some of the most memorable, and from a strength-of-field standpoint, strongest tournaments on the PGA Tour schedule, and that’s a reflection not only of the support and the commitment that RBC has for the tournament, but also that the fans have brought to this event. So I think Canadian fans deserve to see this tournament continue to go from strength to strength, and we are very much at the table leveraging our voice and our relationships with players and with the PGA Tour to get the most optimal outcome.”

In other words, you bet RBC is trying, and as it did when it was negotiating a new date for the Canadian Open ahead of the 2018-19 season, it brings a lot of muscle to the fight.

RBC is a two-tournament sponsor, having rescued the Heritage event in Hilton Head, S.C., in 2012. Its contracts for both the RBC Canadian Open and the RBC Heritage are set to expire after next year’s events, and it’s now plainly obvious why the bank has not yet announced an extension for either.

Additionally, this year’s RBC Canadian Open proved the perfect elixir for the PGA Tour’s ails. With LIV Golf conducting its first event in London, England, that same week, much of the golf world’s attention was focused abroad and on who had defected from the American circuit, a group that included Dustin Johnson and Graeme McDowell, both of whom were immediately stripped of their RBC shields, signalling RBC’s allegiance to the PGA Tour when other sponsors were slower to cut ties with LIV players or haven’t at all.

Then play began at Toronto’s St. George’s Golf and Country Club and it was everything the PGA Tour could have asked for and more. Rory McIlroy, the tour’s face, bested Tony Finau and Justin Thomas in an awesome Sunday duel that came down to the final hole, to which thousands of fans rushed in a wild scene that had Jim Nantz singing the tournament’s praises to his CBS audience.

That McIlroy won in Canada again also solidified RBC’s relationship with the superstar. It’s therefore likely he’ll be in its corner when the tour is choosing the additional four elevated events and the tour absolutely will consult its top players when making that decision.

Because gone are the days when the PGA Tour largely ignored the importance and history of the Canadian Open, and Canadian Open officials were hopeful, but ultimately accepting, of whatever property it became on the PGA Tour’s monopoly board. RBC is too powerful and spends too much money in golf, not just titling the Canadian Open, but on the RBC Heritage, CP Women’s Open, Team RBC, Team Canada, the Ryder Cup, Women’s Golf Day, its Community Junior Golf Program and the RBC PGA Scramble, to be Baltic Avenue.

This is not to say the RBC Canadian Open is guaranteed to get such status. It’s unknown how many other tournaments are positioned, or inclined, to ante up for the increase in prize money, as RBC is. The tournament’s date, currently following an already-elevated event in the Memorial and preceding another of the 17 in the U.S. Open, may be an issue, but surely RBC and Golf Canada would accept a slight shuffle, although it is limited to June and July by weather and the FedEx Cup playoffs.

And one could argue that RBC is powerful enough to lure top players north of the border even without elevated status, as it has done before. But that means entering a recruiting war with stars who have more leverage than ever. And that means running the risk of being an also-ran.

RBC doesn’t want that, and as DePaoli said, Canada — and Canadian golf fans — deserve more.

RBC Canadian Open deserves elevated event status