The grandstands on the 16th green during finals action of The Honda Classic at the PGA National Resort in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida on Sunday February 27, 2022.
PALM BEACH GARDENS – The glory days of the Honda Classic were as electrifying and as worthy of the national stage as any non-major on the PGA Tour.
Take 2012. A then-record attendance of more than 160,000 witnessed Tiger Woods’ lowest finals score of his career up to that point, a 62 that wasn’t good enough to overtake a 22-year-old hotshot named Rory McIlroy, who was on that one Day he became the youngest to move to world No. 1 since Tiger was there at 21.
Then came 2014. Seven of the top 10 golfers in the world competed on the PGA National’s challenging Jack Nicklaus-designed Champion Course, and four ended in a playoff that was guaranteed to produce a winner whose first name began with the letter “R”. starts.” Russell Henley beat Rory McIlroy, Ryan Palmer and Russell Knox with a birdie on the first playoff hole.
That leads us to 2023. An event struggling to attract a world-class field — a trend that began about four years ago — could (and should) get help from the PGA Tour, which has an opportunity in 2024 to do the right thing because of the nuances of the schedule.
The PGA Tour narrows the list of title sponsors for Honda Classic from 40-50 to around five
Watch them float the Honda in the lake on the 18th green in the PGA National
The Honda Classic will be rebranded next year, with Honda Motors ending its 42-year run as title sponsor, and how better can the PGA Tour show a new sponsor that they genuinely care about the future of the event by ensuring that this run Finished off by its top golfers treating Honda as if it were an alternative event. It’s the least the Tour can do for a tournament that has been successful in every respect.
Although most of the senior golfers have skipped Honda in recent years, largely because of its place on the schedule, attendance has remained consistent in years without a pandemic, and local charities have continued to benefit with record amounts in donations. All of this is thanks to first-year executive director Andrew George and his predecessor Ken Kennerly.
“There’s a lot of things we can’t control,” George said. “But we can control the vibe that we exude here and make sure we continue to be a community event. And that won’t change. It will only get better.”
But viewers also want to see marquee names, particularly ones they might encounter at a local coffee shop, and Honda is among a handful of tournaments to have been squeezed through the Tour when it comes to the schedule. For many golfers, the excuse was valid when high-profile events like the Phoenix Open, Genesis Invitational, Arnold Palmer Invitational, and Players Championship surround an event. Most prefer not to play for five consecutive weeks, and whoever misses the tour pays the price.
But that didn’t make it any easier to digest when, in any given year, about half of the top 20 golfers in the world lived within about 10 miles of PGA National, and very few haven’t bothered to get out of bed lately to roll and take the 20- to 30-minute drive west on PGA Boulevard.
This is where the Tour needs to come in now, helping Honda in 2024 and beyond just as it crushed it in 2023.
Everything indicates that it is moving in this direction.
The schedule could give Honda some relief
PGA Tour Chief Competitions and Tournaments Officer Andy Pazder spoke about the history of Honda and the work that Jack and Barbara Nicklaus put into the event to make it such a success off the court. He said the Tour is looking at the events that pulled the short stick and putting them in “the position to succeed,” and just not in the short term.
“What you would expect over the next year and the years beyond is for the event to take place in a position where it’s not isolated,” Pazder said.
In other words, Pazder and his team are looking for ways to ease the tide of Honda-centric high-profile events, a position the Tour put Honda in when it ranked four Honda-centric events as raising at least $20 million. denoted dollars. Honda’s wallet is $8.4 million.
This year, Honda comes after the Phoenix Open and Genesis Invitational, followed by the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Players Championship. All were granted elevated status in 2022. The top 20 of the Player Impact Program 2022 must participate in the elevated events. You are allowed to skip one during the year.
“They don’t want to have what we have this year,” Kennerly said of Honda’s place on the schedule. “Unfortunately, that’s no use to anyone.”
Honda’s field this year includes four of the top 30 golfers in the current world rankings, which would be the fewest in at least a decade. None of the top 10 will play for the third straight year. From 2013 to 2018, Honda averaged four of the top 10. In the last four years, one top 10 golfer has played against Honda, No. 3 overall Brooks Koepka in 2020.
Watching champions like Sepp Straka (2022) and Keith Mitchell (2019) claim their first PGA Tour win or Matt Jones (2021) lifting a trophy for the first time in seven years are cool, heartwarming stories. But that doesn’t compare to a Justin Thomas (2018) or Rickie Fowler (2017) or Adam Scott (2016) or McIlroy celebrating on the 18th green.
Outside of Honda’s control are those now playing on the LIV Golf Tour. Of the 11 top 50 golfers in the Honda field a year ago, Koepka, Louis Oosthuizen, Joaquin Niemann, Patrick Reed, Matthew Wolf and Lee Westwood have now joined LIV and have been banned from participating in PGA Tour events.
The tour looks at different ways to make changes to strengthen the field. The solution for the next three years could be in the calendar, which includes an extra week before the Masters.
The best result would be if the Tour separated Honda, which begins the Florida swing, from the Genesis Invitational, which marks the end of the West Coast swing. That would allow golfers to play Honda and the upscale Honda-related events without having to pitch five weeks in a row.
“I think the extra week is important for that,” George said. “This is probably the toughest course in golf. They focus on and separate (those high profile events). This extra week will help us.”
Pazder said: “It gives us a bit more flexibility next year.”
Sungjae Im (No. 19), Billy Horschel (19) and Shane Lowry (22) are the top-ranked golfers in this year’s field. Horschel, a Florida native and University of Florida graduate, wants all Florida events to be successful. This is never a problem for The Players and API.
“Not just me,” Horschel said, “but a lot of people live around Jupiter. I know many of you have played Honda Classic before. It’s always nice to play a tournament and sleep in your own bed.
“People around here would love to play it if it was in a slightly different spot.”
Guys like McIlroy who lives in Jupiter and Thomas who now lives in Tequesta. Both have won the tournament but McIlroy has skipped four in a row and Thomas has not joined Honda since 2019. Jupiter’s Dustin Johnson, now part of LIV Golf, has shied away from the Champion Course for years. He played against Honda three times, most recently in 2015.
Sponsors must commit to larger purses
The Tour reassesses how it marks events as elevated. Some will continue to offer $20 million in prize money, while others are not guaranteed. Some might get into a rotation. In all likelihood, the opportunity to be nominated at different times will be offered and it is up to the title sponsor if they are willing to make that investment.
The additional money for tournaments with a prize pool of US$ 20 million will be shared between the sponsor and the tour.
“There are some who are very happy with the state of their event as it is,” said Pazder. “They are happy with their field, they are happy with the financial performance of the event as it generates significant charitable dollars.
“Any conversation about (Honda) becoming a specific event would involve a conversation with the new title sponsor.”
This means the earliest Honda could be considered for elevated event status is 2025, as the Tour is already working on a 2024 schedule and naming a new title sponsor is likely months away.
The difference in fields around elevated events was illustrated this month. The Pebble Beach Pro-Am, a non-elevated event, had three of the top 25 in the world rankings. The two subsequent high-profile events, the Phoenix Open and the Genesis Invitational, had 22 and 23 of the top 25, respectively.
Honda will have three.
While the focus in recent years has been on the unconvincing fields, this hasn’t diminished the popularity and charitable reach of the tournament. In fact, Honda is thriving in every other respect with continued strong attendance, 2022 tournament charitable donations reaching a record $6.45 million, and the largest expansion in tournament history this year with more than 300,000 square feet of hospitality Suites, public seating and dining venues.
The Honda Classic was named the PGA Tour’s Most Fan-First event in 2014 and 2019, awarded to the event for its affordable ticketing options, parking and transportation accessibility, dining options, convenience stations and social media engagement.
Still, George knows tournaments are judged externally on the strength of the field, and he’s hoping next year’s momentum will swing in his tournament’s favor, whatever the name.
“We have companies that want the best field,” George said of potential title sponsors.
“What[the PGA Tour]has been telling us is they want to make sure every event has an opportunity to get the players they want. And we see that as we often speak to them about title sponsorships, there’s positive momentum for that even though we’re not lifted to start.”
This article originally appeared in the Palm Beach Post: The PGA Tour Should Help Honda Classic Win World Class Fields, Tiger, Rory
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