NEWS: Rory McIlroy Wants Major Championships Spread Out More

One of the biggest stories heading into the 2019 golf season was how the new event schedule was going to work out. While many have been receptive to the idea, some players aren’t the biggest fans of the changes.

Rory McIlroy is one of those players that thinks that the new schedule isn’t good for golf, especially when it comes to fans. The major change that happened was moving the PGA Championship to May so that it would be the second major played. The thought process was that this would allow the event to have more viewership without the competition of the NFL season kicking off with preseason games in August.

But McIlroy has a different opinion, saying that this isn’t good for fan viewership. “If (the major championships) are spaced so closely together, will fans only care from the second week of April to the third week in July?” McIlroy said, via the BBC. “I’d like to see them spaced out like tennis does with the Australian Open in January and the US Open going on now, they’ve a nice nine-month window of relevancy.”

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I think Rory makes a good point here because casual golf fans are more likely to watch majors and an event here and there rather than the entire PGA TOUR schedule. And with the majors so smashed together on the schedule, that means that there’s a large chunk of fans that are only tuning in for two months of the season.

Another issue that McIlroy didn’t bring up was how stressful those months of the season are for players. For example, starting in March and going through July in 2020, All four majors will be played, along with The Players Championship, World Golf Classic Events, as well as the Summer Olympics in Tokyo. That will either leave golfers exhausted or force them to miss some top tier events.

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Now that the schedule has been altered, it will be almost impossible to change it back with courses already chosen for events on the current dates for years in advance. So I wouldn’t expect another change anytime in the near future but McIlroy’s thoughts may end up being correct and something could happen in several years.

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