What can golf fans expect for PGA Tour's The American Express in 2024
The PGA Tour will release its schedule for the rest of 2023 and all of the FedEx Cup schedule for 2024 in the coming weeks, though the release of that schedule always comes well after details of the pending season have been leaked.
One of the not-so-secret details of the 2024 schedule will be The American Express tournament in La Quinta will be played the third weekend of the new year. That’s a spot the desert’s PGA Tour event has occupied for nearly two decades, with the PGA Tour happy with the way the seven-event West Coast swing kicks off the calendar year.
Here are a few other things we can be assured about when The American Express is played for the 65th time in the Coachella Valley:
The obvious dates locally
American Express officials have known for months that their dates for 2024 will be the third week of the new season, the week of Jan. 15-21. That will be confirmed when the tour releases its schedule for 2024 in the coming weeks, but there won’t be any surprises for the desert.
The event will not be “designated”
The 2023 season has been the first year of the PGA Tour’s so-called designated events, where all the top players were expected to gather to provide fans with bigger events and more head-to-head confrontations among the game’s elites. The American Express was not one of those tournaments this year, and it won’t be one of those events next year. The Waste Management Phoenix Open was designated on the West Coast in 2023 (along with the Sentry Tournament of Champions in Hawaii and the Genesis Invitational in Los Angeles), and talk has been that the AT&T Pebble Beach tournament will be designated in 2024. That could cause major changes to the AT&T’s pro-am format and multi-course rotation.
Don’t expect LIV players anytime soon
Part of the framework agreement between the PGA Tour and the PIF is that golfers who left the PGA Tour and in many cases resigned their membership will have to go through some kind of disciplinary process to return to the PGA Tour. Whatever that discipline is, fines or suspensions or limited tournament appearances, it seems likely nothing would let current LIV players to be restored soon enough to play in The American Express in 2024 in January. That assumes they want to come to the tour, of course. So don't expect past American Express champions Phil Mickelson, Patrick Reed or Hudson Swafford in La Quinta in January. Three of the four major championship winners in 2023 (Jon Rahm, Wyndam Clark and Brian Harman) have at least a better than average chance of playing in The American Express, but PGA champion Brooks Koepka might not be eligible in January because of his LIV ties. And Koepka has only played in the desert once, anyway.
No significant format changes
Back in 2012, the desert’s PGA Tour event underwent significant changes, going from five days to four, four courses to three, eliminating celebrity players and finding a new sponsor in Humana. In 2016, the tournament saw golf course changes, with the Pete Dye Stadium Course and Nicklaus Tournament Course at PGA West added to the rotation. Since then, the tournament has been pretty stable, with the same three courses and the same format of 156 pros and 156 amateurs each year. Pat McCabe, executive director of The American Express, said that will indeed be the format for 2024, and probably for years to come.
The bands will be just as good
No, it won’t be Taylor Swift playing at the driving range of PGA West for one of the two concerts as part of the concert series for the tournament. With concerts still set for Friday and Saturday, the tournament is comfortable with crowds of 12,000 to 15,000 each night. Expect similar acts at the event in 2024 as the acts from 2023, which were Gwen Stefani and Darius Rucker.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: PGA Tour: 2024 American Express and what can golf fans expect
