Masters preview: What's with the new majors schedule?
The first in our series of previews headed into The Masters. A lot has happened in golf since you saw the mobs carrying Tiger Woods to a Tour Championship victory six months ago; let’s discuss it all.
It’s April and golf is in the air! Azaleas blooming, for casual golf fans, evoke the same response as Christmas carols for casual NBA fans or brackets for casual college basketball fans: oh, it’s time to start paying attention now.
The first thing you need to know about this golf season is that it’s unlike any season, schedule-wise, in the last decade-plus. The Masters remains in its customary first-full-week-of-April slot, but beyond that, majors season gets a little odd.
While we usually come out of Masters week knowing we’ve got a good two months till the next major — sorry, The Players Championship — this time around, we’ve only got a few weeks until the PGA Championship tees off in Bethpage, N.Y. That means it’s a major a month from now right on through July — the PGA, then the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach and the Open Championship at Royal Portrush — a sweet run of for-the-ages golf.
Why the schedule change?
Blame the NFL. After years of watching The Shield decimate the PGA Tour’s own marquee event, the FedEx Cup playoffs, the Tour decided that the wisest course of action was a strategic retreat. The playoffs now run through August, conveniently enough ending right before Labor Day weekend and the start of college and pro football.
But crunching the schedule like that put the squeeze on the PGA Championship, traditionally held in August, so the Tour and the PGA of America worked out a deal to move The Players from May to March, and the PGA Championship from August to May, and the Tour Championship from September to August, and then everyone dials into football and starts making their fantasy lineups.
How will this affect The Masters?
Honestly? Not at all. The Masters stays where it’s always been, right there on the cusp of spring, while all around it tournaments scurry hither and yon.
But what this means for the sport as a whole is a lot of sustained momentum, where a player coming out of April with a green jacket can put on a charge for a two-major year in May, where we’ll know within the next three months whether we’ve got some newly minted major winners or whether Tiger and Rory can add to their impressive hauls.
Now you’re up to speed. Let’s roll on up Magnolia Lane and start Masters week.
Other Masters previews:
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.
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