The PGA Tour this week returns to the Blue Monster at Trump National Doral. Last seen a decade ago as host of a World Golf Championship (WGC) event, Doral regularly featured the best players in the world in a limited-field, no-cut event.
Sound familiar?
The 2026 Cadillac Championship is billed as a signature event (essentially the modern equivalent of the WGCs, with slight differences); however, not all the best players on the PGA Tour will be competing. In fact, five of the top 15 players in the Official World Golf Rankings chose not to tee it up because of the busy schedule this time of year. Patrick Cantlay also withdrew due to illness.
Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, Matt Fitzpatrick, Ludvig Åberg and Robert MacIntyre were not among the entries in the field when the list was released last Friday. Instead, they will prepare for the second major championship of the season, the PGA Championship, by playing another signature event, the Truist Championship at Quail Hollow Club.
One player who will not be there? The man who beat everyone else in the world of golf at that golf course a season ago to raise the Wanamaker Trophy: Scottie Scheffler. The world No. 1 has learned from overloading his schedule in the past and has realized an opportunity to win a signature event pales in comparison to properly preparing for a major championship.
“Having three of our biggest events in a row is, depending upon the time of year, if this was a different time of year, maybe I would play all three,” Scheffler said. “But when you have a major championship as the last one, I think that creates a different kind of a different cadence to it.
“Major championships are just the hardest events. When you look at the courses we’re playing for our signature events now, like, I mean, I think it was a couple years ago we did Jack’s place and the US Open back-to-back. I’m like, I physically and mentally, I can’t do this for two weeks in a row. I won Memorial, and I was whipped showing up to the US Open. So that’s kind of how adjusted my schedule. … Mentally it puts more of a like kind of a mental grind on players, just with the amount of people that there is out there.”
Scheffler won’t be in Charlotte, just like McIlroy won’t be in Miami this week. A couple of weeks ago, Scheffler was in Hilton Head, South Carolina, but again, McIlroy was not. Instead, the six-time major champion took the week off following his successful defense at Augusta National.
Who could blame him?
This does leave the PGA Tour in a strange predicament, created entirely by its own doing. By forgoing playing The Sentry at the onset of the year — that golf course was playable, albeit a convenient excuse for the PGA Tour — and adding another signature event at a spot the Mexico Open (now a fall event) used to occupy, the organization has watered down the original essence of the signature event format: the best players on the PGA Tour playing in the same tournaments against one another as much as possible.
“I looked at this period coming up ,and I think something had to give, for sure,” Justin Rose said. “For me, it kind of ended up being the RBC [Heritage], especially what happened after Augusta. I felt like I knew what was coming, I knew what a big run of events were coming, obviously with PGA Championship being on the back of this three. For me, personally, after the Masters, I feel like I needed that week extra to reflect and get the recovery going into this big run of events.
“When you’re having to miss great events to prepare for other great events, it’s not ideal. Obviously, this event was added late in, I guess, the structure of the sort of elevated event structure that we had. This is obviously a new edition, so it had to fall somewhere.”
The problem, in all likelihood, is a this-year problem. PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp and the future competition committee have this section of the calendar earmarked, knowing that their best are actively choosing to skip their most important events to save themselves for the majors that the PGA Tour neither owns nor operates.
It doesn’t take a gastroenterologist to know that doesn’t sit well in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
“I’m sure there’s a group of players and people, the Competition Committee or whatever it’s called, looking at the best practices going forward,” Rose continued. “So I’m sure there’s been a lot of talk about our schedule next year, the year after, whatever it is. I’m sure that this period of time will be refined.”