In Defence Of The New No-Cut Era

Max Homa has become one of the go-to voices in the game, both for his honesty and humour. He has also developed into a major force, now sitting inside the world's top 10 after five wins on the PGA Tour in the past couple of years.

The 33-year-old has seen all sides of tour life, having made only two cuts in 17 starts in 2017 before turning everything around in some style. He doesn't do corporate speak and he's quickly becoming one of the most popular faces in golf.

So his opinion is a good one to listen to with the news this week that there will be smaller fields and no-cut events in 2024 and a new PGA Tour that will work on two levels.

"I love the new changes. The reason I wanted to join the Player Advisory Council, which is what I'm on now, is because I think I do provide a unique perspective as, you know, in 2017, 2018 I guess I've just seen all kind of levels of professional golf between the Korn Ferry Tour and the PGA Tour.

"And I believed in this back then and I believe in this now. I didn't maybe see exactly what is being done. I'm not quite smart enough to have planned this one out. But the product is important. I think it's easy to frame these changes as a way to put more money in the top players' pockets. But it has been made to make it easier and more fun for the fans. I know it's low-hanging fruit to jump on, Oh, this is just a money grab. This is to make it better for the fans."

What we will hear from the Tour is how much money is going in the players' pockets, something that is more relevant today than ever with the advent of LIV Golf. What that means to the golf fan is next to nothing – see the FedEx Cup for evidence of that – and what do we want is a more entertaining product.

"It is more opportunity for the top players to battle it out late on Sundays. Which, you look back at times of Phil and Tiger, the two best players growing up for me watching, and they had like maybe two real battles. So we're going to have more of that. We just had Scottie and Jon battle it out in Phoenix and that was awesome. Two of the three best players in the world going at it. So I think that's great. I understand the sentiment you brought up about maybe the avenues getting smaller, but the prize is much larger. So I'm not so sure I agree with the kind of negative connotation of that.

"The non-designated events are the same purses with, I mean, on paper, weaker fields. So financially that doesn't change a whole lot. And there's a lot of room for growth throughout that. You can play your way into the designated events and go from playing an event for the exact same amount of money to playing it for significantly more amount of money with a two-week good golf stretch or a win or something like that."

What hasn't been discussed enough is one benefit of these smaller field events - in that the nature of them means that the non-designated events can thrive. Put simply, with only 70-odd players in the big weeks, we will see stronger players having to play in the non-designated weeks.

"I think the part that's frustrating and maybe the part that just simply might be misunderstood is that if we made these fields very large in these designated events it would ruin non-designated events that have been staples of the PGA Tour, that go to cities that people love watching these events with their families. It would ruin them. No-one would play in half of them because it would no longer fit your schedule by any means.

"So I think that the Tour's done a great job of looking into that and seeing that this would be a great number to cut to to make sure that we still have competitive events that are non-designated, while keeping the sponsors and the fans happy with the parity and some of the, you know, maybe not the top 50 big names, but big names. Guys everybody has watched play golf, win golf tournaments and excel at this game still in those fields. So I think that that is an important distinction to make before just jumping on something negative."