Bad Takes Week: Tear Down the Tour Championship and Relaunch It As a Gambling-Infused TV Spectacle

We have bold ideas for golf we’d like to see happen (even though we know they likely won’t). This is the first in our annual series for “Bad Takes Week,” where we share a brash, thoughtful and possibly harebrained idea and then defend it. (We like to think our first batch of Bad Takes was pretty good last year, but we don’t see any shot clocks or 54-hole fall tournaments yet.) Here’s the first bad idea for 2024. We hope you enjoy it.

In theory the PGA Tour’s season-ending Tour Championship should be a crescendo, the culmination of a thrilling year with an elite field and a handsome payout for a worthy champion. But—can we be honest here?—the event in its current form is malfunctioning. It’s stale, sleepy and utterly forgettable. Fortunately for the PGA Tour, our annual “Bad Takes Week” is here, and I have taken it upon myself to fix it.

Let’s start with a positive: from a prize-money standpoint, the show at East Lake has never been stronger. This year’s Tour Championship dished out bucketloads of cash to the 30 fortunate Tour players. $100 million in total, with $18 million going to this year’s winner, Scottie Scheffler. But while we’re here, a quick check: can you recall one shot Scheffler hit during that event? Did you even remember that he won it? It’s time to rip this thing down to the studs and rebuild. Here’s what we’ll do:

How to Fix the Tour Championship Step 1: A Mixed Field (But Not Just Any Mixed Field)

We can keep the opening FedEx playoff events as-is. It doesn’t matter, as long as 30 players are left standing for the revamped season-ender. But the new field only begins with those 30. We’ll next add the top 30 LPGA players from their season-long Race to the CME Globe. And in the spirit of the upcoming collaboration between the Tour and LIV Golf, we’ll toss in the top 10 LIV golfers from its season-long points list.

We’re still warming up: next we’ll add the top five players from the European Tour, Asian Tour and Sunshine Tour.

That brings the field to 85. To make it an even 100, we’ll draw from a successful project the PGA Tour itself launched earlier this year at East Lake just before the pros to the course: the Creator Classic. But instead of forcing them into a separate, pre-tournament exhibition, we’re dropping 15 of these cellphone-wielding average Joes straight into the main event, and they’re going to play against everyone else for a slice of that $100 million pot, TikToking and YouTubing all along the way.

To give the creators a chance at prizes, there will be payouts for individual holes, front- and back-nines and post-round. Their tee boxes will be based on their handicaps. We’ll still set aside a healthy jackpot, say, $10 million, for the winner. But we want to dish out plenty of cash along the way to keep the tension high, the broadcast riveting and the YouTubers right on the edge of fainting over their wedge shots. We’re off and running, but there’s more to be done.

How to Rebuild the Tour Championship Step 2: A New Venue

East Lake is stately and charming, but each year it produces low scores and, except for that time Tiger Woods won it and did a pied piper impression, few moments that endure. We need a more dramatic venue, and so we’ll shift the event to Shadow Creek, the secluded enclave in Las Vegas that is a popular hang for celebrities and athletes. Tour players also love it—it’s even been chosen to host the upcoming match with Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka. Moving out of Atlanta and into Vegas will make the course itself one of the stars of the show, and because of its setting in Nevada there will be no problem implementing my third and most groundbreaking step toward making the Tour Championship golf’s greatest TV spectacle of the season and possibly of all time:

How to Rebuild the Tour Championship Part 3:  Require all Players to Gamble During Their Rounds

This is why we want cash prizes at every hole along the way: money won will be recycled immediately as players make bets between each other.

And we won’t end there. Because the creators in the field are essentially imposters plugged into the broadcast for our amusement, in addition to watching them sweat out on-course opportunities to win small fortunes, we have for them a special twist: each creator who leaves with a profit must immediately place their entire winnings on a Vegas table game set up at the 19th hole. They can take a spin on the roulette wheel or play a hand of blackjack or roll the dice at craps, as long as everything they just won is on the table. It’s double-up or bust, and it’ll be broadcast live.

In summary, we will make the Tour Championship a 100-player field including top golfers from around the world and 15 hackers with an Instagram following. We’ll move it to Vegas and require players to gamble during their rounds, with TikTokers forced to double-down on a table game before they can log into their savings accounts.

We can continue with the Tour Championship in its current format, where next year another PGA Tour pro will win $18 million, 29 others will enrich themselves just a bit more and everyone will forget it three days later. Or we can relaunch it as the greatest television event in golf history.

Which would you rather watch?

What do you think of our Bad Takes? Got one of your own? Email your feedback (include name and hometown) and we’ll publish the best comments next week.