Diluted Honda Classic field first victim of PGA Tour’s revised schedule

The Honda Classic is being played this week for the first time under the PGA Tour’s new schedule and already the negative effects are being felt.

The revamped PGA Tour schedule for 2019 has been rightly praised, but along the way some tournaments were bound to suffer. This week we found the first victim, the Honda Classic.

The Honda Classic begins on Thursday at PGA National in Florida with just six of the top 25 players in the world taking part. Rickie Fowler, Brooks Koepka and defending champion Justin Thomas headline a field that has lost a significant part of its star power this year.

There were 10 players in the top 25 in the field last year and 12 in 2017.

Gone are the likes of Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods, who announced last week he was skipping the Honda to focus on the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill and the Players Championship the next two weeks.

McIlroy and Woods have both played the last two weeks at the Genesis Open and WGC-Mexico Championship

The new schedule is playing a big part in keeping the top players from PGA National this week. This season the tournament falls between Mexico and Bay Hill. The Players Championship, which moves back to a March date for the first time since 2006, is the following week.

Last year the Honda Classic fell the week after the Genesis Open and before Mexico.

Playing all of those tournaments for a player like the 43-year-old Woods would mean playing five weeks in a row.

Woods had a choice to make: skip the Honda or the Valspar Championship beginning on March 21, where he first made it known he was fully healthy again with a runner-up finish last year. Woods made the decision that the Honda, where he’s never won, had to go.

Thomas, who beat Luke List in a sudden-death playoff last year, says the decision on which tournaments to play isn’t an easy one. He also recognizes the dilemma some players were in when deciding to skip this event.

"“It’s a shame because this is such a great stretch of golf tournaments. It’s just not possible for us to play all of them,” he said during his Wednesday press conference.“I know it’s unfortunate for this event. It’s just the time and schedule, it had a lot of people who always play that just can’t play this year. There’s so many great tournaments on the PGA Tour the whole season. We just can’t play all of them.”"

For Thomas, players have to weigh what this tournament means to them with what is best for their own game.

"“At the end of the day, although we have respect to that tournament director, to that tournament, to that course, city, whatever it may be,” he said, “we have to think of ourselves and our body and what is going to produce our best golf.”"

The course itself, in particular the daunting “Bear Trap,” is another factor keeping players away this week.

The Bear Trap, holes 15, 16 and 17 at PGA National, is one of the toughest three-hole stretches players will encounter during the season; last year Woods alone shot 5-over on those three holes in a 12th-place finish.

Tournament organizers have made it slightly easier by shortening the par-3 17th, but all three holes will surely rank amongst the toughest on the course this year.

Honda has sponsored this event every year since 1982, making it the PGA Tour’s longest continuous sponsor. Their deal is up in 2021, however, and unless the tour addresses the problem the tournament is facing one of their stalwart events might fall by the wayside.