Does The Players Championship Deserve to Be Called a Major?

Those who believe The Players Championship deserves major championship status make the following points:

• It should be considered a major simply because it is, by acclamation, that important as a tournament.

• It's the biggest event staged by the PGA Tour. As a major, it would join majors staged by the USGA, R&A, PGA of America and Augusta National.

• The PGA Tour deserves to have it's "own" major.

• The Players Championship typically has the best field of any tournament played during the year, and it offers the biggest purse of any tournament played. The best field playing for the most money equals major championship.

• The number of and identity of the majors on the Champions Tour and LPGA Tour have changed through the years, and those tours survived the changes just fine. Adding a fifth major to the PGA Tour won't hurt anything.

• The Players Championship deserves official status as a major because increasing numbers of players, fans and media treat it as a major.

Those who oppose the idea of officially recognizing The Players Championship as a major make the following points:

• Golf is a game of traditions, and one of the most important traditions is having four majors, not five.

• Not every tournament can be called a major. Just because there are four majors doesn't mean that the fifth-best tournament - the most important tournament outside of the four majors - deserves to be bumped up in category.

• If The Players Championship becomes the fifth major, then how long will it be before another tournament starts clamoring to be the sixth major? If there can be five majors, then why not six? Or seven or eight?

• Adding a fifth major throws out of whack all the historical stats, such as major championships won, and changes how players of today and yesterday are judged.

• If The Players Championship is a major, then how are past champions dealt with? Is the winner from 1977 or 1983 now considered a major champion? Or only those winners of the event after it has achieved "official" status as a major?

• Declaring a fifth major simply opens up too many cans of worms, detractors say, and tampers with time-honored traditions of golf.

Where this issue stands is in a sort of limbo: The Players Championship is without question more important than any other tournament on the PGA Tour, outside of the four majors. But it's not as important as the four majors - not yet, anyway.

But some players have started treating The Players Championship as a major. Phil Mickelson, in 2005, skipped the preceding week's tournament to apply his major-championship preparatory routine to The Players. Other golfers who like to take the week before a major off - Tiger Woods, for example - don't do that for The Players Championship.

So the status as of this writing is that the debate continues. It may intensify beginning in 2007, when The Players Championship moves from its usual March date to a new date in May, the only month from April through August that does not currently have a major championship in it.

Poll
What do you think: Will The Players Championship ever achieve major championship status?

Post Your Opinions
What are your feelings about this issue? Share your viewpoint in our Golf Forums.