Will The Players Championship be the fifth major?

Now that the PGA Tour 2026 season is well under way, the Tour’s first TV spot promoting The Players Championship ends with “March is going to be major.” The Players is March 12-15.

That not-too-subtle ad line has rekindled a controversy and debate which has been going on for years – whether The Players Championship should be golf’s fifth major. Gary Van Sickle, writing for the firstcall@substack.com, Feb. 18, offered that putting “The Players” in the same sentence with “fifth major” is “the First Big Step toward acceptance.”

The four big men’s pro golf majors, as we know them today, was the brainchild of revered golf writer Herbert Warren Wind more than 65 years ago. They are the Masters, U.S. Open, PGA Championship and the Open Championship (British Open).

Actually, we had six majors in the mid-1900s, as the U.S. Amateur and the British Amateur were considered majors, and before that, the Western Open as well as the North-South Amateur were majors. When Bobby Jones won the “grand slam” in 1930, generating a ticker-tape parade in New York City, it was the U.S. and British Opens and Amateurs.

Note, by winning the 2025 Masters. Rory McIlroy joined Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Ben Hogan. and Gene Sarazen as the sixth golfer to win the modern grand slam. Still, golf in the post-modern era has stuck with the four current majors, mostly because they evolved that way. There is no single ruling body for professional golf.

We need to understand that the PGA Tour has a significant vested interest in seeing that The Players becomes a fifth major. Right now, the PGA tour doesn’t control any of the major tournaments.

Augusta National Golf Club does the Masters (dating to 1934); the USGA does the U.S. Open (dating to 1895): the PGA of America does the PGA Championship (dating to 1916); and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club (R&A) does the Open Championship (British Open).

Major golf championships are all about prestige and tradition. Also, majors are played on highly respected golf courses that are typically more difficult than those where regular tournaments are played.  

Over the years I have had the pleasure of playing a number of golf courses where majors have been played, including Cherry Hills (Denver), Inverness (Toledo), Torrey Pines (San Diego), Pinehurst No. 2 (North Carolina), Oakland Hills (Detroit), Cedar Crest (Dallas), Firestone (Akron).

In the mid-1970s, I was a member at Birmingham Country Club in suburban Detroit, where the 1953 PGA Championship was held. It was (and still is) a beautiful and challenging course, but it never could be lengthened, and so 1953 became the final major there.

The Players Championship was conceived by PGA Commissioner Dean Beaman, with the inaugural event in 1974 played at Atlanta Country Club in Marietta, Georgia on Labor Day weekend in September. It moved to Colonial Country Club in Ft. Worth in 1975, and then to south Florida in 1976, at Inverrary Country Club in late February.

In 1976 The PGA Tour agreed to a multi-year deal to play the event up the coast at Sawgrass Country Club in Ponte Vedra Beach (the current home of the PGA Tour) in March 1977 up through 1981. Since 1982 it has been played at the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, designed by Pete Dye.  

The word “Tournament” was dropped from the title following the event in 1987. From the very first playing at the Stadium Course the single compelling hole was the par-3 17th with the island green. The design was the result of the urging by Pete’s wife Alice Dye. It has always been a TV and fan favorite. From its inception, the 17th hole has led to numerous cases of the “joy of victory and agony of defeat.”

It’s not that the idea of The Players becoming the fifth major hasn’t been bantered about previously, but the PGA Tour has not exactly promoted that. Until now. Until the Tour’s new CEO Brian Rolapp took over in late 2025.

Rolapp is fresh from spending every waking moment devising ways for the NFL to take over every day of the week around the globe. One of the first things he noticed was that there were four golf majors and the PGA Tour didn’t control any of them.

He could acquire (i.e. buy) one, leave it alone or create one, The Players. For the latter, the case can be made that The Players does have a stronger, deeper player field than any of the current majors (more top 100 OGWR players), and going back to mid-twentieth century, four majors has not always been a sacred number.

But to make The Players a major it might require that the venue it is contested on change to a more global stage every other year. There are a lot of factors to sort out.

Eamon Lynch, writing for Golfweek (Feb. 8, 2026) states: “Like so much else being considered these days in Ponte Vedra (by the Tour), it’s tough to balance tradition, fan enthusiasm, cost effectiveness, revenue generation, investor returns, player entitlement and obligations to the broader golf ecosystem.”

Then there’s the question, “What happens if The Players does become the fifth major?

Record books would need to be re-written for some back-door major status. Nicklaus won three Players, so he’d have 21; Woods won two, so he gets bumped up to 17.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Due to the fact that Brian Rolapp seems to have a firm grasp on what is needed to propel the PGA Tour upward, despite stiff competition from other professional sports leagues, and despite the LIV tour, my personal sense is that The Players Championship will indeed become the fifth major, and probably sooner rather than later.