Why Brandel Chamblee’s audacious majors take is flawed

I have the highest regard for Brandel Chamblee, as a golf person and person person. He is golf’s most engaging TV personality, and as a provocateur Brandel is world-class. Must you really lift your front heel off the ground, as Jones and Hogan and Nicklaus did, at the top of your swing to be enter the golfing pantheon? Recent history says no — but Brandel says yes! And he has the photographs and studies to support it.

If you’re gonna take on Brandel Chamblee, you’d better have your arguments in order.

I wouldn’t want to have to face this guy in a debate, though Paul McGinley, the former European Ryder Cup player and captain, does a superb job of it on Golf Channel. Weirdly, given what’s to follow here, McGinley once argued on live TV that the island-green 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass, annual March home of the Players Championship, is a superb test of golfing skill, even on freakishly windy days. Chamblee said it was too much. I’m guessing if a producer instructed the two gents to adopt the other’s view, they could have argued that side, too. 

With Chamblee and McGinley in the air here, I do feel this next bit of commentary is overdue. Chamblee has often been praised, in this space and elsewhere and appropriately, for having the best (male division) hair in golf, with all due respect to Robert Rock (English pro), Neal Shipley (American pro) and Fred Ridley (American golf administrator). But why have the knots in McGinley’s ties not been given their due? There is nobody in golf who does the Full Windsor better than he. Ronald Reagan would be so pleased.

OK, OK, the preamble is over. Brian Rolapp, newish CEO of the PGA Tour, has figured that the Tour does not own any of golf’s most valuable and vaunted events: the Masters, the Ryder Cup, the British Open, the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship. It does own the Players Championship, which some people still refer to as the TPC (Tournament Players Championship), first played in 1974 on the Stadium Course, which some people still call TPC Sawgrass, its birth name. It would serve Tour interests well for a Players win to be as celebrated as, say, a U.S. Open win.

At the WM Phoenix Open this week, Chamblee said, “The Players, to me, stands alone and above the other four major championships as not just a major, it is in my estimation, the best major.” He’s been going down this road for years. We are all shaped, immeasurably, by our own experiences. Chamblee played in the event 12 times. He has covered it for Golf Channel every year since 2004. The Tour’s contractual relationship with Golf Channel is there for all to see, one that extends to 2030. The network is the Tour’s main Thursday-Friday broadcast partner. Of course Brandel wants to celebrate the Players every which way to Sunday. It’s not that he’s a, quote, company man. For more than two decades now, Chamblee has shown that he thinks for himself. But human nature is human nature.

Chamblee’s most recent Players commentary, new-and-improved for ’26, compliments a new Tour spot for the Players. As my colleague Dylan Dethier noted the other day, the Tour’s new 30-second promotional spot for the Players (March 12-15) concluded with this bit of all-caps poetic hype on your preferred screen: “MARCH IS GOING TO BE MAJOR.” The spot’s soundtrack is from the 2016 electronica club hit, “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” a mindset that nobody associates with tournament golf, unless your name is Tiger Woods and you’re thinking about the weeks leading up to the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, a course that has figured significantly in his prodigy childhood. That’s part of what of what made his playoff win there over Rocco Mediate such an important moment in golf’s lore. You may not have known that, but it’s baked into every story about the event. What that tourney meant to Woods raised its importance to all of us. You want a metric for that? There is none. Sorry.

The PGA Tour player Michael S. Kim had a response (via X) to Dylan’s story about the Tour’s efforts to raise the profile of the Players: “I’d honestly be prouder of winning the Players over the PGA. (As if I get to choose. I know. Haha.)” (Periods inserted by the son of an English teacher.) I don’t doubt the sincerity of Kim’s claim for a second. For starters, last year’s winner of the Players (Rory McIlroy) took home $1 million more than last year’s winner (Scottie Scheffler) of the PGA Championship. But do you think Scheffler would trade titles with McIlroy? Absolutely not. He’s chasing history. Same for every other player you have spent your hard-earned emotion on: Rory; Tiger; Phil; Vijay; Ernie; Seve; Curtis; Watson I; Watson II; Jack; Arnold. Etc., etc.

Now, if you wanted to make the case that men’s pro golf has three Grand Slam events, have at it. (The Masters and the two Opens.) Nicklaus, on his way to the record 18 majors, won the PGA Championship five times, against fields that had 40 or more club pros in them. Woods, among his 15 majors, won four PGA titles, against much deeper fields and (arguably) more demanding golf courses. If you want to cut their PGA Championship titles from their grand totals, be my guest. Nicklaus goes from 18 to 13. Woods goes from 15 to 11. Tom Watson stays at eight — he never won the PGA Championship. Arnold stays pat, too. Seven major titles, no PGAs among them.

But you know why this new accounting, with the PGA off the list and (let’s just say) on the same level as the Players, would never happen? Because none of the previous winners would allow it to happen. Because of the PGA’s storied course history and the golfers who have won on them. Because of our connection to those winners (Hagen, Hogan, Nicklaus, Koepka) and those venues (Pebble, Olympic, Bethpage). I’ve said this before and one of these decades I do believe this idea will get traction: If the PGA wants to really separate itself from the other three majors, it might consider making greater Pebble Beach the event’s annual home: a 54-hole qualifier at Pebble, followed by a two-day 16-player weekend match play event at Cypress Point.

Discuss.

In the meantime, I have one response to Brandel’s statement, that the Players is the first of the five majors:

Have you ever, sir, met a kid on a late summer day on a practice putting green, aim-pointing over a five-footer and saying, “This is for the Players!”

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com