The PLAYERS is here and along with the best field in golf, an iconic Sawgrass venue and exhilarating 17th hole comes the annual debate: Should The PLAYERS be called the fifth major.
There are valid cases to be made on both sides of the argument. The PGA Tour’s showcase event ticks most of the measurable boxes. It has the top players in the world and is played on a championship course. The purse of fifteen million dollars is the largest in the game and the tour conducts a championship with all the bells and whistles and usually finishes with a worthy champion.
Naysayers have no patience with those who would christen this the fifth major. A main part of that argument is that it doesn’t have the history of The Open Championship or the U.S. Open and PGA Championship.
After all, the PLAYERS is by far the youngest of those five championships. Started in 1974 by the Tour to showcase their members its pedigree has grown over the decades. And Bobby Jones’ vision of the Masters wasn’t one of a major championship. It just evolved into that due mostly to the sportswriters of the day when golf, boxing horse racing and baseball dominated their columns.
Alan Shipnuck of Golf.com is old school and says four is the magic number. His column focuses on the debate between noted golf journalist John Feinstein and Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee.
All three of them offer plenty of evidence for their arguments with Feinstein the traditionalist who 
dismisses any thought of a fifth major. “The reason Golf Channel and NBC promote the Players as a quote-unquote major is because the Tour pushes them to do it,” says Feinstein. “Golf Channel was in a panic the last few years that they’d lose the broadcast rights to Tour events, so they bent over triple-backward to keep the Tour happy. I was on air for Golf Channel and used the old Jeff Sluman line: ‘When you go to Denny’s and order the Grand Slam, they don’t give you five things, do they?’ The producer in my ear yelled, ‘John, stop! You can’t say that here!’ ”
Chamblee has been converted and wants The PLAYERS to take its place in the Fab Five and give credit to the scribes of the day for The Masters’ place in the core four “They were the myth-makers who swayed public opinion. Rice was a big part of that. So was Henry Longhurst. Herbert Warren 
Wind coined the phrase ‘Amen Corner.’ Dan Jenkins was close to Ben Hogan just as Bob Drum was close to Palmer, so they turned their Masters victories into a big deal. All the writers loved Bobby Jones, and somewhere along the way they collectively decided that the Masters should be a major championship. Now contrast that to the Players, of which some prominent and slightly disgruntled writers are not willing to give its due in part because of their adversarial relationship with the PGA Tour.”
These three esteemed journalists are certainly more well versed in the argument than I. But I am a passionate golf fan and spend more time than I should on all things golf. But this is a relatively easy one for me.
I see The PLAYERS as a great championship and one I look forward to each season. But do we have to name it something other than that? It’s a damn great championship and the players all treat it like a major as far as arranging their schedule to tee it up at Sawgrass.
Shipnuck says it this way, “Alas, some things are immutable: There are four seasons, four Beatles, four horsemen of the apocalypse, and only four major championships.”
I’ll steal the line Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart used when he was deciding what is and what isn’t pornography, “I know it when I see it.”
That’s right, I know it when I see it. I see four major championships and one great PLAYERS.
Let them live together in peace.
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