There's only one guarantee we know about 'Track 2' events: Lynch
Golf Channel's Eamon Lynch predicts Rory McIlroy will wind up walking back some of his comments Tuesday at Shinnecock Hills where he dismissed the PGA Tour's reported track system as creating "glorified Korn Ferry event(s)."
Video Transcript
We've all covered Rory long enough to know that his opening gambit on any sensitive topic tends to get more nuanced as the weeks go by, and I think he'd probably walk back some of that in the future in the sense that there's a lot of commentary with not a lot of hard information until we get to next week and some of this comes out.
We don't know, for example, if the Canadian Open will be a Track One or a Track Two event.
Calling the Track Two tournaments glorified Korn Ferry, it may not turn out to be inaccurate as a description, but not every town, not every sponsor is gonna have the option of, of Track One.
If you want Rory, you want Scotty, well, give us $20 million.
And if you don't have that, okay, well, here is an alternative along those lines.
So I think it, it's a realignment of dollars and commercial values out there in the sense that the purse of a signature event is $20 million.
A non-signature tour event, 8 to $10 million range, $4 million in the opposite field events.
The reality is Track Two is probably going to be a lot closer to the $4 million reality than the $10 million reality in terms of what people are pa- willing to pay.
But that's palatable for people and tournaments that sponsors who want a PGA Tour event that don't have the option of Tier One.
And, and Rory needs to recognize that Tier Two, or Track Two as they're calling it, may be the only part of the product that Brian Rolapp can actually guarantee.
Because Rolapp wants about 18 Track One events plus four majors.
That's 22 weeks, and he wants that wrapped up by the end of August.
Do you know how many times Rory McIlroy played on the PGA Tour last year between January and August?
11, plus four majors.
So g- Brian Rolapp can't guarantee what Track One is going to look like going forward.
Track Two he can guarantee, because those guys are gonna be hungry and need to play their way out of Track Two into Track One.
So it's maybe a little previous, as Ian Poulter used to say-
