The PGA Tour’s Championship Management division has taken over the running of the Cognizant Classic which this year finds its way to Palm Beach close to the home of many professional golfers in Jupiter, Florida.
With the event going down at the PGA National resort it is one they have a stake in elevating and they seem to have done that with a scheduling tweak.
The Cognizant Classic has been all too missable for the PGA Tour’s best which has seen a lacklustre field drawn to Palm Beach.
Having been moved to the first weekend in March for its final rounds in 2024, there is hope that the field will improve.
Local resident and 2018 champion Justin Thomas was positive about the changes but couldn’t commit to turning out at his ‘home’ event.
Its new position does allow it to dovetail into a run of big events that traditionally draw the best fields all the time.
“I think it’ll help it,” Justin Thomas said.
“Everybody is just so different in how they break the schedule up and how much they’re playing (early in the season).
“It’s tough. But I do think it’ll help the field, especially with how it’s been the last couple of years.”
Thomas notes that he doesn’t really feel the home comforts help him in-tournament as he isn’t as dialled in while staying at home.
“It’s strange being home and being in work mode,” Thomas said. “You wake up, you’re used to kind of doing your thing. We’re obviously practicing, but it’s different than tournament weeks. And it’s the best-case scenario because you’re sleeping in your own bed. But it is weird.
“You’ve played your whole life where every single event you’ve played you’re staying anywhere but your house. So when you’re home, you just kind of disassociate the two. When you’re home you’re not in a competition so sometimes you’re like, ‘Wait, I have to wake up for a tee time tomorrow?’ It’s a strange thing.”
The 2023 field had four of the world’s top 30 players at the time, the fewest in at least a decade. None of the top ten players competed for the third year in a row.
The scheduling was the major cause of the dearth of top talents. It was challenging enough that Honda was the first stop on the Florida Swing, following the Phoenix Open and Genesis Invitational, but last year the circuit raised two events with prizes of at least $20 million before and after Honda, giving every big-name golfer a reason to bypass the Cognizant.
As previously announced following the 2023 tournament, the tour has relaxed the 2024 schedule ahead of the coming season’s event, placing the Mexico Open between the West Coast Swing’s last event (Genesis) and Cognizant.
Difficulty of the course is another factor in player attraction with the PGA National Layout notoriously unforgiving.
“I think from a tour standpoint, they are thinking through a lot about course design, difficulty of the course, all of those elements,” Gaurav Chand, Cognizant’s chief marketing officer, told The Palm Beach Post.
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