Chamblee’s Players Championship Take Reveals a Deeper Truth About Modern Golf’s Identity Crisis
Look, I’ve been around this game long enough to know when somebody says something genuinely provocative versus when they’re just throwing elbows for attention. Brandel Chamblee’s recent claim that The Players Championship carries more weight than the four majors? That’s the former—and it’s actually worth taking seriously, even if Phil Mickelson’s two-word rebuttal captured what most traditionalists are thinking.
Here’s what strikes me after 35 years covering professional golf: Chamblee isn’t entirely wrong, and he’s not entirely right either. But the fact that we’re having this conversation at all tells us something important about where the sport is headed.
The Case Chamblee Didn’t Quite Make
When the PGA Tour dropped that trailer with the tagline “March is going to be major,” they were threading a needle they’ve been working on for years. The Players has evolved into something genuinely unique—it’s the tour’s flagship event, played on arguably the most challenging course in professional golf, with the strongest field you’ll see outside of the majors themselves. There’s legitimacy to calling it an unofficial fifth major.
But let’s be honest: saying it’s bigger than the Masters, U.S. Open, Open Championship, and PGA Championship? That’s where Chamblee loses me, and where he lost Phil Mickelson too.
“I’ve won it. It’s not,” Mickelson posted on X.
Now, I’ve got to give Mickelson credit for the concision. The man won The Players in 2007—one of only two top-five finishes in 28 appearances at TPC Sawgrass—and he knows what victory tastes like across golf’s different tournaments. His record there was actually pretty mediocre by his standards, which makes his bluntness even more meaningful. He’s not dismissing the tournament; he’s just being factual about its place in the hierarchy.
What’s interesting is that Mickelson didn’t always feel that way. In 2007, right after his win, he suggested something close to Chamblee’s position: “I don’t know exactly today, but I think as I look back on my career after I stop playing, I think I’ll look back on this tournament victory in the same light as the majors.”
That’s not the same as saying it IS bigger than the majors, but it shows how seductive The Players’ narrative can be in the moment.
What’s Really Happening Here
In my experience caddying for Tom Lehman back in the ’90s and covering the tour ever since, I’ve watched the PGA Tour struggle with an identity question: How do you maintain relevance when the majors—especially the Masters—have become the gravitational center of professional golf?
The answer the tour has landed on is to make The Players feel major-adjacent. Make it prestigious. Make it exclusive. Make the media talk about whether it should be a major. And you know what? To a certain degree, it’s working. The Players has genuine allure. The course is a character in the tournament. The field is packed with the best players in the world. The drama is real.
But here’s where I think the tour might be getting ahead of itself: majors carry weight because of history, institutional gravitas, and the simple fact that winning one changes your legacy in a way that nothing else does. When Tiger won the 2019 Masters, it wasn’t just a victory—it was a redemption story that transcended golf. When Phil won the 2021 PGA Championship at 50 years old, it rewrote the narrative of his entire career in a way that no Players Championship victory ever could.
The Players, for all its excellence, doesn’t have that gravitational pull. And you know what? That’s okay.
The Real Issue Underneath
What puzzles me more than Chamblee’s claim is why the tour feels the need to make this argument at all. Lee Westwood picked up on this too, expressing confusion about where Chamblee was coming from. And I understand that reaction.
The Players Championship is fantastic exactly as it is: the best non-major event in professional golf. It’s where the tour says, “This is who we are. This is our signature event.” That’s powerful. That’s meaningful. That doesn’t require it to be positioned as something it’s not.
I think what’s happening is that the PGA Tour is still adjusting to a landscape where LIV Golf exists, where the majors have become more dominant, and where players are making choices about which tournaments matter to them in new ways. The tour wants The Players to feel essential, and sometimes that desperation shows.
The good news? The tournament itself doesn’t need the hype. TPC Sawgrass will continue to produce compelling golf, dramatic moments, and memorable champions. That’s been true for decades, and it will remain true whether Brandel Chamblee’s take gains traction or becomes a footnote in golf trivia.
What matters is that the tour has a tournament worth defending and celebrating. They don’t need to oversell it by comparing it to the majors. The Players Championship deserves better than that kind of argument—and so does the conversation about where it actually belongs in golf’s hierarchy.
