00:00In the midst of my fury over the ludicrous scoring at the CJ Cup, Byron Nelson,
00:06I did a little bit of sort of hate digging into some stats
00:09and found that over 50 tournaments have been won at 20 under par
00:15or better since the start of the 2023 season.
00:17Now, if you compare that to the amount of tournaments
00:21that have been won at single figures under par, there's only been 10.
00:26Five of those came in majors, so only five non-major competitions
00:31were won at single figures under par.
00:34That, for me, suggests that we've got a problem on our hands.
00:38If there's that many golf tournaments that are being won
00:41at scores of an average of, say, five under at least per round,
00:49we've got an issue there because there's nowhere near as many tournaments
00:53that are being won in terms of challenge at events like Memorial,
01:00the Arnold Palmer.
01:02I think Valero Texas Open had one of the five as well.
01:05But these sort of big boy courses, I suppose,
01:08where you know you're going to be in for a test,
01:10they're holding their own and doing their bit by allowing the course
01:13to challenge the golfers in the way of making them go out
01:17and play to a true test of golf.
01:19But then they turn up another week at courses like the ones we've seen recently
01:23where you're seeing 30 under par, 25 under par, 23 under par win.
01:27And it doesn't seem like there's any sort of continuity throughout the year.
01:31Now, I don't want to see single figures winning every single week.
01:34That would be ludicrous.
01:35But what I'm saying is we do need a better balance.
01:37At the moment, the scales have tipped too far towards being birdie fest,
01:43birdie fest, birdie fest, which is why I said at the start of the week
01:45I think we've got a bit of a birdie fest epidemic on our hands
01:48because if we were to have more of a balance where it was, you know,
01:51occasionally we only have a birdie fest sort of, you know,
01:54players going out and shooting 18, 19, 20, 21 under par to win
01:58every three or four tournaments, that might be more entertaining.
02:01It might be a point of difference,
02:02something that we actually enjoy sitting down and watching.
02:05But this sort of race to the line shootout that we see almost every week
02:09on the PGA Tour is becoming incredibly tedious.
02:12And for me, I think it's something that needs addressing
02:14as we move forwards with the proposed changes into the PGA Tour
02:19next year and beyond.
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