Arnold Palmer champ sides with Chamblee in | Golf News

Russell Henley has sided with Brandel Chamblee in the talk about The Players’ standing as golf’s fifth major championship.

The Players — the PGA Tour’s flagship event that will probably be held at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, next week — induced controversy last month when it launched a social media marketing campaign with the tagline “March is going to be major.”

The video reignited the talk over The Players’ standing in the sport. It has been informally called “the fifth major” in some circles, as it has boasted a discipline stronger than the normal majors over the years. Chamblee led calls for The Players to be acknowledged as a major championship, although the Golf Channel pundit’s view was mocked by a earlier winner of the event in Phil Mickelson.

The 4 majors invite past champions, that means gamers properly past their primes are concerned, and their particular person quirks imply lesser gamers can participate. The PGA Championship’s discipline contains 20 membership professionals, connecting the sport with the grassroots, but it weakens the sector.

The U.S. Open and The Open Championship have open qualifying, that means low-ranked gamers can earn spots if they get sizzling on the correct day. And the Masters discipline is restricted to only around 90 gamers, a significant slice of which is stuffed by past champions

The Players, however, has a discipline of 144 gamers, comprising the top performers on the PGA Tour over the past 12 months. Remaining spots are stuffed by gamers in the top 50 of the world rankings who aren’t PGA Tour members, excluding LIV Golf gamers.

World No. 7 Henley, who defends his Arnold Palmer Invitational title at Bay Hill this week, made clear he’s on Chamblee’s facet in the talk.

“I mean, I think it’s a major. It’s our home tournament,” Henley said. “I don’t know the statistics on like what they say, like best field in golf or whatever, but, I mean, it is. And the history with that tournament? I mean, I’ve always considered that a major in my mind. It’s just such a tricky golf course and it rewards great shots, typically. It visually is very intimidating. I feel like if you have a good week there you’ve done a lot of really good things.

“You look at the past champions and nobody is really, it hasn’t really favored any one player. People typically don’t win it back-to-back, unless you’re Scottie. But it’s a tournament I always look forward to, I love the challenge of it, and it’s one of, yeah, I consider it a major.”

Chamblee was widely mocked when he argued that The Players is just not just worthy of the major label, but it’s the best of all the big occasions in golf.

“In every single way that a metric could be used to measure whether something is a major, the Players, to me, stands alone and above the other four major championships as not just a major. It is, in my estimation, the best major,” he said.

LIV Golf star Mickelson, no stranger to talking his thoughts on social media these days, sought to put Chamblee in his place and end the talk about a event he received in 2007. “I’ve won it. It’s not,” he wrote in response to the case Chamblee made on Golf Channel.