RBC Canadian Open proving, again, that magic trumps money

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HAMILTON — As the PGA Tour attempts to untangle its war with LIV Golf and calculate its future, the RBC Canadian Open just needs to keep being itself.

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Nobody needs to be reminded that outside of major championships the men’s professional game is a giant mess at the moment. Superstars are split between two tours, the money in the sport doesn’t seem to be tied to any economic reality, and the two sides in the fight appear closer to digging in their heels than sorting anything out.

A couple of years ago, after having many of its top players poached by LIV Golf riches, the PGA Tour seemed to have no choice but to fight fire with fire. So it vastly increased tournament purses by adding a series of limited field, no-cut tournaments called Signature Events.

All of this despite the fact that this moved the tour in a similar direction to the very rival it was decrying as an illegitimate joke. And also despite the fact commissioner Jay Monahan was already on the record saying that if the fight became a war over money, the PGA Tour would lose.

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If you were in the advertising world of Mad Men, or you are up on your internet memes, the saying would be, “Not great, Bob!”

We are now into the second year of signature events and the third year of LIV Golf. And it hasn’t taken long to figure out that bigger money events aren’t the answer.

Shockingly, playing the Travelers Championship or the Wells Fargo Championship for $20 million purses doesn’t automatically get the juices flowing for golf fans. Neither does a limited field of star players when seven of the 14 men to win major championships since 2020 are playing on different tours.

If there is no earth-shattering deal to be made in the near future, the PGA Tour will soon be looking for new answers, and it might find itself looking to lean more heavily into its past.

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History, legacy, permanency, these are things players who chose to stay on the PGA Tour often mention as important to them. They are things that money can’t buy, but things the tour can leverage with fans and with star players (both those star players they want to keep and those they might want to woo back when several LIV contracts are up at year’s end).

This year’s RBC Canadian Open winner will be the 113th name etched on the trophy alongside names including Tiger Woods, Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Sam Snead, Walter Hagen, and, yes, Greg Norman twice.

The record-breaking 28 Canadians in the field also serve as a reminder of what it means to be a national open with open qualifying, especially in these times when LIV Golf and signature events have started to close off the professional game by limiting pathways to promotion. The romance of the game has always been that the Cinderella story is possible, that everyone is equal until the golf balls are in the air.

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“I’ve made it well known what I think of national opens. I think that they’re the oldest championships in our game and I think they’re very, very important,” Rory McIlroy said this week. “I’m very proud of the fact that I’ve won quite a few of them. So, yeah, it’s important to keep coming back.”

Watching Nick Taylor break a 69-year drought and win last year, or watching how desperately Mackenzie Hughes wants to win this year in his hometown, are both far better weapons in any long-term fight against LIV Golf than trying to go dollar-for-dollar with jacked-up purses and stars-only fields.

“The fans are just tired of hearing about it, tired of hearing about the money. I don’t think the money that’s going around is sustainable for golf,” Hughes said earlier this week. “People don’t care. People don’t want to hear it.”

The RBC Canadian Open will never be one of the biggest tournaments on the PGA Tour, but because of the reasons mentioned above — and a little luck of the Northern Irish — it recently has had a knack for hitting above its weight.

And along the way reminding everyone that priceless moments can’t be bought.

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