It’s quite fitting that Brian Rolapp revealed the sweeping new changes coming to the PGA Tour at the Travelers Championship last week.
In the middle of what I consider a stale stretch of non-major Tour tournaments, Rolapp announced a new format and schedule for 2028 at the one venue that always seems to deliver in the summer—TPC River Highlands.
Maybe it’s the fact that all of the tournaments are sandwiched between the major championships, but it feels like once the Tour goes to Texas, it all starts to feel rather monotonous until the end of the season. There are obviously exceptions, whether it’s a great leaderboard or a great course setup, but I often feel like my interest around the Tour is sky-high from late January through the Masters, and then I’m mostly keying in on the major championships and some of the end-of-year tournaments with implications on who keeps their card.
But the Travelers is the exception to that. And that’s not because River Highlands in Cromwell, Connecticut, is some masterpiece of golf architecture. In fact, it’s one of the easiest courses on Tour and certainly not one of my favorite designs (it’s a fun design, though, with some risk-reward holes down the stretch).
What sets the Travelers apart from much of the schedule is almost hard to explain or quantify. It’s a strong combination of sponsor and community support, along with a golf course that doesn’t get in the way.
The players absolutely love the Travelers
This could be an underrated aspect of the general atmosphere around the Travelers every year. The players seem to always have a little extra juice at TPC River Highlands. We see some great celebrations, plenty of fist pumps and many of the world’s greatest players genuinely having a great time while making a ton of birdies.
That’s not necessarily always the norm. We get a lot of dull weeks on the Tour schedule with players seemingly going through the motions.
If you check out some soundbites from the players last week at River Highlands, you’ll hear some of the reasons why. Jason Day, Wyndham Clark, Rickie Fowler, Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland and more praised the Travelers week as one of their favorites of the season. They applauded the tournament sponsors for going above and beyond to make the experience fun and easy for the players, and cited their enjoyment of the course and the large crowds.
Happy and inspired players do make for a better week. It’s clear that the players care about this event. Scottie Scheffler’s fist pump to force a Monday playoff on Sunday night was possibly the most emotion he’s ever shown at a non-major. Were there some external factors causing that? Probably. But this is now an important event on the schedule, and the tens of thousands rooting Scheffler along surely pushed him in the end.
Travelers and community have elevated the event
Most of the credit here has to go to Travelers and the community around the metro Hartfield area. I can’t remember ever hearing about a tournament sponsor as much as the players, fans and media talk about Travelers during the week of the tournament. It’s been the sponsor since 2007 and seems to put everything it has into assuring that it’s a great tournament week. As a result, the Travelers has been given awards like the “best tournament for fans” by USA Today and the “best PGA Tour event” by Newsweek.
Having a dedicated and passionate sponsor may not be talked about enough for Tour events.
I think back to the Honda Classic, which was the sponsor for the South Florida event over four decades. In its prime, the Honda was a fantastic event with a great atmosphere, despite not always drawing the best fields due to its spot on the schedule. But it still managed to draw names like Rory McIlroy fairly often.
Toward the end of its reign, it became apparent that Honda was considering pulling out of the event, and the quality of the tournament seemed to decline along with it—smaller crowds, fewer star players and a worse course setup. The tournament is now called the Cognizant Classic, and it may be one of the weakest regular Tour events on the calendar.
The community around the Travelers is incredible. Cromwell is a small town, but it’s a short drive from Hartford. The metro Hartford population is just over 1 million people, which is not that large compared to many cities the Tour travels to—despite that, the Travelers is almost always the second-most-attended event on the schedule, behind the Phoenix Open.
While the Tour has talked about visiting large markets in the new schedule that haven’t gotten events in a while, hopefully it’s digging into why Connecticut is home to perhaps the most impressive event each year.
How can the Tour replicate the Travelers formula?
I can’t answer this as easily as the Tour hopefully can, as it should have all of the information on ticket sales, revenue and exactly how much effort Travelers puts into the event as the sponsor.
But one thing seems clear: dedicated sponsors. It’s not as easy as it sounds, but finding the right sponsor who will put in the effort to host an incredible event seems to be the magic formula here. We see a revolving door of sponsors at many events, which is probably a good thing if the tournament and sponsor don’t seem to align for a great event.
Valero has been the sponsor for the Texas Open since 2002. It makes sense. The tournament is in San Antonio, Valero’s headquarters. But it just hasn’t worked out. Despite being played on what I consider a strong golf course and featuring some big names every year, it’s one of the least-attended events on the schedule and never seems to have any juice. It may be time to move on.
That leads us to the location of events. Texas (sorry for picking on you) continues to get four regular Tour events each season, and it will add a fifth this year in Austin in the fall. Yet we don’t seem to get many memorable events out of the state. To be fair, none of them have a very favorable slot on the schedule, but it’s probably time to rethink which Texas events should stick and when and where to play them.
Cromwell, Connecticut, should showcase that the right area with golf-starved fans and a community ready to embrace its own Tour event needs to be the priority here instead of just visiting massive markets which may have many other attractions to attend on a weekend.
Either way, hopefully the Tour has understood this formula and is ready to add more electric events to the 2028 calendar like the Travelers Championship.
Top Photo Caption: Viktor Hovland celebrates with fans after winning the Travelers Championship. (GETTY IMAGES/Ben Jared)
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