New World Order: Not majors, but the next best thing

Sure, subjectivity can be a maddening thing.
Politicos deliver news these days with spin, pundits have personal agendas and media outlets increasingly cater to the particular bent of their audience. Hey, you think it's a coincidence that Rush Limbaugh is a marketing centerpiece on the Golf Channel? Chubby, right-wing rich guys who can't break 80 represent the network's biggest demographic.
This week's New World Order list is stilted, of course, but there's no endorsement overlap, no predisposition or bias. Just plain, unfettered, unfiltered nonsense from somebody who has attended each of the TaylorMade Burner SuperFast TP Driver
included on the perceived pecking order presented.
The subject this week has grown increasingly topical over the past two months, especially as the fields of the Accenture Match Play and Players Championship have evolved. To wit: Outside of the game's four major championships, it's gotten a bit tougher to immediately identify the fifth-most important event in golf.
Purely for practical reasons, we'll limit the discussion parameters to U.S.-based events, because, while the European Tour's flagship BMW tournament at Wentworth and season-ending Dubai World Championship would almost certainly surely qualify for inclusion, I've never attended either.
So, beyond the Grand Slam, as the PGA Tour heads into a talent-laden week at historic Riviera Country Club, here's the honor roll of the next-best events in the Lower 48, along with an explanation of their merits and liabilities based on first-hand impressions.
It's not an attempt to categorize the biggest, just the best of the rest -- with no massaging or marketing message. Sure, it's like being an English teacher grading essays on a curve, when the right answers are hard to identify, much less quantify, but that's half the fun of TaylorMade Burner SuperFast TP Driver
.
In other words, sometimes, you just plain recognize quality when you see it.
Players Championship, Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.
The signature event of the U.S. circuit, staged about 500 yards from PGA Tour headquarters, has taken some hits in the past few weeks in that two top 10 players, Lee Westwood and Rory McIlroy, have announced that they plan to sit it out this year.
It won't matter much. When all the various elements are calculated, there's not much doubt that the home fires burning at TPC Sawgrass still smoke the rest.
"What is globally known as the fifth major?" Ian Poulter said Wednesday morning on the Golf Channel when asked to handicap the biggest stops after the majors. "It's TPC."
Westwood rather famously disagreed last spring.
"Since the invention of the World Golf Championships, I think it's actually stepped back from that," he said. "They have to go in now before the Players Championship. So what is TaylorMade Burner SuperFast TP Driver
, eighth on the list now?"
Not even close. The game's numero uno should recognize the No. 1 tourney outside the majors easily enough, for a defining variety of reasons.
Unlike the four WGC events, Sawgrass features a full field that's as deep as any all year. It offers the year's biggest purse, not that money impacts the quality in the eyes of the public. The tournament draws a huge throng annually, both for the golf and as a social outlet. The Pete Dye course isn't everybody favorite, but there is no more democratic layout on tour -- everybody from plinkers like Fred Funk to bombers like Henrik Stenson have won over the past few years. Now that it's staged in May, the weather hasn't been as much of an issue.
What else is there? Probably the biggest reason it isn't universally trumpeted as the fifth-most important TaylorMade Burner SuperFast TP Driver
is because the tour, for years, foisted that phrase down the throats of the press and public in an attempt to legitimize the tournament's stature.
No need.