Column: The American Express winning over some non-believers with strong field, great energy
“After the tournament, I’m totally sold,” one email said. “Great leaderboard, but the energy, especially with the grandstands around 17 and 18 and the crowds, was fantastic. Field was good, too.”
In the hours and days after The American Express PGA Tour event concluded in La Quinta, with Jon Rahm as an impressive winner in a horserace Sunday afternoon, several non-believers in the tournament reached out and said they had become believers.
“That tournament has deserved what it got in the past,” one caller said. “But now I think they have it figured out.”
Let’s not go crazy here. The American Express isn’t going to be confused for a major championship just yet, or even some of the designated tournaments the PGA Tour is promoting this year. But as the callers and the emailers pointed out, The American Express is moving up on the PGA Tour ladder, and that’s a great thing for golf fans in the Coachella Valley.
Some things about The American Express last week can’t be ignored. The PGA Tour’s own metrics say the field of last week’s event was the best for the tournament since the turn of the century. Two of the top players in the field finished first and third, Jon Rahm and Xander Schauffele, respectively. Highly ranked Scottie Scheffler, Sam Burns, Tony Finau and Tom Kim were all in the mix as well.
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Schauffele specifically said that it is American Express and its influence on upgrading the tournament that makes a player more comfortable coming to La Qunita. Fans often forget that golfers can be considered customers of the PGA Tour and the sponsor of the event. If the customer isn’t satisfied with the way they are treated, then the customer won’t be back. For golfers, how a tournament looks and feels and is conducted makes a difference, and right now PGA Tour players like what American Express is offering.
More than a few people have questioned why a golf tournament needs a concert to get people interested. That’s a fair argument, but over the last six years – with the exception of the COVID-19 year of 2021 – the concert series at The American Express has become a strong addition to the event. By the time October rolls around, fans are asking who will be playing on the PGA Tour driving range. Maybe those people are dedicated golf fans and maybe they are just music fans. But the concerts have been an addition.
Plenty of reasons to play
To be sure, there are still reasons The American Express might not be at the top of a potential player’s list. Some European golfers are still going to play in Abu Dhabi and Dubai in January, and that’s fine. Some golfers are never going to be sold on playing in a pro-am format, believing that the professionals shouldn’t be hampered by amateurs during rounds that count toward the pro’s money. Again, that has been true for decades, with some golfers just skipping the desert.
But the desert tournament is improving, and the players recognize it. The pro-am, once a place for desert golfers from local country clubs, is now a corporate pro-am bringing people from around the world to play in La Quinta. Toss in great weather, good conditions on golf courses and a friendly spot on the current PGA Tour schedule, and you wonder why a PGA Tour player would want to skip the desert.
It’s 51 weeks before the next The American Express tournament, and who knows exactly what the PGA Tour will look like then. LIV lawsuits and player defections might still exist in January of 2024, and you never know what the tour schedule will look like. For now, the PGA Tour, American Express and the folks at SportFive, the management company running the event, should be very happy with what happened in the Coachella Valley last week.
The PGA Tour is full of ebbs and flows, and right now The American Express is moving forward. As one emailer said, why would the better players not want to play in the tournament. Whatever the case, the tournament is making some believers out of people who didn’t believe in the tournament just five or six years ago.
Larry Bohannan is the golf writer for The Desert Sun. You can contact him at (760) 778-4633 or at larry.bohannan@desertsun.com. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter at @larry_bohannan. Support local journalism. Subscribe to The Desert Sun.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: American Express: Golf tournament winning over some non-believers with strong field, great energy
