In a week, the PGA Tour will start its brand new season in Hawaii. And with that, it will set in motion the controversial 100-player limited field rule. For golfers, the sport has become more challenging. But for Brandel Chamblee, the PGA Tour is calling on its own end.

In what can be called a ‘reality check’ to the PGA Tour, Chamblee writes on his Instagram, “Nobody wants to watch the same players beating the same players every week.” Continuing further, he brings in Tiger Woods (not surprisingly) to cement his views. “All one needs to do is look at Tiger’s win percentage in regular tour events, or majors vs his win percentage in WGC Events to have some ideas.”

Back in his time, Woods won 22% of the time in regular PGA Tour events, which saw fields of 140-plus golfers. At the same time in majors, which roughly had 150 golfers, his win rate dropped to 15.7%. But in the World Golf Championship (WGC), his percentage exploded to 39%. Why? because it was a no-cut event, with roughly 50-60 golfers on the course.

This punctures the idea that concentrating talent would create better competition. Because if that were the case, then a player apart from Woods should have won in the WGCs. But that wasn’t the case. So, the limited-100-player field that the PGA Tour has set in motion from this season, will it actually work? Because if it doesn’t work in terms of talent (which is also the cause of concern for various golfers), it is unlikely to work in terms of fans’ retention as well.

”…Smaller so-called ‘elite fields’ won’t resonate with today’s fans,” Chamblee doubles down in his remarks.

Continuing on Woods’s example, the picture gets clearer.

He won 18 WGC titles, twelve more than the next closest player, Dustin Johnson. From 1999 through 2009, every year Tiger Woods won at least one WGC event. Fans do like seeing a single player dominate, but it turns out not always.

The 2015 WGC-Cadillac Championship drew a rating of 2.2 and 3.3M viewers on NBC. It is indeed a good number, but it was 21% percent down year over year. Then in 2019, the WGC-St Jude Invitational averaged just 1.6 ratings and 2.31 M viewers on CBS, a whopping 30% drop from the previous year.

By 2023, the experiment saw it end. The last WGC Match Play was held that year. The Championship and Invitational had already disappeared by 2021. Created in 1999 by the International Federation of PGA Tours, the event offered money comparable to majors. Yet, it didn’t last. The reason officials gave was scheduling events and the rise of other PGA regular events. But maybe the actual reason was what Brandel Chamblee is saying on his account.

“In today’s parlance, a less meritocratic PGA Tour, all they have to do is have smaller fields and/or no cut events,” he types. “Which would guarantee an apathetic audience because intuitively they will know they are watching an anemic product.”

The PGA Tour’s own history is an example of this. The idea behind its formation was not to protect a set number of people. Rather, it was meant to dismantle the elites. In the early 1980s, only 60 players held full exemptions. Others, which accounted for roughly 200 pros, had to scramble through Monday Qualifiers to earn a spot. Of course, many couldn’t make a living.

But then came the pushback.

Gary McCord, at the 1981 Doral Open, considered this system broken, as he narrated his story on Brandel Chamblee’s podcast a few months back.

The realisation hit him at the 1981 Doral Open. The Monday Qualifiers for that included players with 54 combined PGA Tour wins. He also found out that 76% of Tour players were not able to sustain themselves financially. Eventually, he vouched for a reform which led to the Tour we were seeing till last year – a field of 125 fully exempted players.

Until now.

With a 100-player limited field, the PGA Tour risks looking more like its rival: the LIV. “I would argue that with the PGA Tour reducing the number of exempt players…it risks looking more like LIV than differentiating itself from it,” Chamble wrote in an earlier post on Instagram.

And this is not just his opinion. Because everyone knows how LIV’s viewership has been looking in recent years.

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Viewership numbers back Brandel Chamblee’s warning

Audiences respond to such differences. Through 2025, the PGA Tour Sunday broadcasts on CBS and NBC saw an average of 3.1 M viewers. LIV’s concurrent broadcasts on FOX/FS1/FS2 saw 175k. That’s a laughable gap of 17.78 to 1. And that’s why Chamblee’s ‘warning’ looks more urgent.

The reason behind this is quite simple. The audience is exhausted. The prolonged PGA Tour-LIV conflict, loss of competitions with marquee players divided between the rival leagues, and the growing perception that the Tour is drifting back to its elitist roots.

While the PGA Tour’s viewership has been increasing comparatively, with CBS reporting a 17% jump in average viewership in 2025 and calling it the most-watched season since 2018, the officials need to stay consistent on that. LIV, too, is changing its format to a 72-hole format, which can further pose more competition, something the PGA Tour wouldn’t want.