What’s a major without top golfers? Not appealing. So what does the PGA Tour need to do if it wishes to make The Players Championship a fifth major? It needs to have all the top golfers there, no matter if they compete on LIV Golf or DPWT. At least this is what Dan Rapaport, the host of Dan on Golf, thinks.

“They need to invite the top LIV players. You can’t have a major without Jon Rahm or Bryson DeChambeau. You just can’t. If you want the big ones, you need to beat the best players. You have to invite the best LIV players. You have to invite the best DP World Tour players.”

As Rapaport said, no major can work without the likes of Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, or top DP World Tour stars. Having top golfers in the field will increase the legitimacy of the tournament. The competition would actually be fair, with the best golfers competing, no matter their tours. This is how the actual majors (the Masters, the PGA Championship, the U.S. Open, and the Open) have maintained their credibility: by ensuring every player, across different tours, has a chance to make it there.

With the marketability that Rahm and DeChambeau bring, it’d certainly boost the viewership. That is not to say the PGA Tour is struggling in that particular aspect. Last season, the event saw its rating climb from 3.5 million viewers to 3.6 million, but it was still less than 2023, when Scottie Scheffler won (4.1M viewers). Not to mention, it’d increase the depth of the field rating, likely putting it above the majors, like it did last season.

LIV golfers have faced hurdles at other majors, but now they get OWGR. A move that would fairly help them earn spots in the major fields. Not to mention, it will be quite ironic for The Players, often touted for having the strongest field, to not actually have all the best players in the world, a point Phil Mickelson took note of.

Rapaport also summed up the three immediate changes that the Players need to make to be considered major.

“The Players has all the tools. It has the iconic golf course. It has an electric on-site feel. It’s got huge money, but, for me, those three things—invite non-PGA Tour players, no retroactively giving out majors, and one of the majors then has to go outside of the United States—are too much. Those are musts.”

Meanwhile, the host of the event, TPC Sawgrass, is known for its reputation, with the final stretch forcing the most dramatic playoffs. When it comes to prize money, The Players also boasts a higher reward ($4.5M) for its winner. In comparison, J.J. Spaun picked up the highest earnings from a major win last year with $4.3M.

Now, if the PGA Tour suddenly crowns The Players a fifth major, you don’t have to retroactively tally past wins into players’ major counts. But you probably should, and if you grant retroactive glory to every champ since 1974 (the inception of The Players), you’re simply handing out majors to past champions, repeating what the annual majors did with Sam Snead, Gene Sarazen, and Old Tom Morris, who beat 17 players in 1961 to claim The Open.

On the other hand, Rapaport’s last argument is something that even Lee Westwood would agree with. He even commented on that. There’s already a geographic lopsidedness with three of the four majors hunkered in the U.S., where the biggest earnings for the PGA of America come from. One fix to win over golf fans is to literally hit the road with The Players, if the PGA of America refuses to do it with the PGA Championship, for instance.

The PGA Tour has an incentive to globe-trot, syncing with its peripatetic DP World Tour partnership. In fact, veteran analyst Eamon Lynch proposed a similar solution. Having four majors in the U.S. will be bad for the game.

However, despite such discussions, a particular analyst is all right with The Players being a fifth major.

Brandel Chamblee is on board with taking The Players Championship to a new level

During a live broadcast at the WM Phoenix Open, Brandel Chamblee stated, “What constitutes a major championship? Of course, it’s history and tradition and reverence and all those things… When you look at the Players Championship—with all due respect to the other four major championships—it is the best field in golf.”

Then, added just to perhaps anger Phil Mickelson, “So, in every single way that a metric could be used to measure whether something is a major, the Players, to me, stands alone and above the other four major championships, not just as a major. It is, in my estimation, the best major.”

Mickelson didn’t like that, just as you’d expected.

Since its 1974 debut, The Players has been a PGA Tour staple. Yet despite the Tour’s best efforts, it lingers in the annual majors’ shadow, playing as always the fifth-most important event. Yes, that is despite the same conversation doing the rounds every year as the event nears another edition.

On the other hand, there are only a few people who dispute the importance of The Players. After all, it unfurls Sunday drama routinely, and with water guarding TPC Sawgrass’s 16th, 17th, and 18th, it flaunts one of golf’s most nerve-shredding finishes. But to give it even half of the recognition that, say, the Masters gets, it will have to change.

For starters, the PGA Tour can take into consideration what Dan Rapaport suggested.