Stars like Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas must step play up after PGA Tour signature events stagnated in 2024

The 2024 PGA Tour season marked the second year of signature events being a featured part of the league. Introduced as a way to pit the Tour’s best players against one another on a more consistent basis — all while filling their pockets with guaranteed money as a means of fending off the LIV Golf threat — the signature events got off to a roaring start in its initial go around but hit a wall this last year.

In 2023, the “designated events” lived up to the billing. Jon Rahm and Scottie Scheffler were among the early winners, but there were also feel-good stories like Kurt Kitayama emerging from a star-studded leaderboard at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Sam Burns, Matt Fitzpatrick, Wyndham Clark and Viktor Hovland all reigned supreme on the biggest stages on the PGA Tour before the series came to an eventful end at the Travelers Championship where Keegan Bradley won. Of the nine tournaments played — now trimmed to eight — only Rahm raised more than one trophy.

The parity appeared to trickle into the new season as a smorgasbord of names entered the winner’s circle during the winter months. Chris Kirk claimed the opening crown at The Sentry before Clark won a shortened AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and Hideki Matsuyama made his presence known at the Genesis Invitational.

The simple fact is that Scheffler did so much winning — frankly, in a dominant fashion — that it tamped down excitement the signature events were supposed to create. The PGA Tour now finds itself in between a rock and a hard place — stars play in all of the same tournaments, but none of the stars are winning them.

Scheffler is not going anywhere in 2025 — heck, he may be even better entering a full season with an adequate game plan on the greens — but the rest of the game’s big names need to step up.

The PGA Tour cannot control what happens in between the ropes, of course, but they need their star players to play … like stars. Jordan Spieth, for example, has two wins since the beginning of 2018 and none the last two years. Justin Thomas doesn’t have a win since the 2022 PGA Championship. Patrick Cantlay is without a trophy since the summer of 2022.