How congested PGA Tour schedule is eroding entire concept behind signature events

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The PGA Tour this week returns to the Blue Monster at Trump National Doral. Last seen a decade ago as host of a World Golf Championship (WGC) event, Doral regularly featured the best players in the world in a limited-field, no-cut event.

Sound familiar?

The 2026 Cadillac Championship is billed as a signature event (essentially the modern equivalent of the WGCs, with slight differences); however, not all the best players on the PGA Tour will be competing. In fact, five of the top 15 players in the Official World Golf Rankings chose not to tee it up because of the busy schedule this time of year. Patrick Cantlay also withdrew due to illness.

Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, Matt Fitzpatrick, Ludvig Åberg and Robert MacIntyre were not among the entries in the field when the list was released last Friday. Instead, they will prepare for the second major championship of the season, the PGA Championship, by playinganother signature event, the Truist Championship at Quail Hollow Club.

One player who will not be there? The man who beat everyone else in the world of golf at that golf course a season ago to raise the Wanamaker Trophy: Scottie Scheffler. The world No. 1 has learned from overloading his schedule in the past and has realized an opportunity to win a signature event pales in comparison to properly preparing for a major championship.

"Having three of our biggest events in a row is, depending upon the time of year, if this was a different time of year, maybe I would play all three," Scheffler said. "But when you have a major championship as the last one, I think that creates a different kind of a different cadence to it.

"Major championships are just the hardest events. When you look at the courses we're playing for our signature events now, like, I mean, I think it was a couple years ago we did Jack's place and the US Open back-to-back. I'm like, I physically and mentally, I can't do this for two weeks in a row. I won Memorial, and I was whipped showing up to the US Open. So that's kind of how adjusted my schedule. ... Mentally it puts more of a like kind of a mental grind on players, just with the amount of people that there is out there."

Scheffler won't be in Charlotte, just like McIlroy won't be in Miami this week. A couple of weeks ago, Scheffler was in Hilton Head, South Carolina, but again, McIlroy was not. Instead, the six-time major champion took the week off following his successful defense at Augusta National.