To counter the new LIV Tour actions and tensions, the PGA Tour who has been under siege recently felt it was necessary to make significant changes to the operating model including the schedule, creation of elevated events, new compensation program, change in field sizes and more.
The RBC Canadian Open is the third oldest continuously running tournament on the PGA TOUR, after The Open Championship and the U.S. Open. The first Canadian Open was played in 1904 and has a strong history of celebrating the importance of golf to Canadians.
RBC is the current sponsor and also sponsors a second event, the RBC Heritage. Naturally RBC and Golf Canada wanted the RBC Canadian Open to become one of the new elevated tour events with a $20 million purse for the tour’s top 20 players. That question has now been answered and the RBC Canadian Open will not be elevated in 2023 which is bad news for our national championship and insults Canadian golf.
This past August Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods and other top players met to discuss their tour and how to decelerate the departure of players to the LIV Tour. With the rapid changes the PGA faced many logistics and scheduling issues and we believe they had no intention to slight any event.
Golf Canada and RBC will be pushing hard to ensure the national championship gets a spot as one of these premier events in coming years. Mary DePaoli, RBC’s executive vice-president and chief marketing officer is confident the RBC Canadian Open will still draw an elite field including defending champion McIlroy. The RBC Canadian Open has proven itself year after year and deserves to be near the top of the list in coming years.
To help the RBC Canadian Open obtain the elevated status The PGA Tour will need some minor tournament date shifts in the future to ensure the elevated events are not jammed together on the calendar.
For now you can rest assured RBC and Golf Canada will be at every table leveraging all relationships with the tour and with the players to obtain the most optimal outcome.
