CROMWELL, Conn. — PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan met with media at TPC River Highlands on Wednesday and revealed that the Travelers Championship will once again earn signature event status in 2025.
These tournaments offer high prize money and are limited to around 70 players. This year’s Travelers Championship will be the eighth and final signature event of the 2024 season.
“This event will be the signature event for 2025,” Monahan said. “This marks our 18th year with Travelers, but the contract is a 10-year agreement that runs through 2030.”
Travelers first sponsored the tournament when Hunter Mahan won his first PGA Tour event in 2007. Since then, the tournament has become popular among tour pros, who cite the golf course and hospitality as reasons for its popularity.
“It’s good to be back and I always feel like this is a tournament I enjoy playing,” world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler said Wednesday.
“The community really comes together for the tournament. The fans are always great. The golf course is always in great condition. The clubhouse. The way the tournament treats us as players is always great. So it’s a really easy and fun week for us to come play. It’s good to be back here.”
Caddies will also be provided with loaner cars this week, a rarity on the PGA Tour, but that’s not all. There are plenty of other perks available to the top PGA Tour players.
“They do a really great job for us, the caddies and the support team,” Xander Schauffele added.
“If you look at the range, there are little umbrellas, a coffee stand, a lounge area, a green truck with pizza. This week after the U.S. Open has been a very relaxing time and I think we’ve all really appreciated it.”
With this in mind, the new signature event model being introduced in 2024 has attracted a lot of criticism, with Lucas Glover calling the tournaments a “money-making ploy” in March, adding that he “doesn’t like the idea at all.”
“Why Signature Events? [a maximum of] “Of the 80 players, only 50 make the cut? Our biggest signature event next week is 144 players making the full cut. It’s a signature event,” Glover said in March about The Players Championship.
“I don’t know what went so bad that we had to do this. Let’s raise some money to keep some of the players, but now we’ve lost a lot of playing opportunities for some really good players.”
Monahan is aware of this, with a number of players not qualifying for the Travelers this week, including Lee Min-woo, who had a strong 2024 season despite Rory McIlroy withdrawing.
“Nothing is perfect, but when you look at where we are today, as I shared with the board, [on Tuesday]”We feel like we’re giving the fans exactly what we set out to do, which is have the top athletes competing together more frequently and create as competitive a schedule as possible,” Monahan said of the signature events.
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“When you look at field strength in full-field events, whether it’s top-50 or top-125, field strength in full-field events is 35 percent better.”
The Signature Events have arguably provided an opportunity for the best players to compete against each other. Looking at the winners of the seven Signature Events this season, Scheffler has won three times; Wyndham Clark won at Pebble Beach with a record-breaking 60; Hideki Matsuyama came from behind to shoot 61 at Riviera and win the Genesis Invitational; then Rory McIlroy won the Wells Fargo Championship; and Chris Kirk won the first tournament of the year, the Sentry. It’s a lineup of PGA Tour powerhouses.
Moreover, these victories were achieved against very strong fields. The top 50 players in last year’s FedExCup standings qualified for each of these tournaments in 2024. The PGA Tour then established the Aon Next 10 and Aon Swing 5 to supplement these limited-field events. Players who win PGA Tour events in 2024 also qualify, and each tournament has sponsor exemptions that they use to supplement the field. These exemptions have been heavily scrutinized because PGA Tour Policy Board members appear to make up a significant portion of them. Look no further than Webb Simpson, who was exempt again this week.
Still, this tournament lives up to expectations every time. As the shortest course on the tour, TPC River Highlands offers plenty of birdies, so players usually aim for low scores on this golf course. The tournament also offers plenty of drama, with six playoffs since 2007, including six occasions when the winner was decided by a single stroke.
So, taking all of this into consideration, despite some of the criticism the overall model has received, it makes sense for the Tour to make the Travelers Championship its signature event for 2025.
Jack Mirko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation Playing Through. Follow For more golf articles, follow us on Twitter Jack Mirko In the same way.
