Take a mulligan: TPC should NOT become a major
There’s been a lot of the recurring banter about the TPC, and whether it should become a “fifth major”? USA Today’s Jerry Potter has an excellent article about it here.
Frankly, I could really care less about the issue, if it were not for one thing: recognizing 5 majors will screw up the uniformity of conditions between Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. If Tiger is to break Jack’s record of 18 majors, the conditions should remain as uniform as possible.
Making the TPC a fifth major now will effectively give Tiger many more attempts at majors than Jack. We could try to retroactively recognize Jack’s 3 victories at the TPC, but those weren’t even at Sawgrass (which became the site in 1982). The retroactive recognition of Jack’s TPC victories would also be unfair in that the TPC only started in 1974, 12 years after Nicklaus became a pro. Jack would get short changed in the end, even though he currently has a 3-1 edge on Tiger in TPC victories. True, Tiger has won only 1 TPC, and it doesn’t appear based on his stats that the TPC is Tiger’s favorite tournament. But Tiger’s got many years left to go, so making the TPC a “fifth major” would give Tiger a disproportionate number of attempts at winning a major compared to Jack. Bottom line: don’t make the TPC a “fifth major” for the simple reason that it would screw up Tiger’s run. Viva el tigre!
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