Max Homa Goes On Rant In Defence Of No-Cut, Limited-Field Events

Max Homa went on a rant ahead of this week's Arnold Palmer Invitational on the news that the PGA Tour is introducing more limited-field, no-cut events next year.

The American is one of a number of PGA Tour pros to come out and defend the changes, which will see fields in the designated events limited to 70-78 players and no 36-hole cuts from next year.

Homa says he loves the new changes and said they've been made to "make it easier and more fun for the fans," and not just a money grab by the top players. He went on a four-minute rant during his press conference to defend the initiative following backlash from fans and certain players.

"I love the new changes. I could rant on this for awhile, which I might," he said in his pre-tournament press conference.

"The reason I wanted to join the Player Advisory Council, which is what I'm on now, was on a bit last year, is because I think I do provide a unique perspective as, you know, in 2017, 2018 I guess I've just seen all kind of levels of professional golf between the Korn Ferry Tour and the PGA Tour.

"And I believed in this back then and I believe in this now. I didn't maybe see exactly what is being done. I'm not quite smart enough to have planned this one out. But the product is important. I think it's easy to frame these changes as a way to put more money in the top players' pockets. But it has been made to make it easier and more fun for the fans. I know it's low-hanging fruit to jump on, Oh, this is just a money grab. This is to make it better for the fans."

Homa says the new events will ensure that there are more battles between the world's best players.

"It is more opportunity for the top players to battle it out late on Sundays. Which, you look back at times of Phil and Tiger, the two best players growing up for me watching, and they had like maybe two real battles. So we're going to have more of that.

"We just had Scottie and Jon battle it out in Phoenix and that was awesome. Two of the three best players in the world going at it. So I think that's great. I understand the sentiment you brought up about maybe the avenues getting smaller, but the prize is much larger. So I'm not so sure I agree with the kind of negative connotation of that.

"The non-designated events are the same purses with, I mean, on paper, weaker fields. So financially that doesn't change a whole lot. And there's a lot of room for growth throughout that. You can play your way into the designated events and go from playing an event for the exact same amount of money to playing it for significantly more amount of money with a two-week good golf stretch or a win or something like that."

The six-time PGA Tour winner thinks that the smaller fields will ensure that the non-designated events still get decent turn-outs, and that keeping them large would "ruin" the non-designated events.

"Cutting the field sizes down I know is, you know, I just finished my pro-am and went on my phone briefly before I came in here and I saw quite a bit of frustration, some from players, some from fans, that the fields are small," the Californian said.

"But I think the part that's frustrating and maybe the part that just simply might be misunderstood is that if we made these fields very large in these designated events it would ruin non-designated events that have been staples of the PGA Tour, that go to cities that people love watching these events with their families. It would ruin them. No one would play in half of them because it would no longer fit your schedule by any means.

"So I think that the Tour's done a great job of looking into that and seeing that this would be a great number to cut to to make sure that we still have competitive events that are non-designated, while keeping the sponsors and the fans happy with the parity and some of the, you know, maybe not the top 50 big names, but big names. Guys everybody has watched play golf, win golf tournaments and excel at this game still in those fields. So I think that that is an important distinction to make before just jumping on something negative."

Watch Max Homa's rant: