Fifty years after his European Tour debut, Bernhard Langer will make his final DP World Tour start this week at the BMW International Open in Munich, Germany.
It will mark his 513th start on the European circuit—the tour where he amassed 42 career titles, second only to the late, great Seve Ballesteros.
“I’ve never said goodbye to anything so far in terms of golf; this is going to be a first experience [for me],” Langer told DP World Tour media officials.
“I have a feeling it’s going to be very emotional.”
The two-time Masters champion grew up 45 minutes from Golfclub München Eichenried, the host course of this week’s tournament. His connections to this area run deeper than that, though. Langer worked as an assistant professional at nearby Munich Golf Club, which helped give him his start.
Langer then went on to win 123 times around the world.
He is a Ryder Cup legend, too, having played on Team Europe 10 times, winning six. Langer also captained the Europeans to a dominant victory at the 2004 Ryder Cup, winning 18.5-to-9.5 on American soil—one of the more impressive wins in Ryder Cup history.
He is, without a doubt, Germany’s most accomplished golfer.
So, in an ode to German golf, the DP World Tour paired Langer with fellow countryman Marcel Siem, who won last week’s Italian Open, and Martin Kaymer, who, like Langer, won a pair of major championships. Kaymer won the 2010 PGA Championship at Whistling Straits and the 2014 U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2.
“It means a great deal just to play in front of the home crowd,” Langer added.
“Hopefully, I can make the cut, but I hear the golf course is a lot longer than it used to be, and that’s a challenge for me.”
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThroughfor more golf coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko as well.
Akshay Bhatia’s three-putt on the 72nd hole, which left Cameron Davis as the only man standing at 18-under-par, and thus the 2024 Rocket Mortgage Classic champion, helped give CBS Sports a nice ratings bump.
The network drew an average of 2.472 million viewers for Sunday’s final round at the Detroit Golf Club, a one-percent increase from last year when Rickie Fowler bested Collin Morikawa and Adam Hadwin in a playoff. Fowler’s win garnered plenty of attention, as he has quite an impressive following among PGA Tour fans. It also marked Fowler’s first PGA Tour victory since 2019. With that said, inclement weather forced the tour to begin the final round early a year ago, leading CBS to air a tape delay in the afternoon, which negatively affected ratings.
Weather had an impact on this year’s tournament, too, mainly during Saturday’s third round.
Yet, luckily for the network, Mother Nature did not create any issues or delays on Sunday, thus leading CBS to yield the highest-rated non-major/Signature Event of the 2024 season, per Josh Carpenter of Sports Business Journal.
Cameron Davis poses with the trophy after winning the 2024 Rocket Mortgage Classic.Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images
With Bhatia and Davis coming down the stretch, the broadcast peaked with more than 4 million viewers—4.028 million to be exact—during the 6:00 to 6:17 p.m. ET window, per a CBS Sports spokesperson. That’s an impressive figure, considering many of the game’s top players did not compete last week in Detroit.
Similar sentiments can be said about this week’s John Deere Classic, as Jordan Spieth headlines the field. CBS will air live third and final round coverage from the Quad Cities this week.
It will also televise next week’s Genesis Scottish Open live from the Renaissance Club in Scotland.
CBS Sports will then wrap up its 2024 golf season with two more events, which bookend the Summer Olympics in Paris: the 3M Open at the end of July and the Wyndham Championship in August. NBC Sports has the rights to broadcast the FedEx Cup Playoffs this year.
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThroughfor more golf coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko as well.
CROMWELL, Conn. — PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan met with the media at TPC River Highlands on Wednesday and revealed that the Travelers Championship will receive Signature Event status again in 2025.
These tournaments feature elevated purses and limited field sizes, hovering around 70 players. This year’s Travelers Championship marks the eighth and final Signature Event of the 2024 season.
“This event will be a Signature Event in 2025,” Monahan said. “This is the 18th year with Travelers, and we have an agreement; they’re in a 10-year agreement through 2030.”
Travelers first sponsored this tournament in 2007, when Hunter Mahan won his first event on the PGA Tour. Since then, it has become a fan favorite among tour pros, who cite the golf course and hospitality as reasons why.
“It’s good to be back. I feel like this is always a fun tournament to come play,” said World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler on Wednesday.
Scottie Scheffler smiles ahead of the 2024 Travelers Championship.Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images
“The community really rallies around the tournament. The fans are always tremendous. The golf course is typically always in great shape. The clubhouse. The way the tournament treats us as players is always tremendous. So it’s a very easy, fun week for us to come play, and glad to be back here.”
Caddies even receive courtesy cars this week, a rarity on the PGA Tour. But that’s not all. The top players on the PGA Tour receive plenty of other amenities.
“They do such an amazing job for us, our caddies, and our support team,” added Xander Schauffele.
“If you look at the range, it’s got the little umbrellas, we have a coffee stand, a lounging area, there’s the green truck there with the pizza. So it’s such a relaxing week coming after the U.S. Open and I think all of us really appreciate that.”
With this in mind, the Signature Event model—new for 2024—has drawn plenty of criticism. In March, Lucas Glover called these tournaments a “money grab,” adding that he “doesn’t like the idea at all.”
“Why do the signature events have [a maximum of] 80 players, and only 50 make the cut? Our biggest signature event next week is 144 players with a full cut. The signature event,” Glover said in March, referencing The Players Championship.
“I just don’t see what was so bad out here that we had to do all this. Let’s raise some purses to make sure we keep some guys around, but now we’ve eliminated a lot of playing opportunities for some really good players.”
Monahan recognizes this too, as many players, such as Min Woo Lee, who has had a strong 2024 season, did not qualify for the Travelers this week, even though Rory McIlroy withdrew.
“Nothing’s perfect, nothing ever is, but when you look at where we are today and as we shared with our board [on Tuesday], we feel like we’re delivering to our fans exactly what we set out to do, and that is to get our top players competing together more often, and to create the most competitive schedule we can possibly create,” Monahan said about the Signature Events.
Jay Monahan during the 2024 Texas Children’s Houston Open.Photo by Raj Mehta/Getty Images
“When you look at our full-field events, and you look at the strength of the field, whether it’s top 50 or top 125, our strength of the field at full-field events is up 35 percent.”
The Signature Events have undoubtedly provided opportunities for the best players to compete against one another. Look no further than who has won the seven Signature Events this season: Scheffler has won three. Wyndham Clark triumphed at Pebble Beach with a record-breaking 60. Hideki Matsuyama shot 61 at Riviera to come from behind and steal the Genesis Invitational, and then Rory McIlroy won the Wells Fargo Championship. Chris Kirk also won The Sentry, the first tournament of the year. That’s a pretty strong whos-who of the PGA Tour.
Plus, these wins came against very strong fields. The top 50 players from last year’s FedEx Cup standings gained entry into each of these tournaments in 2024. Then, the PGA Tour established the Aon Next 10 and Aon Swing 5 to help round out these limited-field events. Whoever wins an event on the PGA Tour in 2024 also gains entry, while each tournament has sponsor exemptions they use to round out the field. Those exemptions have been greatly scrutinized, as PGA Tour Policy Board members seem to take a fair share of those. Look no further than Webb Simpson, who again received an exemption to play this week.
Nevertheless, this tournament always delivers. Players typically go low on this golf course, as TPC River Highlands, the shortest course on tour, yields plenty of birdies. It also produces great drama, as the tournament has had six playoffs since 2007. One stroke has decided the result six other times, too.
So, considering all of this, it makes sense for the tour to make the Travelers Championship a Signature Event in 2025, despite some of the criticism the overall model has received.
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThroughfor more golf coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko as well.
Almost 24 hours after Rory McIlroy collapsed at the U.S. Open, he took to social media to distill his thoughts.
“Yesterday was a tough day, probably the toughest I’ve had in my nearly 17 years as a professional golfer. Firstly, I’d like to congratulate Bryson. He is a worthy champion and exactly what professional golf needs right now. I think we can all agree on that,” McIlroy posted to his social media account.
“As I reflect on my week, I’ll rue a few things over the course of the tournament, mostly the 2 missed putts on 16 and 18 on the final day. But, as I always try to do, I’ll look at the positives of the week that far outweigh the negatives. As I said at the start of the tournament, I feel closer to winning my next major championship than I ever have.
“The one word that I would describe my career as is resilient. I’ve shown my resilience over and over again in the last 17 years and I will again. I’m going to take a few weeks away from the game to process everything and build myself back up for my defense of the Genesis Scottish Open and The Open at Royal Troon. See you in Scotland.”
McIlroy will skip this week’s Travelers Championship, the final Signature Event of the 2024 season. He will also not play in the Rocket Mortgage Classic and the John Deere Classic in the subsequent weeks—the final two events before the PGA Tour heads to Scotland.
Golf fans will see him next at the Genesis Scottish Open, scheduled to begin on Thursday, Jul. 11. McIlroy won that event last year in thrilling fashion, making a birdie on the final hole to eclipse Robert MacIntyre by one.
McIlroy has also had a lot going on in his personal life. He was spotted in Florida on Monday with his wife, Erica, and daughter, Poppy, just one week after the couple called off their divorce. The New York Post first reported the news of their sighting.
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThroughfor more golf coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko as well.
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