Florida Swing returning as Masters run-up

The 2018-19 PGA Tour schedule, which will be formally announced in May, will swap Houston for San Antonio as the stop the week before the Masters Tournament and returns to a four-event Florida Swing in March.

Although PGA Tour officials aren't commenting on the schedule until the week of The Players Championship next month, individual tournament websites have already posted next year's dates. The tour allows those events to release their dates to potential corporate hospitality buyers and for long-range marketing purposes.

The return of The Players to March turns that month back over to the state of Florida. The swing begins with the Honda Classic at PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens on Feb. 28-March 3, followed by the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill moving up a week to March 7-10.

The Players, which had been the last week in March from 1982 to 2006, will be the third week of the month, March 14-17 next year. The anchor event will be the Valspar Championship at the Innisbrook Resort Copperhead Course near Tampa on March 21-24.

From there, the PGA Tour will go to Texas for the two weeks prior to the Masters, the WGC-Dell Match Play in Austin and the Valero Texas Open in San Antonio. The Houston Open, which is lacking a title sponsor, could move to the week before the U.S. Open.

Some players would enter the Houston Open and use the speedy greens of the Golf Club of Houston as a testing ground for Augusta National. It's unsure whether the TPC San Antonio, a course with mixed reviews by players, will prove to be of any help getting ready for the Masters.

 "Yeah, they got the greens fast in Houston but they're flat as pancakes,"
veteran player Billy Horschel said. "No way did that get anyone ready for these greens (at Augusta)."

Jerry Pate, the winner of the first Players at the TPC Sawgrass Players Stadium Course, approved of the return of that event to March.

"That course was designed by Pete Dye with March wind in mind," Pate said. "I think the tournament would be just as big no matter when they played it, but March is the right time."

The schedule changes are part of the PGA Tour's overall plan to end the golf season earlier. The PGA Championship, which will be at Bethpage State Park in New York next year, will move to May, making the British Open the season's final major.

That clears the way for the PGA Tour to begin the FedEx Cup playoffs in August and play the Tour Championship in Atlanta around Labor Day. It removes the conflict of the FedEx Cup playoffs with the start of the NFL season and provides more of a gap between the Tour Championship and the start of the PGA Tour's fall season in October.

Mainly, it makes the tour's marquee event, The Players, the first big tournament of the season. The Players was in March from its inception in 1977 to 2006, when the Tour decided to move it to May to put more distance between it and the Masters.

While the move helped generate record-breaking ticket sales for The Players, it seemed diminished on a global scale, coming between the Masters and the U.S. Open. International media who had made The Players a must-stop before the Masters were bypassing it in May.

"I think it's a great idea," said Paul Azinger, who competed in his first Players in 1982. "There was nothing wrong with that tournament being before the Masters. I also like the idea of having a Florida Swing again. That's when people would start getting excited about golf and know the Masters was around the corner."