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Why is the Scottish Open a PGA TOUR event?

The usual DP World Tour stop is now co-sponsored by the PGA TOUR, and the dollars won count for both. Here’s why both major tours are behind the event for the first time.

By Collin Sherwin
PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan addresses the media during a press conference prior to the Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands on June 22, 2022 in Cromwell, Connecticut. Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images

The 2022 Open Championship is next week at St. Andrews, and with it all the best players in the game competing for the Claret Jug and glory at the home of the game. But that’s about the only thing the same around professional golf as compared to previous years in July.

The other events the week before and during the R&A’s showcase are now co-sponsored by both the PGA TOUR and DP World Tour thanks to the “strategic alliance” created between the two groups in August of 2021. So now members of both tours will be playing in the 2022 Scottish Open thanks to a modified qualifying system, just as they will the following week in the Open Championship.

That “alliance” was expanded to a 13-year agreement last week, admittedly by both sides under pressure from the upstart LIV Tour and the mammoth purses the Saudi-backed league is offering.

And speaking of LIV, four more players are in the 2022 Scottish Open field than expected as Branden Grace, Justin Harding, Adrian Otaegui and Ian Poulter from the LIV Tour successfully won an injunction for the right to play in front of an arbitrator in London. Because of their addition, the Scottish Open is expanding from 156 to 160 players competing.

For players not qualified for the Scottish Open or The Open Championship, both the Barbasol Championship at Keene Trace Golf Club in Nicholasville, Kentucky (July 7-10, the same dates as the Scottish Open) and the Barracuda Championship in Reno, Nevada (July 14-17, same dates as Open Championship) each now have 50 spots open for DP World Tour members not exempt for the bigger events in the UK.

Both the Barbasol and the Barracuda are now “opposite field” events, which means while they come with smaller paydays (just $666,000 to win, less than the minimum $1 million for every PGA TOUR full-field event), and less FedEx Cup points as well (300, compared to 500 for a full-field event, and 600 for a major win), they still can change a career: They both come with a full two-year PGA TOUR exemption, so you can play most any event you choose through 2024 in the USA.

A trip to the PGA Championship is available for both winners, but The Masters exemption that comes with winning a full-field event is not.

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