A promotional video posted by the Players Championship has sparked much discussion about its status among golf’s biggest events. That discussion reached a new level Saturday morning.
A clip that has gone viral is stirring the online golf community into a frenzy. It features Golf Channel commentator and personality Brandel Chamblee waxing poetic about the prestige of the Players Championship, and how it’s not only deserving of major status, but that it’s better than the other four actual major championships.
“What constitutes a major championship?” Chamblee said while speaking to fellow analysts Damon Hack and Paige Mackenzie on a live set at the WM Phoenix Open. “Of course, it’s history and tradition and reverence and all those things, but at the core, these are hard events to win. They’re meant to be harder events to win because of the pressure, because of the setup, because everything is right on that line. So, they’ve got to be hard events to win, they’ve got to be great fields, they’ve got to produce indelible champions and indelible moments.
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“When you look at the Players Championship — with all due respect to the other four major championships — it is the best field in golf. It is the deepest field in golf,” Chamblee continued. “By virtue of the fact that in its 50-year history, only one player has managed to successfully defend it, I would argue that it is the hardest major championship to win. All the others have had far surpassing numbers of those successfully defending it.
“Especially since it moved to TPC Sawgrass, which in my estimation, save for one hole, is perhaps, arguably the best golf course that they play a major championship on from a shot-value perspective. You can talk about aesthetics all you want, risk, reward holes, certainly, but from a shot value standpoint, you cannot touch TPC Sawgrass.
“So, in every single way that a metric could be used to measure whether something is a major, the Players, to me, stands alone and above the other four major championships as not just a major. It is, in my estimation, the best major.”
Television commentator Brandel Chamblee looks on from the 17th tee during a practice round prior to the Texas Children’s Houston Open at Memorial Park Golf Course on March 27, 2024 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Raj Mehta/Getty Images)
To back up his argument, Chamblee pointed out the fact that the Players is the only non-major event where Golf Channel stages its Live From show every year.
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“We do Live From from major championships. We’ve been doing a Live From at the Players Championship since 2004, since I first started working at the Golf Channel. Just by that mere fact, we give it the attention of a major championship. We give it that prestige.”
More: PGA Tour video hints at major status for The Players, but who decides?
The discourse surrounding the Players Championship’s status is nothing new. It’s been a topic of conversation for decades. But the aforementioned promotional video — which features action clips of the game’s best players taking on TPC Sawgrass along with a brief line saying “March is going to be major” — has brought the debate back to the forefront of conversation in golf circles. Will it eventually become a major? Time will tell, but it’s quite clear where Chamblee stands on the matter.
The 2026 Players Championship is set for March 12-15 at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
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This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Brandel Chamblee says The Players ‘stands alone and above’ the majors
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