No, March isn't Major. Labelling Players Championship as 'best Major' is Moronic.

Here we go again.

It's February and they are already at it.

20 years ago they announced it was moving to May to create 5 straight months of Major events.

9 years ago they announced it was moving back to March because a tournament which actually is a Major was moving to May.

They have spent five years denouncing LIV Golf for not being meritocratic or open enough, yet they proclaim The Players Championship as a Major despite the fact that Players from only one tour have access to it.

Please, let us get it straight.

The Players Championship has not ever been, is not, and will not ever be, a Major Championship.

Most of the world knows it, but as usual one nation does not want to hear what the rest of us have to say.

The PGA TOUR launched its television advertising for next month's Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass - March is Major. Yes, they said the quiet part out loud. They have finished the debate in their head, they are telling the world that their championship is a Major Championship, but the advert was never going to be enough, they needed a mouthpiece to amplify their message. Step forward the Golf Channel and its Chief mouth, the mouth otherwise known as Brandel Chamblee.

"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."

Brandel Chamblee has said some outrageous things, questionable things and downright biased things in recent years, but this is all of the above and more.

To claim that The Players Championship is better than The Open, is risible. One was first played in 1860 in the birthplace of the sport, and played on the purest courses in the sport, the other was first played 1974 and since 1982 has been played on a reclaimed swamp in Florida. One offers pathways to qualify for golfers on the PGA TOUR, DP World Tour, Japan Golf Tour, Asian Tour, Sunshine Tour, PGA Tour of Australasia, LIV Golf and the amateur world. The other is a championship for members of the PGA TOUR.

To claim that The Players Championship is better than The Masters, is laughable. The golf world is captivated each and every April, with moments etched into everyone's minds, none more so than last April when Rory McIlroy clinched his first Green Jacket and complete the Career Grand Slam. Rory won The Players Championship three weeks before The Masters last year, he barely generated a fist pump following his playoff win over JJ Spaun, let alone shed the tears he did following his playoff against Justin Rose. The Masters is also the First Major of the Year, and that should never change.

To claim that The Players Championship is better than The US Open, is inaccurate. The US Open is about 9,000+ golfers from all over the USA and the world, competing to make it to America's National Championship. The US Open is about the very foundations of a sport in a nation, first played in the 19th century.

To claim that The Players Championship is better than The PGA Championship, is disrespectful. The PGA Championship has more than a century of history, and is about the thousands of professional golfers who help people to learn and play this game day in day out, across America, and around the world. Has the PGA Championship lost its lustre? Yes. Why? Because the PGA TOUR has dictated to the whole of American and world golf what the schedule is going to be. Their relentless obsession with having a fake post-season, and avoiding clashing with the NFL forced the PGA of America to consider moving their flagship championship from August to May.

The PGA Championship was 'Glory's Last Shot', but when it moved to May it became just another shot at glory, and in a month where much of America was out of bounds due to it being early season for potential host courses. If the PGA Championship could democratically decide when to play their championship I would wager that they would never select May, around one month after The Masters and before the US Open. The PGA Championship needs room to breathe, re-establish an identity, and that is more likely in late August or even in the Autumn, giving golf one spring major, two summer majors, and one end of season showpiece in the autumn.

10 years ago the PGA of America gave consideration to moving the PGA Championship around the world, following the formation of the PGA Global Alliance, which featured Professional Golfers Associations from across the world including Great Britain and Ireland, Europe, South Africa, Japan, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand. But that idea was chopped off at the legs quickly by those who see the world as San Francisco to New York, and the PGA TOUR schedule changed and that was the end of that.

The Players Championship is one of the great championships of golf, of that there is no doubt. But so is the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, the National Opens of Spain, Scotland, France, Ireland, Australia, and South Africa. So are the 'International Tour' events on the Japan Golf Tour which were created around the same time as The Players to attract the best golfers in the world to Japan. So was the World Match Play Championship at Wentworth, before the PGA TOUR created its own version as part of the WGC's. leading to the decline of the original.

This sport does not need, or want, another Major Championship in the United States.

Don't take my word for it, here is some of the reaction on social media:

This absolutely Moronic claim by Brandel Chamblee that The Players Championship is better than any of the Four Majors follows hot on the heels of the absolutely ridiculous claim by an American user on X that the start time of the Australian Open Tennis Final should be moved to suit the American TV audience.

Of course this is the country which calls Daytona International Speedway 'The World Center of Motor Racing'. Yep, sorry Monaco, Silverstone, Monza, Le Mans, its a bland American city in Florida which the cars go round and round in a circle for 500 miles that is the world's home of Motor Racing. Of course it is the country which contends the World Series between two teams from the same country every year, and names its winners of the Super Bowl and NBA Finals as World Champions. Heck, they even contend that the Super Bowl is bigger than the World Cup.

One is a single-day sports event watched by 120 million people worldwide, the other will feature 104 matches this summer and is viewed by billions around the world. The winners of it are genuinely World Champions too.

Golf has four major championships, just like Tennis, and just like Boxing has the four major belts. It does not need yet another American tournament artificially elevated to satisfy the executives of an American broadcaster, and a few one-dimensional American golfers who lost their passport in the bottom of their stand bag when playing college golf more than a decade ago.

March is not Major. It never will be.

SHANK, by Matt Hooper