I used to have two official wins and one unofficial win on the regular PGA Tour. I once blogged about how the unofficial status of this one win, the 1972 PGA Team Championship, was changed forty years later to official status. That tournament had been official for several years, starting with its inception in 1965. Then the Tournament Policy Board made it unofficial for two years, which included the year 1972 when my close friend Babe Hiskey and I won that tournament. I had never known of such a status for a tournament being changed in the PGA Tour’s history.
Well, I have one other unofficial win–the 1984 Tallahassee Open. The PGA Tour’s Tournament Policy Board had made that tournament an official event from its inception, in 1969, through 1982. Then the Board changed its status to unofficial in the years 1983 through 1986 partly because it was conducted the same week as the Masters. So, pros who competed in it were mostly those who had not qualified for the Masters that year. But there was another reason; the Tallahassee Open was made the flagship tournament of the fledgling Tournament Players Series (TPS)–the precursor of the current Nike Tour–its first year, thus from 1983 through 1985. But when that TPS Tour fell defunct in 1986–and was revived in 1990 as the Ben Hogan Tour–the PGA Tour still conducted the Tallahassee Open in 1987 through 1989 and even made it an official event.
I now notice that the PGA Tour has four events on its regular Tour schedule that the Tournament Policy Board declares as “alternate events.” That’s because one is scheduled the same week as the British Open and the other three are held opposite three of the four World Golf Championship tournaments. Yet all four of these alternate events are “official,” so that winners of them are credited with an official win on the PGA Tour. It makes me wonder if the Tournament Policy Board will someday do like they did with my 1972 PGA Team Championship win–reverse my unofficial Tallahassee Open win to official status due to this apparent inconsistent policy through the years. Let’s see, forty years from 1984 would be the year 2024!
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