Why Golf's Major Season Needs to Be Longer and More Global

A Season That Vanishes Like Morning Mist

There's something almost cruel about the way golf's major season unfolds. You wait eight and a half months for Augusta's azaleas to bloom, and then—in what feels like the time it takes to find your swing on a links course—it's all over. Fourteen weeks from the first roar at Amen Corner to the final putt for the Claret Jug. Blink, as they say, and you miss it.

I've spent two decades chasing major championships across continents, and every July, as the Open draws to its close, I'm struck by the same melancholy. We gorge ourselves on the game's greatest theater, then fast for nearly nine months until spring returns to Georgia. It's a rhythm that served golf well in a different era, but increasingly, the sport's brightest stars are questioning whether this compressed calendar still makes sense.

Voices From the Fairway

Rory McIlroy, preparing for the Open at Royal Birkdale, didn't mince words. "I'd like to see the major season spread out a little bit longer," he said. The four-time major winner acknowledged what every player on a heater already knows—the current format rewards hot streaks while potentially punishing those who peak at the wrong moment.

McIlroy noted that while the Masters will always benefit from its unique buildup—that anticipation born from winter's long dormancy—the subsequent sprint from the PGA Championship through the US Open and into the Open Championship feels almost frantic. "It just seems like it's very, very quick," he observed.

Jon Rahm, who has claimed two major titles himself, raised a different but equally compelling point. His concern centers less on timing than on geography. Three of the four majors take place on American soil, leaving the Open as the lone international stop on the sport's most prestigious circuit.

"I think it would be good for golf," Rahm said of the possibility of additional international majors. "Golf being a global game and as big as it is, it's something that could be explored for sure."

The Geography of Greatness

Rahm's vision extends across oceans. He floated the idea of majors in Australia, a second European venue, even Asia. The commercial realities are complicated—as he readily acknowledged—but the sporting logic is sound. When the NFL, perhaps the most domestically focused of American sports leagues, sends games abroad annually, golf's insularity feels increasingly anachronistic.

The R&A has shown willingness to expand the Open's footprint, with Portmarnock in Ireland on the horizon. But wonderful courses throughout the British Isles remain on the outside looking in, while entire continents go unvisited by major championship golf.

I've walked courses from Melbourne's Sandbelt to the volcanic landscapes of New Zealand, from the wind-swept links of Ballybunion to the emerald fairways of Thailand. The global game has global venues worthy of its highest honors. The question Rahm poses—who decides what becomes a major—may not have an easy answer, but it deserves to be asked.

Feast and Famine

The current calendar creates a peculiar rhythm for fans and players alike. We feast on major golf through the spring and early summer, then face a famine broken only by the biennial Ryder Cup in September. As golf battles for eyeballs in an increasingly crowded sporting landscape, this boom-and-bust cycle seems counterproductive.

Spreading the majors more evenly throughout the year could maintain sustained interest, give players more recovery time between the game's most demanding tests, and create additional peaks of excitement rather than one compressed crescendo.

The Takeaway

The major championship calendar, unchanged in its essential structure for decades, may be ripe for reimagining. When players of McIlroy and Rahm's caliber speak openly about wanting change—whether in timing, geography, or both—the governing bodies would be wise to listen. Golf's greatest events deserve a stage large enough to hold them, and a season long enough to savor them.