PGA Tour sponsor invitations are controversial. Here are the results

This current iteration of the PGA Tour is called the “Signature Event Era” in part because of how the league feels right now. It won't look the way it does now forever. So how will the years 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 (and maybe even 2027, depending on the pace of change) be remembered? Especially with what they've shown before – limited field, often uncut events played for $20 million. It was an attempt to define a tour “brand” and a wartime device designed to maintain loyalty to the best players in the sport, and it was an interesting answer to an important question about what makes professional golf attractive. But they also made things difficult on the PGA Tour.

Make enough institutional moves on behalf of Tour Elite, the Scottie Schefflers and Xander Schauffeles of the world, do enough to protect your brand names and it can start to feel like you're neglecting the mid-level, up-and-coming player. The intensity of that ecosystem created an inherent concern at these Signature events, and no more than four sponsor exemptions were offered at each event.

That release of sponsors is, in theory, a boon to events. They ensure that statistics that may not be relevant can still have a positive impact on the capacity of the stadium, ticket sales, number of patrons, etc. But the Signature Events were created at a time when the PGA Tour was fighting LIV Golf and beating its symbolic chest about being the most prestigious golf tour. Giving players spots on the field as interest grows is not pure expediency.

So this release has been scrutinized. Sometimes they have had arguments. The companies and tournament directors who choose this release put a lot of thought into the decisions, but tour spots don't always go to the best or most in-form players who aren't already on the field. They may go to a player who won that tournament years ago. They may go for a player who is loved around the world and whose game has gone through a rough patch. They may go to a player who is lucky enough to be sponsored by the same company that sponsors the tournament.

So who gets those invitations, and how do they do it? If we look at the last 19 Signature Events and before the start of the 20th this week (we start this calculation in 2024, when the current system begins to take shape), we can make a proper analysis of those release decisions. Below is a scrolling chart that includes each player's world golf ranking at the time of their release, as well as their finish that week.

At this point, no player has gotten more looks than Gary Woodland, who has gotten seven sacks. He just won the Houston Open in March, meaning he can enter the remaining 2026 Signature Events without needing an exemption. Before that win, Woodland had banked more than a third of the Siggies.

And you know what? The golf world felt very good about those. Woodland has been battling health challenges since before his brain surgery in 2023. The 2019 US Open champion is widely regarded as one of the kindest players on Tour. He's recently opened up about his struggles with PTSD following that surgery, too, and he's still one of the hottest stories going, especially thanks to his recent Houston Open victory.

More scrutiny followed the exemptions given to players outside the top 100 players in the world. Although those are a few, another happening this week, No. 441 Webb Simpson gets the nod. It's not hard to see why Simpson is in the field this week. Simpson has been a member of the PGA Tour's policy board, is among the most popular figures in the sponsorship level, and lives in Quail Hollow, host of this week's event. But just know that not every member of the Tour out there liked to see Simpson get this regular release. He earned the second most exemptions, with six – alongside Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth and Adam Scott – but was never in the world's top 200 during any of those tournaments. To his credit, Simpson finished T24 with the 2024 Truist release – but it hasn't gotten any better since.

16 of the 76 releases so far have been given to players outside the top 150 in the world at the time, and only Brandt Snedeker — ranked 430th before the 2025 Memorial — managed to crack the top 10 the week of that release. As with all explanations of who gets these invitations, there were many reasons why Snedeker got that invitation, but the obvious connection is embroidered on the front of his hat: Labor Day, one of Snedeker's main sponsors, also sponsors the Memorial.

Kevin Kisner (then ranked 526), ​​Michael Thorbjornsen (then 710) and Tiger Woods (893) all received exemptions while outside the world's top 500, but each of those cases was very different. Kisner was 40 years old and had gone an entire year without a top-30 finish. Torbjornsen, a Massachusetts native and top young talent, was invited to the Traveler Championship, widely regarded as the Northeast's signature event. (He was 22 years old at the time, has since won on Tour and is now ranked 62nd in the world.) Then there's Woods, who will get any sponsor exemption he wants if he needs it, but this time he's the manager of the Genesis Invitational and he got the exemption before the Tour went so far as to produce a new exemption class, of 80 wins for himself.

As for how these players are doing? The results are all over the place. And maybe that should be expected. The average end of sponsor release was about 38 to 40, right in the middle of these 72 to 80 man areas. There were nine of the top ten finishers with sponsor exemptions and 11 who finished 70th or higher – missed cuts and withdrawals included. All the other nets came out somewhere between those two poles, which is probably, again, to be expected. Below is a list of players who received exemptions, ranked from oldest to youngest.

7 invitations: Gary Woodland

6 invitations: Webb Simpson, Adam Scott, Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth

5 invitations: Billy Horschel

4 invitations: Tony Finau, Matt Kuchar

3 invitations: Keith Mitchell, Max Homa, Mackenzie Hughes

2 invitations: Mr Woo Lee, Tom Kim, Shane Lowry, Max Greyserman, Brandt Snedeker

1 invitation: Peter Malnati, Maverick McNealy, Harry Hall, Sahith Theegala, Tiger Woods, Will Zalatoris, Nicolai Hojgaard, Rafael Campos, Justin Rose, Chris Kirk, Kevin Kisner, Wyndham Clark, Marco Penge, Alex Noren, Michael Thorbjornsen, Luke Clanton, Joel Dahmen