One week the PGA Tour winner was Ludvig Aberg, a Swede so supremely talented that he played in a Ryder Cup before his first major, entered the top 10 in the world ranking just nine months after he left college and has been there ever since.
The next week it was Brian Campbell, a 31-year-old who averaged $7,999 for the 186 tournaments he played over the last decade — one full year on the PGA Tour, the rest on the Korn Ferry Tour — before winning the Mexico Open. That was worth $1,260,000.
Golf needs them both.
Stars are what fuel interest. The PGA Tour gets a boost from these 72-man signature events with $20 million purses because they tend to deliver big names and often big moments. Scottie Scheffler has won four of them over the last two years. Rory McIlroy has won twice.
There also has been some discussion over the last 25 years — dating to the World Golf Championships — that smaller fields make it easier to win no matter how stacked they are. But the signature events have not disappointed.