PALM HARBOR, Fla. — Few paid much mind to the pros and cons of a 36-hole cut in the men’s professional game until LIV Golf came along and put forth a schedule of events without them.
That led to considerable hand-wringing—and ultimately the PGA Tour’s decision to double down and add events without a 36-hole cut.
All of which puts Peter Malnati in a precarious position as a member of the PGA Tour Policy Board who fully believes in the idea of a cut but whose own game has suffered along that pressurized number too many times of late.
“That comes from a guy who has missed more cuts than I made, and I hate every one of them, I hate every single missed cut,” Malnati said Wednesday at the Innisbrook Resort, where he is the defending champion at the Valspar Championship. “I think a cut is an integral part of professional golf.”
Malnati has missed five cuts in eight starts this year on the PGA Tour, his latest the most excruciating.
Having started working with a new teacher earlier this year and seeing some progress in his game, Malnati was 3 under par on Friday during the second round of the Players Championship with only the par-4 18th at TPC Sawgrass to play.
“Only,” of course, is a relative term, because the dogleg par-4 can be quite daunting. The 36-hole cut ended up being 1 under, meaning Malnati seemed safe to get a weekend tee time.
He made a triple-bogey 7 and missed by one.
“It was every bit the nightmare that it looked like on Shot Tracker if you got to see it,” he said. “I hit a bad drive, got unlucky on my second shot, hit a pretty good one from a long way away because I had to drop way back and it just—anyway, a calamity of errors, a little bit of bad luck, and then it, when it—yeah, it was awful.”
Malnati has mostly struggled since his feel-good victory a year ago at the Valspar Championship, his second PGA Tour title and first since 2015. In the aftermath at the awards ceremony, he all but apologized for not allowing the tournament to celebrate a bigger name, a dose of much-needed humility at a time when the game can’t get out of its own way while fighting over millions of dollars.
Since then, his best finish is a tie for 33rd last year at the Memorial Tournament and he had a stretch late in the year where he missed five consecutive cuts.
So, sure, Malnati might have enjoyed a few times last year when he had qualified for the signature events where one wasn’t in play.
It remains a controversial aspect to the PGA Tour, one put in place as a response to LIV Golf, something for which Malnati is intimately involved as the Tour continues to negotiate with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, LIV’s backer. The eight signature events each have $20 million purses but only three have a 36-hole cut to 50 players with generally less than 78 in the field.
Throw in the season-opening Sentry and the three FedEx Cup playoff events that all have no cut and and that’s eight tournaments on the PGA Tour schedule with no cut. Malnati was part of the policy board that helped sign off on the plan.
It is not something that Malnati is completely comfortable with, although he understands the reasoning behind it.
“I’ve been clear with my stance on this publicly in the board room everywhere, so I don’t mind saying it again,” he said. “I do feel like a cut is an integral part of professional golf. I feel like the playoffs being 70 (players to start)–50–30, it’s great. I feel like if you have qualified into the playoffs you have made the cut. So I’m fine with the playoffs being exactly where they are.
“I think field sizes in the signature events is something that a lot of research went into, determining that they needed to be smaller for the benefit of the entire PGA Tour environment. I understand that research that was done, I agree with a lot of it. I still think ideally we would play our signature events—for me I think we would play them, 100 players with a cut would be I think ideal from my perspective.
“Whether or not we get to 100 players, I still think having the cut, even a small cut like we have in the legacy events, is an integral part of professional golf. ... So I think as we move forward I don’t think we’re super close to having incredible clarity around the whole future of professional golf, but I do think we are getting closer and closer. And I think as the environment becomes a little bit more stable, I think we’ll have the opportunity again to revisit what we’ve done with the signature events model. I think the signature event model is working really well. I just don’t know if it’s as good as it can be.”
After winning the Valspar a year ago, Malnati, 37, didn’t exactly take advantage of his ability to play in the signature events—or the major championships. He missed the cut at the Masters, PGA and U.S. Open.
He had three starts due to his victory making him exempt, and did no better than his T33 finish at the Memorial.
And knowing there was no cut wasn’t exactly a great thing when his game was poor later in the year at the Travelers Championship.
“There are times when a cut is mercy, too,” Malnati said, explaining how much he loves the Travelers event but how his game wasn’t worthy of the weekend.
“But I had to suffer through two rounds on Saturday and Sunday there knowing I was going to finish last. I was so bad. And it’s—like I still hate every missed cut and I appreciate the fact that in a signature event finishing last gives you a nice paycheck (he made $38,500), that’s great for me and my family, so thankful for all that and thankful to have been there. But oh my gosh, I do feel like there are times when a cut can be mercy.
“I’m thankful for every made cut, I like playing four rounds on the PGA Tour, that’s really good. I think that it’s woven into the fabric of professional golf. You come, you play, you play well you play four days and get a check. You play poorly two days and go home in a pretty big hole for the week. That makes our sport unique. There’s not a lot of guaranteed contractual money in our sport, you got earn it and do I like that.”
Of course, the guaranteed part is why this is even an issue. Those signature events were a nod to the stars, a way for them to cash in. Malnati understands that, too.
But for now, he’s not in any of them. He has job security because his win last year gave him an exemption through 2026. He’d like to start turning the corner again on good play, and despite the horrific ending last week, saw some good in it after working with a new coach starting just a few weeks ago.
“I got some new feelings, and coming down the back nine on Friday I played some beautiful golf and that was really, really fun,” Malnati said. “I don't even feel like what happened on 18 ... I mean it stinks. It wasn’t so much a choke, to use that word, it was just a bad shot at the wrong time. I played really, really good golf coming down the stretch even Friday. So what I’m taking from that is there was a lot of growth for me last week.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Peter Malnati Believes in Cuts on the PGA Tour, Even While He’s Missing Them.