‘He’s full of it’ – Jimmy Walker sounds off on PGA Tour leadership

Jimmy Walker has had enough. 

Following two years of infighting and miscommunication, the PGA Tour veteran is disillusioned. Not with the game itself – he still loves competing and is desperate to make a return to form – but with those in the sport’s corridors of power.

It’s why the 2016 US PGA champion had no interest whatsoever in what his commissioner Jay Monahan had to say about the future of the game in his recent address at The PLAYERS Championship.

“I don’t pay much attention to what Jay says anymore,” Walker told bunkered.co.uk. “I think he’s full of it. They’ve kept us in the dark and a lot of this has been handled extremely poorly. Do I have any faith in the Tour? I don’t know. I really don’t think we’ve got some of the best and brightest working on it.”

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Walker still holds some resentment over how he lost his full PGA Tour playing rights for the 2024 season.

The six-time Tour winner used a one-year top 50 career earnings exemption last year after enough accomplished players jumped ship to LIV Golf to pave his way. He finished No.124 in the FedEx Cup Standings for the regular season, which traditionally would have meant he narrowly maintained his full playing privileges for next season.

However, the introduction of the new Fall Schedule meant only the top 70 retained their status from the FedEx Cup. The adjustment saw Walker miss out having finished the seven-event series in 138th position.

“I was bummed last year when I finished 124,” Walker said. “Historically that’s always been good enough and they changed the rules and made us play the Fall again. I was really upset. I had so many people congratulate me on making it and I’m like ‘no!’

“It was such a poor job of communicating that to the fanbase. Even me, when I came back I didn’t know. It was only halfway through the year that it wasn’t the lock and you had to be top 70 to keep your card. I was like ‘this is unbelievable.’ I was p***** off.  It’s how I felt.

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“We need a season and we need to shut down. We need to starve our audience. There’s too much golf. My career benefitted from when they started the wraparound season. I ended up winning three out of eight events on that first wraparound season. But I remember having mixed emotions having to restart two weeks after the Tour Championship.

“Every other sport has an off season. Can we not go rest? It’s hard on your body, it’s hard on your family and they’re just milking us for everything.

“All of this is in backlash for LIV. It’s incredible that we’ve done so much to counteract all this and you’ve got all these guys that were so on board with PGA Tour and now they’re leaving. The Tour pay these guys big money to hang out and stay.”

The future outlook of the PGA Tour continues to divide opinion amongst players. Wyndham Clark came under fire last week for suggesting the Tour should be restricted to only 100 players.

The US Open champion only cracked the top-100 in the Official World Golf Rankings last year and Walker believes players must start acknowledging their own route to the pinnacle of the sport.

“It’s a lot for Wyndham Clark to start barking orders,” he said when asked about Clark’s comments. “If there were 100 players he may not have gotten to where he’s at today. Myself included.

“The Tour for a long time was about maximising playing opportunities for the membership and now it’s gone completely the opposite way. Now they’re creating less opportunities and it’s bad for the growth of the Tour.”

Walker may have burned his one-year full PGA Tour exemption, but the 45-year-old is still seeking a late career renaissance on the circuit. After recovering from a chest injury, he will make his return at the The Texas Children’s Houston Open this month.

Ben Parsons joined bunkered as a Content Producer in 2023 and is the man to come to for all of the latest news, across both the professional and amateur games. Formerly of The Mirror and Press Association, he is a member at Halifax Golf Club and is a long-suffering fan of both Manchester United and the Wales rugby team.