SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The Valley of the Sun is one of the best places in the nation to play a round of golf and now the PGA Tour's top players will get a chance to experience that as the WM Phoenix Open next February was named one of four new 'elevated tournaments' on the Tour, according to a report from Golfweek.
Elevated tournaments are new for the 2023 season on the PGA Tour and were instituted as a way to compete with the upstart Saudi-funded LIV Golf tour that poached many players from the PGA Tour this past season.
Being an elevated tournament means that the PGA Tour's top players are guaranteed to play and they will be competing for purses that could reach $20 million or more.
So far, there are 13 elevated tournaments on the PGA Tour schedule for 2023.
The first nine elevated tournaments were announced in August. They are the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass in March, all 3 FedEx Cup Playoff events in August (the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis, the BMW Championship in Illinois, and the TOUR Championship in Atlanta), all three invitationals on the tour (The Genesis Invitational in California in February, The Arnold Palmer Invitational in Florida in March, and the Memorial Tournament in Ohio in June), the WGC Dell Technologies Match Play in Texas in March, and the Sentry Tournament of Champions in Hawaii in January.
Along with the WM Phoenix Open, three other tournaments are also being elevated, according to Golfweek. They are the RBC Heritage in South Carolina in April, the Wells Fargo Championship in North Carolina in May, and the Travelers Championship in Connecticut in June.
When you combine all of those tournaments with golf's four majors (The Masters, the U.S. Open, the Open Championship, and the PGA Championship), the top players on the PGA Tour are committed to competing against each other at least 17 times a year.
According to Golfweek's report, the WM Phoenix Open being named as an elevated tournament this year does not mean it will have that status in 2024 as the final four elevated tournament slots will rotate between different tournaments every year.
The WM Phoenix Open will be played February 9-12, 2023, the same weekend that Super Bowl LVII will be played at State Farm Stadium in Glendale.
Construction is already underway for the stadium at the 16th hole.