Five-time PGA Tour winner Russell Henley maintains a mild-mannered reputation, and that would be a good way to describe his demeanor during his press conference at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
Hot takes are not in Henley’s typical repertoire. The position the PGA Tour veteran took at Bay Hill on Tuesday, however, was atypically controversial.
When asked about next week’s Players Championship, Henley was clear about his stance: the Players is “a major.”
His opinion is one shared by some notable figures in the game, including Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee, and comes amid an unofficial push by the PGA Tour to get the golf world to recognize its flagship tournament as the fifth men’s major championship. Though not everyone agrees, including the Tour’s biggest star, Rory McIlroy.
Russell Henley on Players Championship: ‘I’ve always considered that a major’
When Henley sat down at the podium for his pre-tournament press conference on Tuesday at Bay Hill, he did so as the defending Arnold Palmer Invitational champion.
Henley triumphed by one shot over Collin Morikawa last year to capture the biggest win of his career. The next week, he finished T30 at the Players.
Though Henley has never hoisted the Players trophy at TPC Sawgrass (his best finish is a T13 in 2022), he believes the tournament is on par with golf’s four majors: the Masters, the PGA Championship, the U.S. Open and the Open Championship.
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“I mean, I think it’s a major. It’s our home tournament. I don’t know the statistics on like when they say ‘best field in golf’ or whatever, but it is,” Henley explained on Tuesday at Bay Hill.
Henley argued that given the tournament’s history, its iconic host course and past champion pedigree, the Players has “always” been a major in his mind.
“And the history with that tournament. I mean, I’ve always considered that a major in my mind. It’s just such a tricky golf course and it rewards great shots, typically. It visually is very intimidating, and I feel like if you have a good week there you’ve done a lot of really good things,” Henley said. “You look at the past champions and… it hasn’t really favored any one player. People typically don’t win it back-to-back unless you’re Scottie [Scheffler].”
He continued: “It’s a tournament I always look forward to. I love the challenge of it. I consider it a major.”
Chamblee calls Players a major, but Rory McIlroy disagrees
Henley’s Players take did not arrive in a vacuum. The Players as a major has been a hot topic in the golf world this year.
Under new CEO Brian Rolapp, the PGA Tour seems to be pushing to elevate the Players to major status in fans’ minds. Take the Players promo video the Tour dropped in early February that boldly stated, “March is going to be major.”
Shortly after that video dropped, Chamblee took to the airwaves to not only argue that the Players is a major, but that it is the “best major.”
“When you look at the Players Championship — with all due respect to the other four major championships — it is the best field in golf. It is the deepest field in golf. And by virtue of the fact that in its 50-year history, only one player has successfully defended it, I would argue that it is the hardest major championship to win. All the others have had far more successful defenses,” Chamblee said in February. “So, in every single way that a metric could be used to measure whether something is a major, the Players, to me, stands alone and above the other four major championships — not just as a major. It is, in my estimation, the best major.”
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McIlroy has captured two Players titles in his career, including last season. But when he was asked about the Players-as-a-major debate the next week at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, he offered a very different opinion than Henley and Chamblee.
“Look, I’d love to have seven majors instead of five, that sounds great. But I’m a traditionalist, I’m a historian of the game. We have four major championships. You know, if you want to see what five major championships looks like, look at the women’s game. I don’t know how well that’s went for them,” McIlroy said at Pebble Beach.
However, McIlroy clarified that the Players not being a major doesn’t lessen the importance of the tournament. In fact, he argued it had a better “identity” than one of the existing majors.
“It’s the Players. It doesn’t need to be anything else. Like I would say it’s got more of an identity than the PGA Championship does at the minute,” McIlroy said. “So like from an identity standpoint, I think the Players has got it nailed. It stands on its own without the label, I guess.”
The 2026 Players Championship officially gets underway Thursday, March 12, at TPC Sawgrass.
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