The PGA Tour's only team event has long been treated as a quirky outlier, but on the eve of the 2026 Zurich Classic of New Orleans, podcaster Shane Bacon used The Shotgun Start to argue that this year's field has crossed a line.
"It's the Zurich week," host Andy Johnson opened, before turning the floor over to Bacon for the kind of assessment that has become his trademark.
"I was going to say this is — I'm surprised you're, you should be like a pig in [it] with this field. This is the worst field I think I've ever seen," Bacon said. "This is the field that is going to radicalise me cuz this is abhorrent. This is a disgusting event. Disgusting."
It was not just a comedic riff. Bacon went on to argue that the format has reached the end of its useful life on a competitive Tour calendar.
"It's not going to exist anymore," he said. "You can't have a cutthroat tour and hand out exemptions for a partner event."
The co-hosts then walked into the question that has nagged at PGA Tour headquarters every April since the Zurich switched to a two-man team format in 2017: if a victory at TPC Louisiana counts as a full PGA Tour win — with all the FedEx Cup points, exemptions and bonus implications that brings — why are the world's two best players not exploiting it?
"Why wouldn't Rory and Scotty play in this together and both get a win?" Bacon asked. "Like just be like whatever, we'll just win, and it goes on and just add to their total."
Johnson's answer was the practical one. "I think they value weeks at home," he said.
Both Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler are in the field at no PGA Tour signature event this week. McIlroy has been open about his preference for time at home immediately after Augusta. Scheffler, the world No. 1, finished second to McIlroy at the Masters and is also resting after a brutal stretch of high-profile finishes. With both of them out — and a dwindling list of marquee partnerships in the bracket — Bacon's contention is that the Tour's biggest stars have collectively turned the once-novelty event into a shadow of itself.
There are still storylines worth watching. The Fitzpatrick brothers are again in the bracket after Matt Fitzpatrick's RBC Heritage playoff win, and Brooks Koepka returns as part of his ongoing PGA Tour reintegration. But Bacon's broader point is the structural one: signature events have absorbed the attention oxygen, and a non-signature partner format with a winners-take-a-PGA-Tour-card prize is fundamentally at odds with the Tour's stated push toward a tighter, more competitive top tier.
"It's not going to exist anymore," Bacon repeated. "You can't have a cutthroat tour and hand out exemptions for a partner event."
The 2026 Zurich Classic field will still produce a winner and pay out a meaningful purse. Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele, the most successful Zurich pairing of the recent era, are absent. Past champions Andrew Novak and Ben Griffin are back to defend. And the absence at the top of the leaderboard the Tour really notices — the Scheffler-McIlroy hypothetical Bacon raised — looks like the kind of vacuum that does not get filled by tradition alone.
If Bacon is right, the conversation around the Zurich will not be about who wins on Sunday. It will be about whether the PGA Tour can keep justifying a team event that the players themselves no longer treat as essential.
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*Originally published on [Golf News Global](https://golfnews.global/article/shane-bacon-zurich-classic-2026-worst-field-ever-shotgun-start). Visit for full coverage.*
