CROMWELL, Conn. — Four short years ago, the PGA Tour seemed to be coming apart and the Travelers Championship was one of the scenes of the splitting seams. This was 2022, and Commissioner Jay Monahan was in the press shed decrying the “irrational threat” caused by LIV Golf and its Saudi money.

Players were jumping ship daily. As the Travelers was getting underway, Brooks Koepka was pulling up stakes for LIV Golf. After hitting a wild 9th-hole tee shot clear out into the road, Jason Kokrak disqualified himself and walked off the premises, and onto the other tour.

“Even back a couple of years when it was crazy, guys were here and they were withdrawing on Tuesday to join LIV, it was like, ‘We were in it,'” said Nathan Grube, the Travelers’ longtime director. “We couldn’t do anything about it, so we just tried to lean into the relationships, including the guys who left. Andy (Bessette of Travelers) was right out of the gate saying, ‘We’re not losing touch with these guys.’ We would see the guys and say, ‘Whatever happens, you’re always welcome here.’ We had histories with those guys.”

Four years later, the PGA is still going. The Travelers, as we knew it, is gone. It has gotten better as a “Signature Event,” drawing nearly all the top players in the world to the TPC River Highlands each year. Last year, the Travelers raised over $4 million for local charities.

The irrational threat is what’s crumbling now, as the next Travelers (June 25-28) nears. The LIV golfers made their tens of millions, but the Saudi monarchy is pulling its $5 billion plus in funding. The tour, which never really became a big deal in the U.S., is scrambling for survival in whatever form, but likely to become a footnote in golf history sooner rather than later.

Now those players, Koepka, Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith, Phil Mickelson, three-time Travelers champ Bubba Watson, could soon be looking for a path back to the PGA. The Travelers will be one tournament ready to roll out the red carpet and dangle its blue blazer for still more stars to its star-studded future fields.

“I have always made it a point, especially at the Masters, where I can see them,” said Bessette, Travelers VP and chief executive officer, longtime driver of the title sponsor-tournament dynamic. “This year, I saw Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, gave him a big hug, I saw Brooks, and I always say to them, every year they’ve been with LIV, ‘We love you, we want you back, and when all the technicalities are worked out with the PGA Tour, we want you back.'”

It won’t be a simple prospect. There are hard feelings in other corners of the golf world, and some of the departed golfers have sued the PGA over its policy of permanently barring LIV jumpers from participating. Only at the major tournaments are all the top players playing for the same prize.

The Signature Event concept, which bolstered purse sizes to $20 million — the last few Travelers winners taking home north of $3.5 million — with smaller, but stronger fields, and a no-cut format, was developed in response to the LIV threat. It helped the PGA Tour stop the bleeding of stars and, by all indications, outlive LIV. If the Signature series continues and the Travelers can add some of those big names to the field it already has, the overflow crowds at the TPC River Highlands, where media day was staged on Tuesday, will grow even larger.

“I’m not involved in any of these decisions,” said Keegan Bradley, who has won two of the last three Travelers. “I certainly think these guys are a big asset to the PGA Tour and could come back and bring a lot to the Tour. But one thing we have learned, the Tour is going to survive. It’s just an incredible product. I hope someday we all play together again, I’m all for the guys coming back. And the Travelers will be come an even bigger event.”

Bradley, a New Englander, was beaming as he opened up two gifts curated by Bessette and Grube: a Bobby Orr-signed Bruins sweater and a helmet signed by Tom Brady and Julian Edelman, symbols of this tournament’s relationships with the players it has attracted.

But if the Travelers has survived and thrived during, and presumably after LIV Golf, there is a new danger on the horizon. The PGA has a new chief, Brian Rolapp, who has the title CEO and is looking at the business end of things. To draw bigger TV dollars, and more corporate sponsor money, the idea of gravitating Tour stops to bigger markets has been gaining traction. New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., are considered potential target areas. So where does that leave Cromwell, Conn.?

“We are the Green Bay Packers of PGA Tour golf,” Bessette said. “(How many) live in Green Bay? But guess what, it’s one of the best franchises in the NFL. We’re the Green Bay Packers. It is so important to know the uniqueness of this. We’re two hours from Boston, two hours from New York, and we do attract a lot of people from there. Brian Rolapp has said to me many times, ‘You guys are doing a phenomenal job, every player loves you, families love you, everyone wants to be here.’ So it’s all good.”

Rolapp, matter of fact, is planning to come to the TPC on June 23 for a major, state-of-the-tour press conference to lay out some of the future scheduling plans. Grube and Bessette say they hope to hear more of what they have been hearing: That the players’ appreciation for this event, which they have twice voted their favorite stop, prevails over the desire to play near big cities. Some of it depends on what metrics The Tour uses to make its evaluations.

“About a year ago, the Tour started talking about bigger markets,” Grube said, “and I raised my hand to ask, ‘What does this mean?’ What the Tour has told us about what we have here, they feel it is something special. When you look at crowds, market performance, charitable growth, market penetration, we are top three, top four when you look at these metrics, take the city out. Our performance at that level is something The Tour acknowledges. And we don’t think we have hit our ceiling.”

Threats come and go, and perhaps always will. But the flexible and resilient, two words that capture this event’s history, survive. Hartford’s place on the PGA has reinvented itself more than once, and if it must do so again? … Tee it up and let’s play through.

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