MIAMI, April 29, 2026, 08:10 (EDT)
Patrick Cantlay withdrew from this week’s Cadillac Championship because of illness, taking another top player out of a $20 million PGA Tour event that was already short several marquee names. The PGA Tour’s media page listed Cantlay as withdrawn on Tuesday and Michael Thorbjornsen as added to the field. (Reuters)
The timing matters. The Cadillac Championship starts Thursday at Trump National Doral’s Blue Monster course, bringing the PGA Tour back to the Miami-area venue in a week built around one of its richest regular-season stops. A Signature Event is a limited-field PGA Tour tournament with higher prize money and FedExCup points; official notes list 700 points to the winner, a $20 million purse and a $3.6 million first prize.
It also lands in a tight part of the calendar. Players came through the Masters, then the RBC Heritage, with the Truist Championship next week and the PGA Championship after that. That run has made Doral less a simple money event and more a test of how much golf the top players are willing to stack into six weeks. (Reuters)
Thorbjornsen, the former Stanford player still looking for his first PGA Tour win, moves into Cantlay’s place. Golf Channel’s updated tee sheet has Thorbjornsen paired with Corey Conners at 1:30 p.m. EDT on Thursday and 10:15 a.m. EDT on Friday. (Golf Channel)
Cantlay, 34, had been coming in off three straight solid results: a tie for seventh at the Valspar Championship, a tie for 12th at the Masters and a tie for eighth at the RBC Heritage. The Official World Golf Ranking lists him at No. 32. (Reuters)
The field is still strong. PGA Tour notes say the event has 37 of the top 50 in the world rankings and seven of the top 10, led by Scottie Scheffler, Cameron Young and Justin Rose. But Cantlay’s exit removes another player with established standing in big-money, limited-field events.
Rory McIlroy, Matt Fitzpatrick and Xander Schauffele are also not playing in Miami, giving the tournament a thinner top tier than the purse would normally suggest. Reuters reported that the event is the fifth of eight Signature Events this season and that the schedule crunch has pushed players into harder choices. (Reuters)
Rose, the 2012 winner at Doral, put it plainly when asked about the stretch. “Something had to give,” he said, adding that missing good events to prepare for other good events is “not ideal.” (asaptext.com)
Adam Scott, who won the last PGA Tour event held at Doral in 2016, said this year’s calendar looked like an exception rather than a settled model. He said the Tour had to get through the season and hoped “the schedule looks a little more balanced next year.” (asaptext.com)
The Blue Monster gives the week its pull. GolfMagic reported that the course previously hosted top-level PGA Tour golf from the Doral Open era through the WGC-Cadillac Championship, before the Tour left after 2016. The official tournament site says the Cadillac Championship runs April 29-May 3 at Trump National Doral. (Golfmagic)
Jhonattan Vegas, one of the players familiar with the venue, said the course has “changed a ton” and warned it could play much harder if wind becomes a factor. He also pointed to Bermuda grass around the greens, saying players would need extra adjustment on a grainy surface. (asaptext.com)
The risk for the PGA Tour is not just one late withdrawal. A no-cut, $20 million event should normally sell itself, but the absences of Cantlay and several higher-ranked players underline a harder problem: even richer events can lose priority when the calendar bunches Signature Events and majors together.
For Thorbjornsen, the late call is a clean opening. Reuters reported he was in contention at The Players Championship and the Texas Children’s Houston Open before finishing T22 and T14, then missed the cut at the Valero Texas Open and tied for 33rd at the RBC Heritage. Now he gets Doral instead of watching it. (Reuters)
