PGA Tour's Peter Malnati backtracks after calling Lexi Thompson's exemption 'gimmick'

In his first year as a member of the PGA Tour policy board Peter Malnati has proved a champion of the everyman, coming clean on the average player's reaction to the PGA Tour’s framework agreement with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund.

Malnati stayed strong on comments that players lost trust in the Tour after the announcement of the arrangement and added that it would take some time to be restored.

On Tuesday, in advance of this week's Sanderson Farms Championship, Malnati was asked about the news that LPGA star Lexi Thompson was given an exemption into the Shriners Children’s Open in Las Vegas. The event will be played Oct. 12-15 at TPC Summerlin, which last year played 7,255 yards with a par of 71. The field of 132 will compete for a purse of $8.4 million.

The 36-year-old Indiana native admitted he thought the exemption might have been a stretch.

"I just got a text this morning, so I don't know much about it," Malnati said. "Obviously I know that Lexi at times has been one of the top players on the LPGA Tour, and she's obviously very athletic. Distance won't be a problem. She'll hit it far enough.

Malnati started to step in hot water with his next statement.

"I don't think we're going to need to resort to gimmicks to drum up interest. I shouldn't have said that. I don't know that having Lexi play is a gimmick, but I don't think the tournaments are going to have to go to those kind of lengths to drum up interest and get storylines that they can sell because I think these events are actually going to have a lot of meaning," he said. "Like I said, change is hard for everyone at every level, so I assume if you're a host organization of a tournament, if you're the Century Club here in Jackson, if you're Wayne Sanderson Farms, you just don't know right now for sure what you have anymore because the fall is completely reimagined.

"I'm pretty sure that the fall is going to be a blockbuster hit. I think it's going to be very successful. But these tournaments, they don't know yet."

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A full-time LPGA member in 2014, Thompson has racked up 15 professional wins including a major − the 2014 Kraft Nabisco Championship.

"Having Lexi play certainly will get a lot of headlines, and if that's the goal for Shriners and the host organization in Vegas there, that's great. Obviously, she's a professional athlete. She's accomplished a lot," Malnati said. "It's not like − I mean, who knows what'll happen. She may go play really well and it'll be huge. She may play absolutely terrible and finish 132nd.

"Either way, she's a professional golfer. She has a spot in the field. The tournament is − if it gets them the attention that they want and it works out positively for them, it's great, all for it."

Malnati is one of seven past champions in the field at The Country Club of Jackson and is making his ninth straight start in the event. He won the tournament in 2015 and added a second-place showing in 2020, making him the only player to have a victory and a runner-up showing since it moved to its current location in 2015.