Billy Horschel has lauded The Players Championship and commented on the idea of inviting the likes of Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm to TPC Sawgrass.

The debate over the significance of The Players Championship has ramped up over the last week.

The PGA Tour recently released a trailer for next month’s event with the tagline: ‘March is going to be major’. Bizarrely, Brandel Chamblee then claimed that The Players is the biggest of the majors.

Understandably, many disagreed with that view. Phil Mickelson was among those to dispute Chamblee’s claim.

But there is no question that Billy Horschel would put The Players alongside the four biggest events of the year.

Billy Horschel comments on the idea of inviting Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm to The Players Championship

Horschel is among the greatest players in this current era without a major victory. The 2014 FedEx Cup champion does not actually have the best record at TPC Sawgrass.

Nevertheless, speaking to Trey Wingo, Horschel insisted that winning The Players would be difficult to top.

He also insisted that the door should be open to LIV Golf‘s biggest names to be involved.

“I’m going to say something, people are going to be on either side of it. There’s one thing I haven’t done, I haven’t won a major in my career. And I do believe I’m going to achieve that. I have said for me personally if I win a Players Championship, I will consider that a major,” he said.

“That’s my take. That doesn’t even have to be everyone else’s take. People are going to chastise me for that comment, and some people may agree with me on that comment. But I think that event in the sense of everything around it, the greatness of it, the field – now, the field, I will say I do believe the PGA Tour should invite the likes of Jon Rahm, Cam Smith, Bryson DeChambeau. I do believe that needs to be fixed in my opinion.

“I’ve always considered it a fifth major. Listen, I’m biased, I live there. I’ve lived there since I got out of college. I understand what that event means to the northeast Florida community. I understand what event means to everyone on the PGA Tour, not Brian Rolapp, not Jay Monahan, there’s hundreds of employees on the PGA Tour that no-one knows about that work so hard to make the PGA Tour so great. They work so hard to make The Players Championship unbelievable.”

When LIV Golf stars were nearly invited to TPC Sawgrass

It looks highly unlikely that any LIV stars will be at The Players next month.

Smith, Rahm, and DeChambeau rejected the chance to come back to the PGA Tour through the Returning Member Program that opened the door for Brooks Koepka.

But there was a time last year when it appeared that there would be LIV players in the field at TPC Sawgrass.

Of course, in the weeks leading up to The Players, there was a growing belief that the PGA Tour and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia would agree a deal to bring the game back together.

Tiger Woods insisted an agreement was close at the Genesis Invitational. There were reports that LIV stars could be invited to The Players.

Obviously, those talks ultimately came to little. However, it did show that practically nothing can be taken off the table when it comes to the elite tours these days.