Colt Knost Rightfully Calls Out PGA Tour For Sending Nick Dunlap Out By Himself At Arnold Palmer Invitational

This week's Arnold Palmer Invitation is a PGA Tour signature event, meaning it's a limited field featuring a $20 million purse. It goes without saying that the Tour wants the Arnold Palmer and the seven other signature events on the schedule to be anything but gimmicky, but given the situation that has unfolded with Nick Dunlap this week, it has failed that task.

The Arnold Palmer was set to feature a field of 70 players, but after Tony Finau decided to withdraw, it left the Tour with an odd number of players. Instead of adding a player to the tournament or simply making a group a threesome, the Tour elected to send players out in twosomes, leaving Dunlap all by his lonesome for the first and second rounds of the tournament.

A player teeing it up by himself after the field is cut isn't a rare sight, but to begin an event with a single most certainly is.

The most baffling part of all of this is Dunlap's second-round tee time on Friday. Dunlap was the first man out on Thursday, which is understandable, but come Friday he will be right in the middle of the tee sheet going off at 10:40 ET. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Colt Knost, a former PGA Tour and current CBS golf analyst, rightfully voiced his frustration with the Tour's decision and asked the very simple question: what are we doing?

"He is first off on Thursday morning which is no big deal but come Friday he'll be off at 10:40 - still by himself - and right in the middle of everything," Knost said during an appearance on Sirius XM PGA Tour Radio.

"I love the PGA Tour and want the PGA Tour to be the best tour in the world, but what are we doing?"…"I know Tony Finau was eligible and chose not to play but how in the world can we not have an alternate list for this event?"

"This is so unfair to Nick Dunlap that he has to play by himself, and it's just ridiculous."

Knost not only took a shot at the Tour's decision-making but turned the knife when noting that LIV Golf seems to have figured this sort of thing out.

"It's amazing to me that when these guys that go to LIV pull out, all the sudden, boom, everyone jumps up a spot. It's pretty simple."

Knost's criticisms are more than fair, and he didn't even mention the fact that Dunlap created the golf story of the year when he became the first amateur to win on Tour in 33 years when he found the winner's circle at The American Express in January.

Throwing one of the young stars of the game out by himself in a signature event is mindblowing.