THE Players Championship, which begins on Thursday, has one compelling reason for calling itself the fifth major. The most powerful body in golf, the PGA Tour, does not run a major championship and this is the best they have to offer.

The Royal and Ancient run the Open, the United States Golf Association has the US Open, Augusta National has custody of the Masters and the PGA of America, the body that looks after 26,000 club pros, has the PGA Championship.

Each of the four has its impurities.

The Open and US Open have qualifiers, the Masters has a field littered with ageing former winners, and the PGA Championship has a welter of club pros.

The PGA Tour do not have a major, although the Players Championship is up there and beyond in terms of strength of field, prizemoney and prestige. It also has a tough examination in the form of the Stadium Course of the TPC at Sawgrass, Florida.

The PGA Tour have been calling it the fifth major for years, presumably on the basis that if it is said often enough, the notion will become ingrained, and why not?

All the top players will be there including the big four of Vijay Singh, TigerWoods, whom he supplanted as world No.1 yesterday, Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson.

The concept of the modern major championships is notional anyway and can be traced to 1960, when Arnold Palmer, having won the Masters and US Open, declared that if he also won the Open and PGA Championship he would equal the achievement of Bobby Jones in 1930 when he won the historic majors: the Open and US Open, and the British and US Amateur Championships.

Palmer didn't win the two he wanted, but the die was cast. Jones was instrumental in establishing Augusta National and the Masters, which started in 1934. It therefore became a major at the age of 26 and so its previous winners, including Claude Harmon, Herman Kaiser and Doug Ford, were, in 1960, awarded majors they did not know they had won at the time.

Woods reckons the Players Championship lacks the history of the other events. That is true of the two Opens and the PGA Championship. Sandy Lyle is credited with the finest quote on the matter. When asked the difference between winning the Open and winning the Players Championship, which he did respectively in 1985 and 1987, he replied: "About 120 years".

Still, such comments no longer apply when compared to the Masters. The Players Championship, at 31, is now older than the Masters was when it became a major. Critics of the idea of a fifth major say it would be interfering with history. If Jack Nicklaus had only four attempts at a major each year, why should Woods have five?

Yet the goalposts have been moved before, anyway, when the amateur majors were dismissed.

Even now, some people say Nicklaus won 20 majors and not 18, because he won the US Amateur twice. That being the case, Woods can be argued to have 11 and not eight, because of his three US Amateur crowns. Add in the Players Championship and Nicklaus is up to 23 and Woods 12.

There, that wasn't so hard and, in the retrospective canonisation stakes, the likes of Al Geiberger, Calvin Peete and Craig Perks, all former winners of the Players Championship, could consider themselves major winners. Its addition would mean the US having four of the five majors and arguments would, no doubt, start about a sixth major, for example the WGC world matchplay, and mobilising it so that it would go to South Africa, Australia as it has already, Asia and Europe.

A sixth major? Now that's a radical thought.

THE Tartan Tour has been given a boost by the intended appearance of Ronan Rafferty, the 42-year-old Northern Irishman who won the European Tour order of merit in 1989 and is now a Sky Sports golf commentator.

Rafferty qualifies for the domestic Scottish schedule because he is a former Ryder Cup player and owns a property in Perthshire.

He has already entered this season's first Tartan Tour order of merit event, the 36-hole Callaway tournament at Panmure, Carnoustie, on April 13 and 14.