I guess there's no harm in posting my thoughts I circulated among the Competition Committee a few weeks ago:
The designation of events included in the "Slams" of other sports were determined as much by the players and the media, not a single sanctioning body. The PDGA has co-opted the word "Major" for sanctioning purposes to good effect. However, observers and touring pros over the years have likely felt there were one or two other events worthy of being considered and perhaps one or two designated Majors less worthy if our hypothetical annual slam were limited to four events. In other words, the number of events some might think are appropriate for a Slam may not always match the number the PDGA has designated as "Majors".
My suggestion to establish a historical foundation for our Slam would be to simply designate the same number of Slam events (starting with five) before the start of each calendar year once the A-tier and higher events calendar has been established. Worlds would always be one Slam event. The other four would include one North American event (likely USDGC each year), one non-North American event (likely Euro Open every other year), and two wild cards which for example might be chosen from Ledgestone or Masters Cup or Maple Hill or Croatia or a new Match Play event.
Historical stability for our DG Slam each year would be established with Worlds as the lynch-pin plus four other worthy events. We can't predict the future. But for as long as our sport exists we can count on at least four other events worthy of being part of our annual DG Slam regardless whether some big events disappear like Japan Open, Circus City, Laurel Springs (big event before Major designation) or are only offered every other year like Euro Open.
Here's my suggestion for an interesting way to select Slam events to add excitement to the Slam process. The top 25 MPO finishers in the previous year Slam events vote to determine some of the events for the next year's Slam that is if there are more than four candidate events. FPO would have a separate vote for their Slam events, some which may be the same as MPO and some different like USWDGC. The top five finishers at the first Slam event in a year are voters for the next year. Then, the top five in the next Slam event not already voters become voters, etc., through the remaining three events, determining voters like the USDGC qualifying process.
The idea behind this is to let the pros decide among Slam event candidates on the ballot where they want to defend their titles, the purses promised are high enough and they will financially be able (some with support from sponsors) to commit to attend the following year. The PDGA would administer the process by handling submissions from events who wish to be considered for the Slam and vetting them including TD, staff, history, courses, cell signal bandwidth, etc. to be included on the ballot. Once the event candidates were announced, the media would be able to kibbutz publicly on which events they would like to see the pros select to potentially influence the voting.
In addition to FPO, a similar process could be done to define Slam events for Masters, Ams and potentially Juniors if we eventually get a thriving global high school DG scene developed. The PDGA might consider providing some additional funding to any events that get voted into Slams for the following year if we don't already support them with at least NT level funding.
