Summary
ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. (AP) — Sunday at Sea Island felt like a fateful day for many PGA Tour players who left the season-ending event without a full card. This year, the tour eliminated 25 cards, lowering the threshold to 100th in the FedEx Cup standings to maintain full status in 2026. Additionally, the Korn Ferry Tour awarded only 20 cards to major leaguers, down from 30 last year. The field size will be smaller next year, but it didn't feel like an ending, perhaps because of the uncertainty of what comes next.
Lee Hodges missed a 10-foot birdie putt on the final hole that would have put him in the top 100. Ricky Castillo thought he had achieved his goal with a closing 62, only for Max McGreevy to sink a 30-foot birdie putt on the last hole, knocking him out. Both players will likely be in Honolulu for the Sony Open on January 15, kicking off a new season. Has anything really changed? Not yet.
There may be fewer opportunities, but there are still tee times, and that's what any player can ask for in a sport where success is still tied to scoring.
Key details
PGA Tour officials have been analyzing figures, and their best estimate is that the top 10 players who didn't crack the top 100 will have access to approximately 16 tournaments next year. This does not include the eight $20 million events, the four majors, the three FedEx Cup playoff events, and The Players Championship.
Some of them can still work their way into the biggest events. Otherwise, they might feel like they're playing on a different tour. Perhaps that was the idea from the start. “I know it's going to get tougher and tougher, and the goals are shifting a bit,” Harris English said last week. “I know it's going to get more complicated for me. I'm 36, and I'm not getting any younger. But we'll see where this takes us. We're all here for the good of the PGA Tour and to make our product the best it can be. What that product means remains to be seen.”.
English shared what might be considered casual conversation when he mentioned that "the talk on tour" was to wait until after the Super Bowl to start the season. That sounds like one of the options being considered by the Future Competition Committee, chaired by Tiger Woods. English doesn't usually make headlines unless his caddie is barred from entering the UK or his name appears on the Ryder Cup envelope that prevents him from playing in singles. "Just speculation," he said with a shrug before teeing off on Sunday.
Statements and context
Such a move is plausible, given how frequently Brian Rolapp, the new CEO of PGA Tour Enterprises, talks about “scarcity” in an attempt to make the golf season compelling from start to finish. Two days after English discussed golf and soccer, Rolapp was in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, for the CNBC CEO Council Experience Forum. When asked if he could imagine a schedule that didn't begin until after the Super Bowl, Rolapp replied, “Yes, I could see that.”.
And to think that former PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem set a 20-year goal in 2000 for golf to surpass the NFL in fan base. Since then, the tour has been drifting away from football.
“If you delve deeper into what he (English) said, it’s not that complicated,” Rolapp commented. “Competing with soccer in this country for media dollars and attention is really tough.” The Future Competition Committee was formed in August and didn’t hold its first meeting until a month ago. More revealing was when Rolapp mentioned that he has invited media partners—including some media groups not yet involved in golf—to pitch their ideas. One advantage for Saudi-backed LIV Golf was being able to start a league from scratch, without more than 60 years of similar operations.
Destroying a tested product can be complicated.
What's next?
“Part of the problem with professional golf is that it’s grown as a series of events that happened on television,” Rolapp said. “Instead of, ‘How can you take those events and make them meaningful on their own, and tie them together into a competitive model—including a postseason—that everyone can understand, whether you’re a golf fan or a sports fan?’” He said it was key for the committee to begin the process with more questions than answers. His message to media partners was simple: “Blank sheet of paper,” Rolapp said. “What would you do?”
How would you do this to increase fan participation?” His three guiding principles since taking over have been parity, simplicity, and scarcity. “The bad news is that golf only has one,” Rolapp said, referring to parity. “But it’s the hardest to achieve.” Eight players won all eight featured events this year. Scottie Scheffler won one featured event, two majors, and a FedEx Cup playoff event. In addition, three tournaments Scheffler entered were won by players ranked outside the top 50 in the world at the time.
“What worked in the NFL—and I think every sport is striving for—is how to make the competition as close as possible so that on any given Sunday you don’t know who’s going to win,” Rolapp said. “Golf has that… That’s an incredible strength.” However, the other two aspects are subject to debate. “How do you create a competitive model that’s easy to understand? And how do you create rare events that fans want to follow? Those are the principles that guide the competitive model,” he said. “I think in a few months we’ll know where we end up.”.
Perhaps then will be the time for the players on the outside to start getting nervous.
