CROMWELL, Conn. – A year ago, when Brian Rolapp inherited the top spot on the PGA Tour, he already had a vision for the circuit. While it may have taken him (and even required) a few months to learn everyone’s name and tournament structures, sharing that vision was a key part of his interview process to land the job in the first place. Now, almost exactly a year after Rolapp’s stewardship began, the future of the Tour has officially arrived as well.
Thanks to a near-unanimous vote Monday by the PGA Tour Board of Directors, the Tour, starting in 2028, will see the biggest change to its competitive structure in decades. Some of the plan reflects Rolapp’s vision, a savvy executive focused on selling television rights. Other shares reflect the influence of Strategic Sports Group, which owns 14 percent of the Tour via an investment of 1.5 billion dollars. And finally, no small part of it reflects the interest and cooperation of the Tour membership, led by its seven player directors. Tiger Woods is one of them, and while he has take time away from golf for medication in recent months, he was present for the vote on Monday and is at TPC River Highlands on Tuesday.
In some ways, the structural changes are akin to a top-to-bottom home renovation—the address hasn’t changed and the front door may still be in the same place, but everything inside has a new look and feel, all with the goal of making the strongest, most valuable golf tour on the planet … and making it stronger and more of value. Formal negotiations for television rights are not far off, Rolapp reminded the membership in an email Tuesday morning. The FCC met with current rights holders as well as potential new partners, assessing what could force the networks to pay more money than ever.
The tournament will operate through two different tracks: the Championship Series, with approximately 130 players, and the Challenger Series, with more players. Their separation will be the strictest form of promotion and relegation the sport has ever seen. The highest level (championship) will have the best players, the highest billing and the highest level of money, in the form of purses of $20 million (or more). The schedule will be shortened for both parts, but both schedules will be shortened WARRANTY player access. No more PGA Tour graduates and keeping out of his bigger purses. But… Championship players who do not play well for a full season will lose their access to top level events for a full season at a time. They will play for less money in the Challenger Series, but bigger purses than the current outing, the Korn Ferry Tour. Sponsor Exclusionswho have been the lifeline of popular out-of-form players will be eliminated.
These changes, which did not easily cross the finish line, represent the Tour’s truest meritocracy yet, meaning this week is perhaps the most significant week in the Tour’s history since August 1968, when it was founded.
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ONE OF ROLAPP’S FIRST MOVES as CEO came last August when he created the Future Competition Committee, a nine-person panel whose purpose is right in its name: redefining the Tour’s future competitive structures. Surprisingly, the committee was chaired by Tiger Woods and is very player focused. But Rolapp added a curious name to the group: Theo Epstein, the longtime baseball executive who works closely with some in the investor group.
Epstein has a pedigree not only for turning around baseball franchises, but also for bringing significant changes to the entire MLB experience. Rush hours, extra rules, shift standards, etc., were incorporated over time and have led to a renaissance for America’s entertainment during an era where audiences have there is no time. He’s also taken a keen interest in golf and served as an important voice reminding Tour leaders of where change, even on surprising courses, can be big.
In an impassioned, closing argument sent to Tour boards over the weekend, Epstein called out those baseball fixes and suggested the changes they would vote on offered the tour “much greater and positive opportunities” than MLB’s terrible success. He described many of the ideas the FCC floated designed to create “consequences and danger.”
Getting there involved hundreds of pattern iterations. No idea was off the table. Should the Tour force playoffs every week to determine a podium, like the Olympics, whenever there’s, say, a four-way tie for second or a six-way tie for third? Should the tournament have different “swings” where players are promoted and demoted frequently mid-season? Forget 72-player Signature Events – should the tournament only be 72 players, period? All three ideas were seriously considered.
But Epstein’s letter reminded the players’ leaders how their expertise and interest helped guide the FCC in specific ways. Signature, limited-field event-style tournaments weren’t big enough; they needed bigger fields with wider access to those fields. The idea of ​​promotion and relegation is no stranger to this group, but it couldn’t happen in the middle of the season. Even the best players have good weeks followed by missed cuts – promotion and demotion had to happen through a much larger sample size.
Epstein wrote how increased “popularity, cultural relevance and associated revenue,” like what he witnessed with MLB, were on offer with this new model, and on Monday the board voted to approve it almost unanimously. Within hours, the promotional vehicles were in place for Rolapp’s Tuesday morning press conference at the Travelers Championship. After listening to players, partners and fans, Rolapp said: “This new model is our answer.”
The details
– Over the course of 21 (former) stroke play events – with 36 holes of play and approximately 120 players – a new points system will determine the best player in the world that season. There will be no need for a subjective Player of the Year award as the Tour currently has, based on votes by Tour members. No. 1 will be clear.
– This series of events will also determine which 90 players will be retained for next season and which will be relegated, creating an end-of-season intensity for those on the bubble.
– After the stroke play portion of the season, the tournament’s postseason will introduce match play for the first time, the closest match to how other sports drop from eight teams to four to two and, finally, one. It will be designed with a television audience in mind and is likely to be contested over two weekends, ending up on a “prestige” course on which the Tour would not be able to stage a full event.
– The season-long schedule will include off-week breaks designed to inspire top pros to play two or three straight weeks before a reset. During the weeks off the Championship, the Challenger Series is expected to take center stage, with 144-player fields and bigger points on offer to increase prominence. Win two Challenger Series events and you’ll earn automatic promotion to the championship.
– After a season of 20 Challenger Series events – where purses will be around $4 million – at least 20 Challenger players will be promoted to the Championship Series, where purses are $20 million or more. That’s the rub of what’s at stake. One series has mega-millions on offer; the other is above all taking to those mega-millions.
– Because this requires transitioning from one system to the next, the eligibility criteria for the 2028 Championship Series will be determined before the start of the 2027 PGA Tour season so players know what they’re playing for and fans know what they’re cheering for.
– To maintain consistency, players in each series are restricted from competing in other series. There is no alternate roster for Championship events. If 30 players in the majors opt out of the Genesis Invitational, it will be a smaller field that week. The main reason for this is underlining JUST who is a Championship Series player every year and who isn’t (yet). The tour backed itself into a corner in recent years by limiting field sizes and telling graduates from the Korn Ferry Tour and DP World Tour that they didn’t have a spot in the main fields. This concern has been abolished.
– Speaking of the DP World Tour, the Strategic Alliance between it and the PGA Tour remains and players from the European-based tour will have qualifying spots held for them in the Championship Series. The same goes for PGA Tour University. How many points remains to be seen.
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NOW LET THAT LAST LINE BE SERVED as an important indicator: much remains to be resolved.
It’s a phrase that will no doubt make fans roll their eyes. All pro golf fans have known for the past five years are half-baked plans and promises of what might come. Hopes for 2025 were pushed back to 2026, which were pushed back to 2027, and now we have solid plans for 2028. But if there’s any crucial reason for all this, it’s because the structure of the tournament is deeply complicated. And it has changed every few years for decades and decades, turning into a twisted Rubik’s Cube with more than six sides. How the Tour handles career exemptions, for example, is still being worked out. How he will deal with player injuries remains to be seen. The winner’s waivers guarantee won’t be what it used to be, but that guarantee is still being determined. The postseason game format isn’t quite set, but it’s probably 85% done.
Included in Tuesday morning’s tournament press release is mention of a “Last Chance” series, where four to six fall events are grouped together to give a small number of competitors one last chance to join the Championship Series.
The Challenger Series represents a fascinating Rorschach test for everyone involved, including the fans. In time, it will boast surprising names that were dropped from the PGA Tour, in the same way that in the second flight of English football, West Ham United will play among the smaller clubs in 2026-27. For the West Ham faithful, this is a hard reality to face. But the ending here? West Ham had a terrible season and earned his death. The club will now have to claw their way back to the Premiership.
If the current PGA Tour season ended today, Taylor Pendrith, Marco Penge, Denny McCarthy, Rasmus Hojgaard, Mackenzie Hughes, Joel Dahmen and a number of other notable names would be outside the top 90 and facing relegation to the Challenger Series. Ask any of them and they’ll probably tell you it hasn’t been a great year for golf.
The bottom line is that, in this forward-looking hypothetical, the pros will have had their full chance. They will have had the full roster of starters in the $20 million events to prove they belong in the Championship Series. On Day 1 of Event 1 on the upcoming PGA Tour schedule, all 120 to 130 players will have the same opportunity as Scottie Scheffler, and nothing in their way but some of the best championship golf courses in the world. Some would call it seductive; others will call it snappy. To each, that’s exactly the point.
