Major PGA Tour changes sent to players. Here are the answers to 6 burning questions

First, there was a memo. Then came a proposal. The other is an official vote from the highest echelon PGA Tour Govt.

What do we know now? Changes are coming to the PGA Tour.

The tour’s middle level of player leadership – the Players Advisory Council (PAC) – sent a 23-page document to the rest of the tour’s membership on Tuesday morning, detailing key changes that will take effect in 2026. changes: field sizes, pace of play, Monday qualifying tournaments and – perhaps most importantly – the number of professionals who can call themselves fully exempt members.

The document follows an Oct. 16 memo from PAC Chairman Camilo Villegas, who informed the membership that the meetings had taken place, the changes were in order and that they would prepare for them. Tuesday’s filing, then, should not come as a surprise, but rather a glimpse into the possible future of the PGA Tour.

GOLF.com obtained access to the document via a player. While the changes are technically only a proposal, they are very likely to be fully adopted. of Tour Policy Boardchaired by Tiger Woods, five fellow tour veterans and six businessmen, will officially vote on the proposal on November 18.

Below is a summary of the biggest changes, who they would affect and why they have been pushed forward.

What is the biggest difference?

The next PGA Tour would have only 100 players banned entirely, out of 125. One hundred PGA Tour cards — a very round number of those who can enter almost any tournament in a given season — has been debated by players for months. For years, the 125 players completely banned from the Tour have changed the arithmetic of the sport. When the FedEx Cup Playoffs came around, it always was Who is Mr. 125 inside? And, Who is Mr. 126, sweaty on the outside?

Under the new system, the standard of play will be raised on the PGA Tour. No. 90-99 would not be able to feel as if their job is completely secure, while no. 100-110 will feel like they have some serious work to do to ensure job security for next season. The Tour would shift its poles by 20%, making it even more difficult to maintain the status from year to year.

Right now, 2023 Ryder Cupper Nicolai Hojgaard – who has largely suffered in 2024 – is ranked 100th. Matt Kuchar, who was in good form at the end of the summer, is ranked 105th. Sam Stevens, a 2024 rookie, has made 22 of 27 cuts, but just hasn’t done better than a T4 team finish in Zurich and a T10 individual finish at the Rocket Mortgage Classic. A next year like the one he’s put together this season puts him on the brink of retaining full status.

Importantly, finishing outside the top 100 does not mean players lose their PGA Tour status entirely. Conditional status has long existed for those who end up outside the sweet spot. Pros who finish 109th, for example, will still be able to enter the tournament, but they’ll just have to wait and see how many spots are available. Often they will be left outside looking inside.

What about the second biggest change?

Field sizes will decrease. The Tour has spent the last few years opening its door a little wider to meet the competitive threat posed by LIV, adding Tour cards for additional graduates from the Korn Ferry Tour and for top finishers on the DP World Tour. But just because more people were allowed into the restaurant didn’t mean everyone had a seat.

Those lower-ranked graduates of the Korn Ferry Tour and DP World Tour found it difficult to enter the tour early in the season when demand was at its highest, raising the question of whether their status had been devalued. After all, it’s a thing HAVE Tournament membership, but then you have to do something with it. How to play well!

But the Tour has struggled with forces like weather, daylight and pace of play to simply finish tournament days (or entire tournaments) on time. If the Tour is going to make cuts on Fridays as it struggles with limited daylight hours, field sizes will have to be reduced at almost every tournament. For events at the beginning of spring, like WC Phoenix Openthe proposed field size is now 120 players (up from 132). As the year goes on and the days get longer — like at the Valspar Championship in March — field sizes will be limited to 132 instead of the typical 144. And by the time summer rolls around, the typical field of 156 players will be whittled down to 144.

In short, tournament events will have around 10% fewer players and the tournament itself will have 20% fewer outright banned members. Both moves increase the importance of every point, every tournament … every shot.

Why is this necessary?

Many reasons. For starters, the wicked combination of game pace and daylight. In 2024, according to the document, 28% of tournaments saw at least one round not completed due to darkness. Because of the difficulty with the pace of tournament play, the tournament starts as close to sunrise as possible, usually ending at or near (or often after) sunset. This means practicing in the dark, either before or after your round. These changes are in part to make tournaments run more efficiently.

A natural answer would be: Make them play faster!

The tournament has created and changed regulations of the pace of the game seriously over the past few years, but when it comes to finishing a tournament on time, the easiest route they see is clearly limiting the number of players on the field rather than readjusting the time limits for the expected game.

Anything else that changes?

yes! Also the qualification is set to changein all categories. This includes those coming from the Korn Ferry Tour, the year-end Q-school and those weekly Monday qualifying tournaments that give non-exempt players a chance to play their way through.

We’ll start with Monday’s qualifying events. For all regular-season events with 120 players or fewer — primarily events in the spring with increased entry demand — Monday qualifiers will be eliminated. In the past, most of them have offered four spots to the lowest-scoring players on that week’s Monday, but with 12 fewer spots in the tournament, a Q Monday would counteract the reduced field size by offering four spots. back to lower ranking members. Evidence shared in the document sent to players says that 65-70% of players who enter the field through Monday’s qualifiers end up missing the cut.

However, Monday’s events are not being completely eliminated. Regular season events with fields of 132 players will see Monday’s qualifying spots halved from four to two. Monday’s qualifiers in the field of 144 will remain the same as they were in the fall FedEx Cup.

Graduation on the PGA Tour is also set to be shortened. In 2024, 30 players from the Korn Ferry Tour earned full status, with another 10 coming from the DP World Tour, as well as the top five and ties from the year-end Q-School. Going forward, under the proposal, those numbers would be 20 players from KFT, 10 from DPWT and just five from Q-School, not the top five and draws.

How did we get here?

The PGA Tour has long had a membership of about 200-250 players of various status levels. Each year, when the FedEx Cup standings are finalized, one player from each subsection of the membership is voted into the Advisory Council to hold monthly meetings on the status of the tournament. The 2024 PAC included the likes of Justin Thomas, Scottie Scheffler, Keith Mitchell, Mackenzie Hughes, Josh Teater, Adam Schenk and 10 others.

Essentially, these players are the local representatives that other members can talk to to raise concerns. Every year a new group of 16 is assembled and sometimes they don’t have much work to do, but this year’s group got busy. For the first time, the PAC included its 16 players in four subcommittees: Competitions and Regulations; Paths; Tours, Fans and Sponsors; Business.

While it may feel extremely formal for professional players in a unpaid position, the PAC meetings have been important in making changes to the Tour’s business model, according to those involved. Putting Justin Thomas on, say, the Tournaments, Fans and Sponsors subcommittee has been more efficient than asking JT to gather input from the membership on all aspects of the tournament.

Nearing the end of the first year of this newly formed PAC, this is the most comprehensive reassessment of the PGA Tour’s membership infrastructure in a very long time. It will no doubt be supported by some and reviled by others.

Is LIV Golf to blame?

Kind of! The tour was cruising along in the early 2020s, dealing with thorny issues of COVID protocols and simply planning tours. But in the rise of LIV Golf and guaranteed contracts that run afoul of PGA Tour rules, a significant portion of the Tour’s best and most marketable players left. This forced the Tour’s hand to increase the purse size, invite more players from Europe to play in America and also work seriously to change its product.

While the moves to reduce course sizes and membership options may seem like a stiff arm for the middle ranks of golf professionals, they effectively make the Tour a more meritocratic system — a point of pride for players and executives alike. his have long argued in battle against competitive golf leagues.