If you’re anything like me, you struggled to find room on your plate on Thursday between the bird and the mash and green bean casserole. Thanksgiving dinner (and the seconds or thirds that follow) is best when the meal just becomes a mess of everything, touching every corner of the plate.
But maybe you too have struggled to find space at the table. Maybe you got kicked out of the way by Uncle Pete. Or maybe there was a little more room at the Children’s Table, so you went there. Thanksgiving often serves as this reminder—that there are more hungry people than there are sacks. Some people fit into the TV tray in the living room. It’s exactly what’s happening in pro golf, too.
The week’s subdued, but no less important, news came from a non-Thanksgiving part of the world — London — where the DP World Tour clarified that it will cut the number of full-status memberships on offer for 2027, following a very similar path recently charted by the PGA Tour. The European version of the Korn Ferry Tour, known as the Hotel Planner Tour, will also have fewer spots offered to graduates for the next step in professional golf.
These moves mimic the same treatment made, quite controversially, by the PGA Tour, which reduced the number of full cards from 125 to 100 this season. You’ve probably heard about all of this, so why should you care about DP World Tour news? What does it tell us?
The move reiterates that, just two or three years ago, there were plenty of open seats at the dinner table. For there to be more places on offer in the game’s biggest tournaments and for tournament operations to be simplified and for the stakes to be raised and for the best players to profit even more, some floors had to be removed.
For many years, the DP World Tour has offered full status membership to 110 players from the ranks of last year’s Dubai Race, its equivalent to the FedEx Cup. But moving forward, that number will now only be 100. The feeder cup below that will reduce the number of graduates from 20 to 15. All of this serves as an access opportunity to ensure that anyone who has earned full status can enter absolutely every tournament they want for the upcoming season.
Big fans of professional golf will have remembered that, in 2024, players will meet PGA Tour status who had graduated from the DP World Tour or the Korn Ferry Tour. mostly left out looking in at popular spring events like the WM Phoenix Open. The unintended message sent to these graduates was Congratulations on joining the PGA Tour, now wait your turn for a while. DP World Tour chief executive Guy Kinnings found his tour had the same problem.
“We’ve had a few task forces working on it all year,” Kinnings said Martin Dempster i Scotsman“and, if you can give those players who have earned their playing privilege through whatever different path that might be, that greater level of scheduling certainty and more balanced opportunity, that’s what we aspire to.”
When the PGA Tour dropped from 125 to 100and the DP World Tour from 110 to 100, pro players on the fringes were bound to dislike it, and Tour officials know it. Kinnings himself spoke of the move, noting “nothing we do is going to please everybody.” But there’s a hidden purpose to these moves that those executives won’t often discuss: It further depletes the game’s innings in a simple way that raises the stakes. When there is an apparent hierarchy between tournaments around the world, with sharper edges than ever before, the golf played by individuals at those edges increases in entertainment value.
Players on the PGA Tour saw it just last week when those top 100 card-carrying members were finalized at the RSM Classic. Those on the outside looking in won’t have a hard time winning their way into the event, but they’ve surrendered full autonomy of setting their own schedule. They’ll have to estimate how many players ranked higher than them want to play, say, the Valspar Championship, before they know they can add him to their schedule. The same now applies to the DP World Tour and its popular events, such as the Irish Open.
A major problem for some is not so much a problem for all. With less guaranteed for players on the fringes, some will entertain other options. Victor Perez, who played his way out of the PGA Tour in 2025, recently committed to LIV Golf for its 2026 season. That’s not an issue for the DP World Tour, especially since Perez will keep his membership there, but Perez noted how he felt the goalposts were moving on the PGA Tour. And to some extent, he is absolutely right. Pro golf in general has certainly reduced the size of its dinner tables, while the amount of food at each one continues to grow. All this means is that you better play well enough to guarantee yourself a spot.
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