It’s one tour, it’s two tours. It’s only slightly complicated and basically what we have had in the past. Or the more things change, the more they stay the same. Sort of.
Starting in 2028, the PGA Tour will “divide” itself into a Championship Series and a Challenger Series. The PGA Tour Championship Series starts in February, as they previously suggested it would. We don’t know when the PGA Tour Challenger Series begins. You could guess January, but we have no information yet.
CEO Brian Rolapp, in a press release, said that these modifications will create a “new competitive model grounded in meritocracy, with clearer pathways, higher stakes and more consistency.”
The new structure is thanks to the Future Competition Committee of the PGA Tour, headed by Tiger Woods and including Patrick Cantlay, Maverick McNealy, Keith Mitchell, Adam Scott, Camilo Villegas, and three strategic business advisors in Joe Gorder, John Henry, and Theo Epstein.
We don’t know exactly which events will be in the Championship Series, but it will include the major championships and The Players, and you can probably guess that it will be somewhat like the last couple of seasons where we have had Signature Events for the top players.
Now, overall, there will be 23-24 events in the Championship Series, and the players who are eligible don’t have to play in all of them. (Their suitcases thank the Tour.) The Championship Series will include The Players, major championships, season-ending events (like playoffs), and international team events (Ryder Cup, Presidents Cup). But the rest have not yet been named. You could assume it will include the Arnold Palmer Invitational and The Memorial. It won’t start until February of each year, or in other words, they won’t go up against the Super Bowl.
Those who qualify for the Championship Series will include the top 90 players from the previous year’s points list and 20 players promoted from the Challenger Series. There will be 120 players in each Championship Series event, so that means 10 additional players have the potential to be added. All events will have a cut to the top 65 and ties. Just wait! There’s more.
The Championship Series events will be contested as 72-hole stroke-play events, with a 36-hole cut, and the purses for these will be “at least” $20 million.
There will be additional players in the Championship Series that will include tournament winners, medical extensions, and career milestones, like guys who have won 20 events, which, in the past, have been considered lifetime exemptions. No one has dealt with this quite yet. There will be no sponsor exemptions. Wow!
Players in the top 90 who do not earn enough points by the end of the season to remain in the Championship group will be given the opportunity to play in four to six “last chance” events. If they don’t gain enough points in the “last chance” events to retain their Championship Series card, they will be bumped down to the Challenger Series for the next season.
At the same time, perhaps not the same week, that the PGA Tour has Championship events, it will also run the Challenger Series. However, players on the Championship Series level cannot drop down to the Challenger level in the same season.
There will be approximately 20 events in the Challenger Series. (So, you can see right away that we end up with about 40-45 total events, which is what we’ve always had.) Purses will be “at least” $4 million. These events will include 144 players, or fewer, depending on daylight (and how slowly they play).
Seven of the Challenger Series events will be elevated. We don’t know what elevated means in this group, but perhaps more money.
The Challenger events will be 72-hole stroke-play events and will have a 36-hole cut with the top 65 and ties moving to the weekend.
Results from the Challenger Series determine who can move up to the Championship Series the next season. (No more details on that yet.)
Challenger Series players who win twice in a season get an immediate promotion to the Championship Series level.
Players in the top 90 who do not earn enough points by the end of the season to remain in the Championship group will be given the opportunity to play in four to six “last chance” events. If they don’t gain enough points in the “last chance” events to retain their PGA Tour Championship Series card, they will be bumped down to the Challenger Series for the next season.
My guess – it’s a total guess here – is that the Challenger Series events will break up the playing of the Championship Series and vice versa. This should be a way to keep top players from needing to play five and six in a row, realizing that fans have no sympathy for this “complaint,” mainly because golf fans most likely have to work between 48 and 51 weeks a year.
One thing that fans have loved/hated in the last few years is the points awarded for each tournament based on finishes. Guess what? They remain. But we don’t have the breakdown yet. Hopefully, no whiteboard adding and subtracting will be involved.
There will be a new season-ending plan. We don’t know what that will be yet, but there’s the possibility of a match-play event in it. Those of us who have been through the match-play situation for season enders know this will probably not last long. It never does because in your mind, the number one and two players will be pitted against each other. Believe me when I say, it never comes to this. Tiger and Phil never faced off except in special events. People will be disappointed in the way this plays out. They won’t want to watch.
There will be a Q-School. No details yet.
There will be elevated international events in the fall that will include “top players from the PGA Tour Championship Series,” according to the announcement information.
The Korn Ferry Tour, PGA Tour Americas, and PGA Tour University are important developmental programs and will continue, so far as we know. No more details here either.
While the Future Competition committee has hammered out the big parts, those things that weren’t mentioned here will be announced at a later date. There are a lot of moving parts, and they dealt with the big stuff first and probably had nothing but headaches getting this far. It will be interesting to see how this works out, but it's a lot the same and a few different things, so nobody should be too shocked come January of 2028.
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