Everything changes for PGA Tour players in 2028. Luckily, they have a year to think about it and get ready because it’s unlike anything that's been seen before.
OK, you’ll get your match play, but you read it here; you’re probably not going to like it as much as you thought, although I hope I'm wrong. The good news is it’s a round-robin kind of a thing to start, so players don’t go home after one match. In fact, it appears that nobody ends up going home early.
So, here’s what we know.
The finale of the 2028 PGA Tour season, so far being called the Tour Championship Series, will be three weeks of play, just like we have now. That’s where the similarity ends.
The first week is a 72-hole, stroke -play event that is just like what we've come to know as the Tour Championship. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll use that here because we are all used to it.
The top 90 players will participate instead of just the top 30. We don’t know if there will be a cut or not. One advantage to this larger field is that the tournament will be harder to win because there’s more competition.
In this first event, the season-long points winner will be decided. In addition, bonus distributions will be paid after this event. Hopefully, this does not mean back to the ever-changing points and the whiteboard addition-and-subtraction exercise for Steve Sands, but if it does, no doubt he’s ready for it.
But wait, there’s more. Ta-da! It’s the top 32!
In week two, the top 32, in what for the sake of simplicity we’ll call “The Series,” move on to two weeks of match play.
Those 32 players, which we presume will be seeded in some method that makes sense, will all play every day. For this competition, they will be divided into eight groups of four players. Each player will be pitted against the other three players in his group. Everybody plays every day. This sounds similar to the first three days of the later years of the Dell Match Play, if you remember.
The top two from the each of the four groups advance to the second week of “The Series.” In other words, 16 players will advance to the second round of matches. Sweet 16? Sound familiar? Again, all 16 players will play every day.
Then, according to the PGA Tour, “Golfers will advance through the bracket based on their win-loss record, with the final two undefeated players battling to be crowned Tour Champion. Player records across all four rounds will determine the final championship standings.”
So, just like a normal knockout bracket, keep winning, and you keep your shot at going for the title. But whenever you lose, you get knocked down into a separate bracket, which we'll get more clarity on down the line.
Now, this is one of those things that will have to be seen before it can be judged as a hit or a miss. If two players that the viewers don’t especially like end up in the final, well, what does that mean? It’s all unknowable at this point. It may not matter if the golf is good enough.
But nobody goes home early, which was the big downfall of previous match-play events. Remember Nick O'Hearn beat Tiger Woods in round one at La Costa at the Accenture Match Play and then again in another year in the third round at Dove Mountain?
“The goal of the Future Competition Committee was to create an easier-to-follow competitive model for our fans, with greater consequence and a stronger season-long narrative," PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp said about this new finale to the finale to the finale.
The goal of the PGA Tour with this new season-ending series was to create an end-of-season event that was worth the effort it took players to get there. It certainly seems like there’s definitely going to be some hard work to get through it on top.
Rolapp concluded by adding that the Tour Championship Series “is a season-ending structure that rewards excellence over the course of the year while building toward a reimagined TOUR Championship.”
Everybody out there watching and listening will decide if it does that or not. And remember, this new animal was player-created by the Future Competitions Committee headed by Tiger Woods. It was based on a lot of fan input, so they think it will work. I’m a fan of week one. The other two, you’ll have to convince me.
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