Smaller, greater high quality fields look set to be a part of a significant overhaul of the PGA Tour’s schedule because the US circuit bids to make its tournaments extra engaging to gamers, TV viewers. tour venues and sponsors.
A current assembly of the PGA Tour’s Participant Advisory Council (PAC) has laid out a raft of modifications to the established order that, if carried out, would outcome within the tour changing into extra aggressive, with diminished sized fields, fewer exemptions and fewer gamers being promoted from the decrease tier excursions.
This evaluation follows intensive suggestions from PGA Tour members about match discipline sizes and tempo of play, together with enjoying privileges and the FedExCup factors system. These potential modifications supported by the PAC might be voted on by the PGA Tour Coverage Board at its assembly subsequent month.
The next gadgets might be introduced to the Coverage Board for a vote on November 18. If agreed on, they might come into impact for the 2026 season.
- Regulate the utmost variety of gamers in a discipline of from 156 to 144, with a discount to 120 or 132 as required by circumstances corresponding to restricted daylight.
- Change exempt standing from the highest 125 gamers to the highest 100 within the FedExCup and add a conditional class for these ending 101-125.
- Lower the variety of PGA Tour playing cards coming from the Korn Ferry Tour from 30 to twenty, whereas sustaining 10 from the DP World Tour and capping Qualifying College at 5.
- Scale back Open Qualifying positions at fields with fewer than 144 gamers through the FedExCup Common Season.
- Regulate the FedExCup factors distribution desk with a slight improve to second-place factors for Majors and The Gamers Championship and a slight lower to factors for these ending eleventh and past and a slight lower to Signature Occasion factors for these ending seventh and past.
The proposed modifications come on the again of the PGA Tour struggling a major drop in TV viewing figures for its common season tournaments over the past two years within the face of elevated competitors from different sports activities and the arrival of LIV Golf in 2022.
A number of long-term headline sponsors, together with Wells Fargo, Sanderson Farms, Honda, RBC and Shriners, haven’t renewed their contracts, whereas many occasions suffered from a scarcity of star energy, with some that includes no gamers contained in the world’s prime 20.
