RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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For the last 20 years, golf fans have grown accustomed to the PGA Tour's FedEx Cup Playoffs. Players would compete throughout the regular season, earn designated points for tournament finishes and either secure their place in the postseason or fall short.
While there have been alterations since the first iteration of the postseason format, the finale has never created much fanfare.
Yes, the Tour Championship has produced some memorable moments: Rory McIlroy's hole-out eagle and subsequent playoff victory in 2016, Tiger Woods winning the event in 2018 with Justin Rose claiming the FedEx Cup, plus a handful of others.
However, no matter what the PGA Tour tried -- accumulated points, staggered starts, reducing the final field to 30 players, enhancing purses and bonuses -- the Tour Championship has never reached the level of its counterpart events from team sports. Mostly, it has been confusing, slow and an afterthought amid the final long days of summer.
That is where PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp entered the fray, leading the charge for a reimagined Tour Championship -- two weeks of match play across two renowned golf courses. From 32 players at the onset of the postseason in group stage competition to 16 players competing in a bracket format, a legitimate Tour Champion will be crowned each season starting in 2028.
That surely sounds more compelling than the current format, but it is not without some potential downsides, which golf fans (and the PGA Tour) will have to take in stride for the sake of growth and trying to conjure together a real postseason with real stakes.
These are not overdone but rather the precise temperature. The stakes are well-balanced in that there is a penalty for playing poorly, but not so much that a top player is put in danger of missing the postseason in its entirety.
Look at McIlroy this season. He finished 66th in a 69-man field at the St. Jude Championship. If he were to perform as such in the Championship Series Finale, it should not matter; he would have a strong enough regular season to propel him into the postseason. However, should McIlroy fall apart in Week 1 of the Tour Championship, he will not emerge from his group, missing out on the Week 2 bracket and the chance to be Tour Champion.
That's precisely how a system like this should work -- play well and move on, play poorly and pack up your locker.
Compare it to college basketball, if you wish. A potential top seed losing in its conference tournament will not prevent it from joining March Madness, though it might ding its positioning in the final bracket. However, a top seed getting outclassed in the first weekend knocks them out of the competition to become national champion.
Some golf fans may have likely forgotten about the early days of the FedEx Cup Playoffs when Vijay Singh won the first two playoff events and stood so far ahead in the points race that he technically did not need to play in the Tour Championship to win the FedEx Cup.
The PGA Tour moved some allocated points around, but combining success from the regular season and the postseason was never a happy marriage. There are ways to reward players for strong regular seasons -- crowning a regular-season champion is one option, and another is giving that victor an easier match play group from which to advance.
You get into the Tour Championship, you have a chance to win the big one -- just like everyone else.
What the 8 match-play groups would look like in new Tour Championship model based on standings after St. Jude pic.twitter.com/0EsfCh7Mjz
There will be matchups that don't feature household names in this new format. The best team in the NFL doesn't win the Super Bowl every season. The best team in college basketball is not necessarily the last one standing every March Madness.
For every McIlroy or Scottie Scheffler who advances to the second week of the Tour Championship, there will be an Alex Smalley or a Kurt Kitayama. They may even be the two who square off in the championship match for all we know, given the volatility of match play.
These are the risks of this format -- uncompetitive matches, lesser-known players competing in the late stages, stars exiting early -- but the risk seems worth the reward, especially considering it could develop new, even unexpected household names.
The U.S. Amateur is the match play event of the summer. Nothing will touch that, but the PGA Tour was wise to pull some similar threads, especially when it comes to the golf courses.
Watching a smaller gallery stroll the fairways of Merion a couple of weeks ago filled me with envy. A smaller footprint, a more intimate setting and a controlled gallery mean the PGA Tour can seek out venues that would not normally host professional tournaments.
The likes of Sleepy Hollow, Pine Valley Golf Club, Los Angeles Country Club, Seminole Golf Club, Interlachen and Cypress Point Club all become legitimate options to host either Week 1 or Week 2 of the Tour Championship.
That's what the truest of golf fans want to see -- historic and/or popular venues they dream of playing. Big ballparks with big buildouts will have their weeks on the PGA Tour, but for two weeks, a scaled-down operation will elevate the product.
"It has to be a challenging championship course," Rolapp said. "It has to be a place that America doesn't get to see very often. That'll be important. It has to be a site that excites our players and our fans, that's worthy of what I think is going to be a really unique and grueling competition that we haven't seen in golf before."
Rolapp also aims to grow the pie by getting more sports fans interested in golf. Match play over two weeks may be enough to do that, considering the opportunities for engagement -- different betting markets, group play and brackets, one-on-one matchups that could promote rivalries, etc.
Rolapp took charge of the PGA Tour in June 2025. It has been exactly 14 months since he was introduced as CEO, and changes have f...
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