The PGA Tour announced today that it is making some dramatic changes to its competitive structure, beginning with the 2028 season.
Here are the six main ways the Tour’s model is about to change.
1. There will be two tiers of players
The tour’s new model will include two separate series of tournaments—the PGA Tour Championship Series and PGA Tour Challenger Series—that will run concurrently during the season.
The Championship Series is home to the top dogs. It will feature up to 24 events, including 16 signature events, The Players Championship, four major championships, season-ending events and the Presidents Cup or Ryder Cup.
Each of the roughly 16 signature events will be 72-hole stroke-play tournaments with average field sizes of 120 golfers with 36-hole cuts to the top 65 and ties. Each will have a purse of at least $20 million. The season will run from around February through August.
The Challenger Series will be the primary pathway to the Championship Series, with golfers competing to advance to the top track, including in-season elevation if a player wins twice.
There will be around 20 events on the Challenger Series with 144-man fields. Seven of the 20 events will be played during weeks where the Championship Series is off. The other 13 events will be played opposite the Championship Series.
How players will qualify for these tiers to start the 2028 season is still being decided.
Some of the finer eligibility details like major medical exemptions, career accomplishment exemptions, etc. are still being worked out. However, we know that if you are on the Championship Series, you are staying on the entire season and are eligible for all of those events. And if you are on the Challenger Series, you are eligible for every event on that tier.
Player will only be allowed to compete in either the Championship Series or Challenger Series but not both. They will not be required to compete in every Championship Series tournament.
However, the Players Championship will continue to have its own qualification criteria and might include golfers from both series.
2. There will be promotion and relegation
Think of this like European soccer. The best performers keep their spot in the top division and the worst performers are replaced.
The Championship Series will retain a minimum of 90 players at the end of the season. Meanwhile, the Challenger Series will be sending its top 20 players to be promoted to the Championship Series at the end of the year.
In-season promotion will exist in the form of winning multiple Challenger Series events in the same season or winning a major championship. Otherwise, the promotion will take place at the end of the year.
Golfers who fail to retain their eligibility in the Championship Series and face potential relegation will be able to compete in a “last chance” series after the regular season ends. The series will include four to six events in the U.S. in the fall.
The fields will include a limited number of spots for top finishers in the Championship Series, as well as players facing relegation, Challenger Series players and other categories that are yet to be finalized.
3. The Tour Championship will look completely different
Match play is coming.
The Tour Championship, long a maligned and irrelevant event is getting a new makeover with a match play format to decide the champion.
And in what feels like a dream, the Tour Championship is going to be rotating venues. You won’t believe who is on the wish list.
The event will continue to be played at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta this year and in 2027 before being rotated to “prestigious courses,” including the potential for many that the Tour will play for the first time such as Pine Valley Golf Club, Cypress Point Club and Seminole Golf Club.
While these courses don’t have the bandwidth to host a major championship or bigger Tour event, the match play component—which does not require the same level of buildout given the small field size and lack of players on the course at any one time—enables these courses to host.
4. The Tour will be heading to several new markets
I mentioned earlier that we are getting up to 24 Championship Series events.
If you subtract the majors, team events and Players Championship, there will be around 16 regular-season Championship Series events.
The Tour has already decided on 10 of these. That includes the current eight signature events—the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Genesis Invitational, Arnold Palmer Invitational, RBC Heritage, Cadillac Championship, Truist Championship, Memorial Tournament and Travelers Championship are expected to remain part of the future schedule.
Who else will join them?
As previously reported, the Tour is targeting larger markets such as Boston, Denver, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C., to fill out the remaining five spots in the calendar. They are beginning to finalize the markets, courses, dates and sponsors for the remaining tournaments.
5. There will be no more sponsor exemptions
Long a fixture of PGA Tour fields, sponsor exemptions are being eliminated.
If you are in the Championship Series, you are in the Championship Series. If you are in the Challenger Series, you are in the Challenger Series.
No qualification concerns. No playing up a tier or down a tier. No responsibility on sponsors to pick players who might draw interest.
This takes away the possibility for a guy like Jordan Spieth to get preferential treatment (not picking on him, but he did take advantage of this route a number of times in recent years).
6. Developmental pathways will still exist—but they’ll look different
The policy board is still finalizing membership eligibility and exemptions for the Challenger Series, including access for DP World Tour and PGA Tour University golfers, according to the release. Those categories will be finalized before the start of the 2027 season.
The tour said it would continue to operate the Korn Ferry Tour and its Q-school to provide developmental pathways into its ecosystem.
But it’s only logical that the Challenger Series will largely replace the Korn Ferry Tour in spirit given the number of players in the first two tiers.
“While specifics of the PGA Tour developmental pathways were not voted on, the Boards acknowledged organized developmental pathways—comprised of Korn Ferry Tour, PGA Tour Americas and PGA Tour University in the current model—remain critical to identifying and preparing the next generation of players [for] ensuring the Tour’s long-term success and sustainability,” the tour said in its release.
Sean’s take
It’s hard to argue with any of these changes. I’m very excited.
This new competitive structure isn’t being formally introduced until the 2028 season, but much of the groundwork is already in place. You can see it coming together.
Isn’t it wild that the Tour is going to places like Pine Valley and Cypress Point? Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine something like that happening.
And now we are heading into an era of total clarity and structure within the Tour. It’s not going to be bloated. It’s going to be more cutthroat.
In the end, this is going to be about competition. You can’t lounge around on career accomplishments. If you can’t compete at the highest level, you will be sent down.
Don’t like it? Earn your way back.
I’m particularly chuffed by the elimination of sponsor exemptions. I’ve been on this block for a long time now.
If I had to point out one criticism, it would be the Tour’s insistence on reaching for bigger markets. I understand the idea, but it’s not necessarily a slam dunk. There is risk to it. A lot of times it’s the smaller markets that can rally around a tournament.
We’ll see how everything turns out, but I’m floating with excitement.
What do you think of all of this? Let me know below in the comments.
Top Photo Caption: Tour CEO Brian Rolapp continues to cook. (GETTY IMAGES/Orlando Ramirez)
Jeff S
4 weeks ago
Hard to believe that the Tour would not want to have annual events in the 4th, 5th and 10th largest markets – DFW. Houston and Phoenix.