Golf’s ability to create stars is imperative, whatever a new PGA Tour looks like

Outgoing Commissioner Jay Monahan has used a form of this word – regenerate – twice in the last two years. It was lost on topics such as private equity investments and a way back for LIV Golf players, and even handing the helm to a new CEO.

But it’s what the PGA Tour can’t afford to lose as it tries to create a bold new model.

“As an organization we are consistently regenerating talent and creating stars,” Monahan said at The Players Championship in 2024, when negotiations with LIV Golf’s Saudi backers were still ongoing with far more hope for a deal than there is now.

And then, in August, at the Tour Championship, where Monahan held his final press conference while introducing Brian Rolapp as CEO, he named 11 first-time winners on the PGA Tour and paused for emphasis.

“Further proof that talent regeneration is alive and well on the PGA Tour,” he said.

That number has now risen to fifteen winners on the PGA Tour this year. The last was Michael Brennan, perhaps the most unlikely of them all.

The Wake Forest graduate was looking forward to the Korn Ferry Tour after winning three times on the PGA Tour Americas (the equivalent of Double-A baseball) this summer. The major leagues were still a year away at best.

And then he received a sponsor exemption to the Bank of Utah Championship, unleashed his powerful swing and won in his PGA Tour debut as a pro to obtain a two-year exemption.

Has a star been born?

Talent is discovered more than it is created. It needs a little more time and a small dose of context. The stars are currently in hibernation. Brennan didn’t stop Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele, but Rico Hoey and Pierceson Coody.

It was no less impressive, and Brennan now gets a bigger stage. He’ll compete in at least one $20 million signature event next year – the RBC Heritage, which replaces Sentry as the winners’ portal – and he has a reasonable chance of finishing the year in the top 50 in the world (he’s ranked No. 43) to get into the Masters.

It’s all about opportunity, and that’s what the Futures Competition Committee should keep in mind as it figures out what 2027 will look like.

Rolapp announced this committee in August and formally met for the first time last week.

Tiger Woods is the chairman of a committee made up of five players – Adam Scott, Patrick Cantlay, Camilo Villegas, Maverick McNealy and Keith Mitchell – and three business advisors, including progressive thinker Theo Epstein.

Rolapp got attention when he said, “The goal is not gradual change. The goal is significant change.” He talked about a clean sheet of paper, being “as aggressive as possible.”

The idea is to make each tournament meaningful, and 2026 – effectively a bridge year – will feature as many as 46 events. About 30 of those events are more “opportunities.”

But it is precisely that opportunity that generates stars.

Will a new Tour model include someone like Brennan? Yes, because he played Black Desert with a sponsor exemption. Those are still available.

And there remains a trail of the Korn Ferry Tour that has produced players like Scheffler and Schauffele over the past decade, and players like David Duval and Justin Thomas before them. The best players always find their way. Some get there faster.

Brooks Koepka and Jordan Spieth both narrowly missed the second phase of Q-School in 2012. Spieth received sponsorship exemptions, earned a card and then a trophy, and played in the Presidents Cup a year later. Koepka started the Challenge Tour in Europe and it took a little longer. But he now has five majors.

There are indications that a new model will target the stars in an attempt to get them to play against each other more often. That’s what makes meaningful competition. The other word Rolapp used was ‘scarcity’, while less means more.

It’s not hard to imagine a tour schedule of signature events, along with The Players Championship, four majors and the FedExCup playoffs. That would essentially create two tours, not much different from what exists now.

Whatever it looks like – and there is a lot of work ahead for the committee – the key is to allow enough movement from the ‘opportunities’ to the ‘meaningful tournaments’ to regenerate.

That’s perhaps the biggest difference between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, and the main issue that prevented the Saudi-funded league from being recognized by the official World Golf Ranking. LIV starts and ends its season with the same 54 players (except for the occasional substitute).

Chris Gotterup got his chance in Myrtle Beach and then beat Rory McIlroy at the Scottish Open a year later. There are just as many stories of players taking their chances and not lasting long against tougher competition.

It remains to be determined how Brennan and other recent newcomers – Jake Knapp, Ryan Gerard, Andrew Novak – will fare against a steady diet of golf’s best players.

Rolapp is still relatively new to the golf world after his long tenure in the NFL. But while he is remembered for talking about equality, scarcity and simplicity, he also brought up the most important word in golf: meritocracy.

“Whatever we do, wherever we end up in a competitive model, let’s just make sure I can earn my way into it,” he said. “And if I earn my way in, I deserve to be there.”

For now, Michael Brennan knows the feeling.