The PGA Tour informed its players in a memo Tuesday morning that it will roll out two financial initiatives for its former fully exempt PGA Tour members and fully exempt Korn Ferry Tour members starting next year.
The first initiative is the Member Support Program, which will award $150,000 in income guarantees to numbers 126 and above on the previous season’s FedExCup points list who were exempt during that season. Players will receive this money at the end of the season, provided they meet the minimum of 12 events on the PGA and Korn Ferry tours. If players do not reach $150,000 in earnings across all tours, they will not be required to refund the difference.
The second program is the Pathways Player Achievement Grant, which gives exempt Korn Ferry Tour members a $15,000 grant at the start of each season that players can use for anything they want. Players eligible for these scholarships include numbers 21-75 on last year’s KFT points list, numbers 1-10 in the PGA Tour Americas points list and the top five available players from the PGA Tour University. Players do not have to play a certain number of events to qualify for this grant.
Funds for these programs were reallocated from the Earnings Assurance Program, which was created three years ago and provided fully exempt PGA Tour members with a $500,000 advance at the start of each season. With fewer exempt players starting in 2026, the PGA Tour will hand out fewer of those advances.
The PGA Tour Policy Board approved these decisions with the goal of “rewarding strong performers and supporting both players rising through the system and those returning from the PGA Tour.”
The Korn Ferry Tour will also allow distance-measuring devices for the entire 2026 season, while also adopting the revised pace-of-play policy it rolled out last spring. The policy states that when a player is timed, the first bad time will result in a one-shot penalty, the second in a two-shot penalty and the third in disqualification. Last season, three players received one-off penalties for bad times.
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