What will the ‘new’ PGA Tour look like?
It’s a question golf fans have been asking for several years, three, four or more, since the arrival of LIV threw the entire pro golf ecosystem into chaos. We got one answer when the Tour rolled out its new limited-field, big-money Signature Event model for the 2023 season; that model has evolved every year since. But the arrival of new CEO Brian Rolapp this summer has made it clear to everyone that bigger, more substantial changes are coming. He appointed Tiger Woods as chairman of the committee Future Competition Committee and didn’t mince words when describing what’s to come:
“The goal is not incremental change,” Rolapp said in August. “The goal is significant change.”
So what will that look like? We’ll see. And we start looking for clues. And we got one on Wednesday, when Harris English – the top-ranked player at this week’s RSM Classic, the final event of the Tour’s 2025 season – teased a version of what “significant change” could mean.
“We have some smart guys at the helm. With Brian Rolapp coming in, he sees the PGA Tour in a different light,” English said. This is a near-unanimous sentiment about Rolapp, who everyone on the PGA Tour describes as “impressive.” (Maybe it’s because they all love football, and because Rolapp’s former employer, the NFL, is such a behemoth. That’s the subtext: If Rolapp’s leadership was good enough for them, it’s good enough for the Tour.)
But here’s where things got interesting:
“Sometimes change is good,” English said. “I understand they want the best players to play together more often, and I think the talk about the Tour potentially starting after the Super Bowl is a good thing because we can’t really compete with football. So we’ll see where it goes.”
Starting after the Super Bowl! That would indeed be news. Sources familiar with Tour discussions have suggested nothing is set in stone, but it is clear the structure of the season is on the table. The English schedule does contain a red flag: the WM Phoenix Open traditionally takes place the same week as the Big Game and is the most attended event on the Tour; they certainly wouldn’t move That? But his larger point still stands. The Tour has done its best to work around the NFL schedule to avoid fighting on Sundays. It seems logical that the NFL offseason would be the Tour season.
What would that season look like? English suggested that the Signature-Event model could get another massive change – or even be eliminated altogether.
“I think that’s what they’re going to change in the future, maybe in 2027, by making all the tournaments the same and not having the eight elevated events and the regular events. They’ll have 20, 22 events that are all the same,” he said. “I think that’s a good model to have. That’s where you see all the top players playing every event because you can’t really afford to take one out.”
English’s suggestion would solve what is perhaps the Tour’s biggest branding problem: Currently, it is difficult to define the difference between a Signature Event and a regular full-field event when they are both considered PGA Tour events. If there were fewer events, it would be easier to define their importance.
English, however, wanted to make one thing clear: he’s grateful to be able to play them all.
“As far as the higher level events, like, I love them, even if they weren’t high level I would probably play them all. I’ve been doing that for a long time,” he said. “Really, Pebble is the only one I haven’t played in a long time in my career, right where it fell into the schedule. I like playing on the West Coast. I like being on the starting line, playing a lot of events there and getting your season started right. We’ll see where it goes. I think they’ll go more where 20 events are all the same, all the points, all the money, everything the same.”
The Tour’s tea leaves are difficult to read with perfect clarity. While Rolapp talks about scarcity, his Tour has added two new fall events for the next few years with new locations and new sponsors. There are open questions about Hawaii’s future as part of the schedule; English expressed regret that the Tour will not go to Kapalua this year, where the calendar season normally begins, and he would be sad to see the Hawaiian swing disappear or lose other venues that follow, such as Torrey Pines or even the fall events. Canceling tournaments may sound like a logical move on paper. That does not mean that it remains without consequences.
“Tournaments like this, I don’t want to see them go away because I know how much they mean to this community. A lot of these fall events, we go to a lot of places around the country that don’t have a ton of golf tournaments and you can tap into a different fan base. I don’t really want to see them go away, but I think they will find a time and a place for some of them,” he said.
Engels, 36, is used to tinkering with the Tour. While some things have remained the same (this is his fourteenth time playing the RSM), many other things have not. He’s seen points, payouts, schedules, structures and rewards change and change and change again. His message was again clear here: Wherever they tell me I can play, I’m going to play. And change can be for the best.
“If you look at other leagues, they are all super competitive and what you did two or three years ago doesn’t mean anything today,” he said. “The NFL is cutting back on guys all the time. We’re getting pretty cutthroat here, but if it makes our product better and more fans watch and more fans come to tournaments, then I’m all for it.”
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