“There will be some eggs spilled, crushed and broken, but I think in the end we will have a product that is much better than what we have now, for everyone involved,” Woods said during the Hero World Challenge.
Woods mixed his metaphors, but not the message. Using Rolapp’s guiding principles of “parity, scarcity and simplicity,” Woods and his fellow FCCers – a group that also includes Patrick Cantlay, Adam Scott, Camilo Villegas, Maverick McNealy and Keith Mitchell, along with a group of business consultants – have gone through numerous models of a new and improved Tour schedule. At the heart of this exercise, according to several sources, is “scarcity,” which strongly suggests that the current 38-event schedule (which does not include the fall tournaments) will see a significant reduction.
By most accounts, the goal is to limit the Tour lineup to about 25 events played on the best venues with the best fields and in the biggest markets.
“We started with a clean slate: what would be the best product we could make, what would it look like?” explained the 15-time major champion who won the schedule. “You take a white sheet of paper and you start throwing ideas out there, and there are like a thousand ideas on this board. Then you add all the people we interviewed and what they would like to see, and you throw them all out there.”
It’s a practice that many in the game have started for themselves. Woods has an ambitious eye on the 2027 season, but ’28 is more likely – and on which we base the likely schedule below.
“I’m going to give you tournaments and then I’m going to give you locations,” Billy Horschel said with little prompting when asked to come up with his version of a new schedule.
Most of these experiments start after the Super Bowl and end before Labor Day, with the obvious goal of avoiding the all-consuming shadow of football, and of the six players interviewed, there was no real theme other than an attempt to create the best product.
Based on player input and stated goals, this is what a 2028 PGA Tour schedule could look like:
- WM Phoenix Open – February 17-20
“Because of the weather, you’re going to start with Scottsdale. It might not be the best location, but it’s the most notable location,” Horschel said. “I think we should start the week after the Super Bowl [which is scheduled for Feb. 13 in 2028]. Even though it’s always been the same week, I think you still get a bigger number [of fans].”
And then?
“There’s no other location you’d want to go to because of the weather that time of year out West,” Horschel said, “so you go to Florida.”
- Miami Championship – February 24-27
“You could start [the season] Make it a Daytona 500 at Doral, a granddaddy tournament of sorts, but Phoenix would work just as well,” Ryan Palmer said.
- Arnold Palmer Invitational – March 2-5
- The Players Championship – March 9-12
- Week off – March 16-19
Much of the discussion with the Future Competition Committee focused on playing Tour events in major markets and/or on iconic courses. Austin, which hosted the track’s match play event from 2016 to 2023, would be a popular option geographically and from a market perspective for a spring event. There is also the idea that existing tournaments could be moved to larger markets, such as the John Deere Classic moving from Silvis, Illinois, to Chicago, or the Travelers Championship moving from Cromwell, Connecticut, to New York or Boston.
“We need to go to the biggest markets – right now we are in five of the 30 biggest markets [in the United States]; we need to make it 12 to 15. A third of our events need to be in the biggest markets,” Horschel said. “Then you get iconic locations that might not be in the biggest markets – Hilton Head, Pebble.”
- Austin Event – March 23-26
- Houston Open – March 30 – April 2
- Masters – April 6-9
- Week off – April 13-16
Weeks off after majoring? This has the support of many players and media partners.
- RBC Heritage – April 20-23
- Atlanta event – April 27-30
- Truist Championship – May 4-7
- Charles Schwab Challenge – May 11-14
- PGA Championship – May 18-21
- Week off – May 25-28
- Commemoration – June 1-4
- RBC Canadian Open – June 8-11
- US Open – June 15-18
- Week off – June 22-25
The lead-up to the ’28 Open Championship is complicated by the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, with the men’s golf competition at Riviera Country Club scheduled for July 19-22 and the new Mixed Team event after that, July 23-24. In turn, the R&A is moving its key date from its traditional mid-July spot to the first week of August.
- Travelers Championship – June 29 – July 2
- Denver event – July 6-9
- John Deere Classic – July 13-16
- Week off – July 20-23
- Scottish Open – July 27-30
Some players may travel across eight time zones to compete in the Scottish Open, or they may head to the yet-to-be-determined Open Championship venue early to acclimatise.
- Open Championship – August 3-6
- Week off – August 10-13
No part of the scheduling experiment would be more affected than the postseason. This is where a West Coast swing could come into play, when the weather would be significantly better than February. The locations would also lend gravitas.
- Playoff (Pebble Beach) – August 17-20
- Play-off (Riviera) – August 24-27
- Playoff (Tour Championship) – August 31 – September 3
A new postseason would be complicated by the Tour’s longstanding relationships with FedEx — which currently sponsors the season-long points race and the first playoff event in Memphis, where the shipping giant has its global headquarters — and East Lake, which has hosted the season finale every year since 2004.
It would also be an economic challenge for the resort to get companies like Pebble Beach on board for an August move.
“In a perfect world we would be playing Pebble this time of year [late summer]but we don’t have carte blanche to say where we go because most of these are private clubs or resorts like Pebble Beach, and if I’m Pebble Beach you want that week [in August] for people who pay money to play golf,” said Brian Harman. “It’s super complicated. Of course we would love to play Pebble in August, but so would everyone else on the planet.”
Tiger doesn’t know yet what 2026 will look like
Tiger Woods discusses his recovery from hernia surgery, his thoughts on PGA Tour Champions, improvements that can be made to the PGA Tour schedule, new CEO Brian Rolapp and the 2027 Ryder Cup.
According to Woods, there are countless possibilities for planning that fits Rolapp’s vision of ‘scarcity’. But even if the FCC can connect all the dots in time for a 2028 rollout, there will surely be resistance from players who have already seen play curtailed by the creation of signature events.
“Before LIV, it seemed to be a schedule that worked pretty well. Guys could choose where they wanted [play]”, said Tom Hoge. “The events had approximately the same status throughout the season.
“Go back to Tiger and Phil [Mickelson]they very rarely played the same events, other than WGCs or majors, but they did run the events they chose to play. That model seemed to work quite well. The great thing about playing the PGA Tour is that if you want to take a month off, you can, and if you want to play four weeks in a row, you can. I don’t like this idea of a shorter schedule.
There is also the idea that the events being cut from the Tour schedule could create a level of tournaments just below the primary product and a new platform for promotion and relegation. But that cannot convince some players that a large-scale switch to less-is-more is good for the bottom line And the sport.
“The game of golf is not growing because of this,” Palmer said. “I find it hard to see how this grows the game.”
Convincing both the “middle class” and the Tour’s numerous partners will likely be a bigger challenge than putting together a bigger and better schedule, but those working on it are confident that Rolapp’s vision is the right path forward.
“The hardest part is that no decision is ever made where there are no winners and losers. That’s the universe: push one way and you’ll be pushed another,” said Harman, a member of the Player Advisory Council. “It feels like we’re on to something, like it has some momentum. We’re trying to get more attention to golf. We’re trying to get more people to make an appointment for a week to sit down and watch golf.”
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