The list of takeaways from Tuesday’s PGA Tour announcement was so long it feels worthy of a different distinction. It’s more of a scroll, and not the kind you do on your phone. The Tour’s own FAQ sheet sent to media took seven pages to answer all our plausible questions … and that was before its CEO answered 45 minutes of additional queries during a press conference.
So yeah, Tuesday was a lot. You can read about it all here. But if your attention span can bear it, return to this piece for the one detail many people are overlooking. The one detail that truly makes a new competitive model palatable to the entire Tour membership: schedule predictability.
A little-known fact about current life on the PGA Tour is that it is one big game of musical chairs, without nearly enough seats for everyone to sit at. Some fields in summertime, with peak daylight hours, are 144 players strong. Other fields, in the spring, boast just 132 players. Other fields yet, technically in the winter, have just 120. And how many unique players, right now, hold some semblance of access into PGA Tour events?
More than 200. Closer to 250. The number is not clearly defined, because access into the Tour is not so simply defined, and that haziness makes planning a schedule difficult.
Englishman Matt Wallace is ranked No. 83 in the world, but his PGA Tour access is bad: No. 167 on the priority ranking. Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen’s OWGR rank is slightly worse, 86th, but his Tour access ranking is much better: 129th. Neergaard-Petersen was able to squeeze into the WM Phoenix Open while Wallace was not. But the Dane has not played too well, so he’s competed in zero of the $20 million Signature Events. Wallace, on the other hand, has played in three Signature Events.
The bottom line may only be clear to people associated with professional golf: neither player really knew what their schedule would be when the year began. Neither are constantly competing against Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy. They’re both very literally making a schedule as the weeks and months pass. And it’s now getting to crunch time regarding if either of them will be PGA Tour members next year.
A very important, though very quiet, piece of the future PGA Tour structures announced Tuesday is that whenever a new PGA Tour season begins, more than 200 golfers will know exactly what tournaments they’ll be playing in. On Jan. 1 each year, they will either get 21 stroke-play starts on the Championship Series, or they will get 20 starts on the Challenger Series. That’s 21 starts in $20 million events, or 20 starts in events with at least $4 million purses.
Not hard to spot a difference there. But you know what a worse-case scenario is? Graduating to the PGA Tour and then sitting in the alternate list, a couple spots out, traveling all the way to Phoenix or Torrey Pines and hoping a player tweaks their back on the driving range, opening a spot in the field. That has happened for many players down the priority ranking in recent seasons. Korn Ferry Tour graduates have arrived on the PGA Tour and had to accept forced off-weeks, all because they couldn’t enter a field because the Tour itself had become bloated. They were forced into being patient, waiting to play in late April, May, June and July — at which point they were already playing from a points deficit.
These days, Tour pros of a lower level feel an obligation to play as much as possible to maintain their status. They can’t be at every wedding or bachelor party — or at least they can’t commit right away. Only when they win and lock up status does the calendar start to relax for them. Don’t believe me? Ask a guy who has been in that spot before.
“[Schedule predictability] was really something that was reserved for the top 30, maybe the top 50 players,” Maverick McNealy said Tuesday. “Knowing what they were going to play in at the start of the year, and now we’ve got over 200 members that are going to know January 1st every tournament that they’re in.
“That’s going to be a huge quality of life thing, and for a huge portion of the membership, they’re going to be playing for much elevated financial opportunities, while still maintaining a much cleaner system to move up and down and through and identify the best players.”
That predictability works in both directions. Player No. 70 will know every date when he’s competing and will also know every other player he needs to beat over the course of the season to finish in the top 90 and retain membership. Player No. 170, down on the Challenger Series, will know every date he’s competing and won’t be fighting for space in those events. No one will elbow him out of the field — everyone is starting at the same place, and fighting for those 20 promoted positions.
This is the simplicity Brian Rolapp was after. The kind that fans can follow along with, but also the kind that makes perfect sense for Tour players as well.
