Editor’s note: “In Case You Missed It” is a GGP+ feature that highlights a story from Global Golf Post‘s Monday magazine.
Whether it’s called evolution or revolution, the coming changes to the PGA Tour’s eligibility criteria may not have a profound effect on what fans see on their screens or on-site, but they fundamentally amend the tour’s business model.
Those precious PGA Tour cards, the ones that come with full playing privileges, will become more precious in 2026 when only the top 100 players in the FedEx Cup points race will be fully eligible for the following season, a reduction of 25 golden tickets, or 20 percent of the workforce.
That assumes the tour’s Policy Board formally adopts later this month the changes proposed by the Player Advisory Council in a lengthy memo that also focuses on reducing the size of tournament fields with the goal of improving pace-of-play issues.
The notion of less is more comes to mind.
“It’s modernizing the PGA Tour to a better spot. Six or seven years ago I would not have said this, but this is the right call,” said Johnson Wagner, a former Policy Board member who now works for Golf Channel.
Businesses streamline (something the tour is likely learning about now that it has a private-equity partner), and while the changes will reduce playing opportunities – the buzz phrase around the tour for so long – it leans into the notion of rewarding the best players. Players who finish outside the top 100 – Nos. 101 to 125 – will still maintain conditional status and get a number of tournament starts, allowing them to make a very comfortable living.
Playing the PGA Tour is an earned privilege, not a right, though there is an understandable sense of entitlement among many who are accustomed to getting tournament tee times and the accompanying perks without moving any needles.
Speaking on PGA Tour Radio last week, Peter Malnati, a Policy Board member who has danced on both sides of the top 125 through the years, said, “The direction they’re going is towards magnifying the value of having a PGA Tour card …
“As of right now, the membership of the tour is too big, our events are too big, and there are people at the bottom who are supposed to be fully exempt players on tour who don’t know the value of their tour card because they don’t know what they’re going to get in.”
These changes will make all of that clearer.
There was a time when players had to finish among the top 60 money winners to keep their cards before the so-called all-exempt tour came into existence in 1983, so trimming 25 cards isn’t as radical as it could be.
Michael Kim, who finds himself 115th on the FedEx Cup points list with three events remaining, tweeted: “To be honest, I don’t love the changes, but that’s probably because I feel threatened by the number of cards going down from 125 to 100. It’s my job to improve and continue to get better and make sure I’m not in the situation I am this year.”
As it stands today, Matt Kuchar, Ryan Fox, Zac Blair, Joel Dahman and Matt Wallace are inside the top 125 but would be outside the top 100, changing their status under the proposed new rules.
It goes back to what Rory McIlroy has said more than once: Play better.
Golf – particularly the PGA Tour – likes to talk about being the ultimate meritocracy. These changes play into that ethos.
If anything, reducing the number to 100 will likely push some players worried about their status to compete in a few more events, thereby strengthening some weaker fields. Getting on tour is harder now, and staying there will be harder. That’s a good thing.
Professional golf is star driven even if LIV’s effort to buy relevance through signing stars has not paid the dividends its creators imagined. The proposed tour changes won’t significantly affect the Scottie Schefflers and Xander Schauffeles of the world because they will continue to feast on the guaranteed riches that come with the signature events (which will maintain 72-player fields) but the adjustments will reduce the bloat the tour has developed.
Cutting full-field events from 156 to 144 and smaller events from 132 to 120 trims the fat. It will keep past champions from playing occasionally, but it could help Korn Ferry Tour graduates who struggle to get enough tour starts.
On the surface, reducing the number of cards earned through the Korn Ferry Tour from 30 to 20 looks dramatic. In reality, the players who got the last 10 cards through the KFT got limited starts, and only one of those players – Chris Gotterup, who won the opposite-field Myrtle Beach Classic – is inside the top 125 in points this year.
Only 11 of the 30 KFT graduates are inside the top 125 to this point.
Cutting out or reducing the number of Monday qualifiers may crush the storybook dreams of some, but their impact is more fiction than fact anyway.
Baseball pitchers complained about the pitch clock installed in 2023, but they adapted. Golfers, the ultimate creatures of habit, could and should adapt to play faster.
These changes have been under discussion for months, and pace of play has driven much of it. Will taking away 12 spots from a full-field event make that much difference? It will help, and it’s needed.
According to the tour, 28 percent of tournaments this year had at least one round that did not finish due to darkness. Tour players can play faster, but there are times when the math makes it difficult because so many players are squeezed into a finite amount of daylight.
Eliminating AimPoint would be a great and popular step, but that’s not going to happen. Aggressively enforcing pace-of-play rules – not with financial penalties but by adding strokes to a player’s scorecard – would be the best incentive to speed up.
Baseball pitchers complained about the pitch clock installed in 2023, but they adapted. Golfers, the ultimate creatures of habit, could and should adapt to play faster.
As purses have skyrocketed and some players are making tens of millions of dollars annually, more should be asked of them rather than less. If that means adjusting their pre-shot routines and playing every pro-am, that’s what they should do.
Professional golf has been rocked by change the past three years, and there is likely more to come. These PGA Tour changes will make a good thing better.