The PGA Tour will continue to prioritize the stars of the game and reduce opportunities for journeymen players if proposed changes are passed.
The PGA Tour Player Advisory Council sent a 23-page document to players on Tuesday outlining its plan to reduce the structure and size of the tour. The memo, obtained by The Athletic, describes a plan to shrink the number of available PGA Tour “cards” from 125 to 100 and reduce the number of spots in PGA Tour full-field events.
The proposed changes come in the wake of the PGA Tour enhancing the signature event model for top players in 2024: limited-field, no-cut events to ensure the best players tee it up against each other more regularly.
Moving forward, player leadership believes it is in the tour’s best interest to continue down that path to make the product as competitive and merit-based as possible. That means eliminating opportunities for lower-performing players and making it more difficult to maintain a PGA Tour card year-to-year.
The changes will not be made official until they are approved by the PGA Tour Policy Board in a meeting on Nov. 18. If approved, the plan would not come into effect until the 2026 PGA Tour season.
Reduction of tour cards
If approved, the PGA Tour will reduce the number of players who can maintain full membership from season to season by 20 percent. The change coincides with the decision to reduce field sizes in full-field events to improve pace of play — now the players with full PGA Tour cards will be guaranteed access to events and a set schedule. At the start of the 2024 season, many PGA Tour rookies were not able to secure spots in PGA Tour events because there were too many exempt members competing for entry into tournaments and held priority over the newcomers.
The PAC indicated it decided to reduce PGA Tour cards from 125 to 100 through a series of analyses, including performance-based metrics. Twenty players from the Korn Ferry Tour will receive PGA Tour cards instead of 30. Only five PGA Tour cards will be available at PGA Tour Q-School, rather than the top five and ties. The 10 cards available to top-performing DP World Tour players will remain the same — Robert MacIntyre and Matthieu Pavon both went from the European-based tour to the PGA Tour and had immediate success in 2024.
If these changes were in effect for this season, Ryder Cup Team Europe member Nicolai Højgaard goes from safely keeping his tour card to No. 100 and sweating out the final month of the fall season, and the task facing notable players like Ryan Fox (No. 108), Joel Dahmen (118) and Daniel Berger (129) is even tougher. Someone like Chris Gotterup, a PGA Tour rookie
If approved, the players ranked No. 101-125 on the FedEx Cup standings at the conclusion of the fall season will instead earn “conditional” membership (they can attempt to improve their status throughout the season to gain more starts, but they won’t have a set schedule).
Nicolai Hojgaard is entering his second year on the PGA Tour. (Kyle Terada / USA Today Sports)
Smaller field sizes
The memo outlines the reduction of field size as an effort to promote flow of play and finish each round on its scheduled day (no more “rounds suspended to to darkness”). The committee decided that 156-man events should instead be capped at 144 players. Events prior to daylight savings will be capped at 120 and events after daylight savings at 132.
These changes mean a reduction in Monday qualifying opportunities — a beloved tradition on the PGA Tour that gives journeyman players one shot to play their way on to the PGA Tour on the Monday prior to the official tournament. Corey Conners, now the No. 37-ranked player in the world, first earned PGA Tour membership when he Monday qualified into the Valero Texas Open in 2010 and won the event. However, a tour-conducted analysis concluded 65 to 70 percent of Monday qualifiers do not make the cut. Many Monday qualifying spots will be eliminated and reduced, or reallocated to spots for PGA Tour members. Monday qualifying will still be available during the fall season.
Additionally, the proposed plan indicates that sponsor exemptions for full-field events will be reallocated to the priority ranking (the list of next-eligible players based on points), moving toward a more merit-based system. Now more than ever, the PGA Tour is working towards a system that promotes its members and shapes its stars from within.
What does this mean
The PGA Tour is increasingly evolving toward a “play better” model. It’s going to be easier for the top players to keep appearing in the biggest events, but it’s harder for players to maintain status and secure tournament appearances when they aren’t playing well. The PGA Tour product has been in question since the LIV Golf threat. Stars were poached by the start-up league and forced the tour to think about how it can prevent future defections. That meant rewarding the best players for their talents more than ever before: The creation of the Player Impact Program, massive signature event purses and limited field, no-cut events, to name a few, are all byproducts of these efforts.
Tuesday’s proposal only furthers that mission. It attempts to strengthen the fields of full-field PGA Tour events, trimming the fat of players who aren’t likely to succeed, and investing in the athletes that could become future stars. In doing that, the tour also hopes to improve pace of play and strength of field for its events.
(Top photo: Rich Graessle / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
