Players will love these 1 quiet details from the PGA Tour schedule changes
The list of takeaways from Tuesday’s PGA Tour announcement was so long it felt worthy of a breakdown. It’s more of a scroll, not the kind you do on your phone. The travel FAQ sheet sent to the media took seven pages to answer all of our most pressing questions… and it was before Its CEO answered 45 minutes of additional questions during the press conference.
So, Tuesday was a lot. You can read all about it here. But if your attention span can handle it, return to this piece for one detail that most people overlook. One detail that really makes the new competition model fun for all Tour memberships: the predictability of the schedule.
A little-known fact about current life on the PGA Tour is that it’s one big game of musical chairs, with not nearly enough seats for everyone. Some fields in the summer, with very high daylight hours, have 144 strong players. Some fields, in the spring, boast only 132 players. Some fields currently, technically in winter, have only 120. And how many different players, right now, have some sort of access to PGA Tour events?
There are more than 200. Close to 250. The number is not well defined, because entry into the Tour is not easily defined, and that instability makes scheduling difficult.
England’s Matt Wallace is ranked No. 83 in the world, but his PGA Tour reach is poor: No. 167 at the critical level. Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen’s OWGR ranking is worst, 86th place, but his Tour access ranking is even better: 129th. Neergaard-Petersen managed to squeeze in the WM Phoenix Open in Wallace’s absence. But the Danish player didn’t play very well, so he has entered zero of $20 million Signature events. Wallace, on the other hand, played in three Signature Events.
The bottom line may only be clear to people associated with professional golf: no player indeed they knew what their schedule would be when the year started. No one can compete with Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy. They both made a schedule as the weeks and months passed. And now it’s time to decide if any of them will be members of the PGA Tour next year.
The most important, though quietest, of the PGA Tour’s structures announced Tuesday is that whenever a new PGA Tour season begins, more than 200 golfers will be able to indeed what tournaments will they play. On Jan. 1 each year, they will get 21 stroke plays in the Championship Series, or they will get 20 starts in the Challenger Series. That’s 21 starts in $20 million events, or 20 starts in events with purses of at least $4 million.
It’s not hard to see the difference there. But you know what the worst case scenario is? Graduating from the PGA Tour and sitting on a different roster, a couple are out, heading to Phoenix or Torrey Pines and hoping a player will straighten his back on the driving range, making room on the field. That has happened to many players below the best level in recent seasons. Graduates from the Korn Ferry Tour have arrived on the PGA Tour and have had to accept being forced out for weeks, all because they couldn’t get on the field because the Tour itself was closed. They were forced to be patient, waiting to play in late April, May, June and July – by which time they were already playing with a score deficit.
These days, low-level tour professionals feel obligated 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 close the situation does the calendar start to relax for them. Don’t you believe me? Ask a guy who has been there before.
“[Schedule predictability] it was something that was reserved for the top 30 players, maybe the top 50 players,” Maverick McNealy said Tuesday. “Knowing what they’re going to play at the beginning of the year, and now we have over 200 members who will know by January 1st every tournament they’re in.
“That will be a higher quality of life, and for the majority of the membership, they will be playing for higher financial opportunities, while maintaining a very clean system of going up, down and through and identifying the best players.”
That prediction works in both directions. Player number 70 will know every day they compete and will know all the other players they need to beat during the season to finish in the top 90 and retain membership. Player number 170, down in the Challenger Series, will know all the days he is competing and will not be fighting for a spot in those events. No one is going to elbow him off the field – everyone starts at the same place, and fights for those 20 promoted positions.
This is the simplicity that Brian Rolapp was after. The type that fans can follow, but also the type that makes sense for tour players.
