The PGA Tour Coverage Board authorized in depth adjustments to eligibility and area sizes Monday.
These adjustments, going into impact for the 2026 season, come after strain from followers and sponsors to create a extra partaking product. Nonetheless, the PGA Tour selected to appease its high gamers below the phantasm of enchancment.
Modifications embrace lowering exempt standing from high 125 to high 100 in FedEx Cup standings and smaller area sizes for occasions. In a statement detailing the tour’s plans, the Coverage Board Participant Director and former Masters champion Adam Scott claims the adjustments “improve the golf fan expertise” and “positively refine the enjoying expertise for our members.”
Theoretically, the very best and hottest gamers will make up a better proportion of the sphere because the tour hopes to enhance viewership by growing pace of play.
Lucas Glover, at present 62nd within the FedEx Cup standings, calls the negotiations “cool child conferences.”
He told Golfweek that the tour is insulting the intelligence of its much less common members by “attempting to appease six guys and make them blissful so that they don’t go elsewhere and play golf.”
The previous U.S. Open champion additionally told the Golf Channel on the Worldwide Expertise Championship in early November that changing into the one skilled sport to cut back membership as an alternative of develop is “asinine.” He believes it’s extra wise to make sure gamers to play sooner as an alternative of blaming lower-ranked members for a decline in product worth.
The Golf Channel heard a contrasting opinion from Wesley Bryan, the face of probably the most common YouTube golf channels, “Bryan Bros Golf.” If the season had been to finish in the present day, Bryan can be the final member given exempt standing for the 2025 season as a result of he sits at 125 within the FedEx Cup standings.
Bryan trusts the “elected gamers” to make correct choices for the PGA Tour “in a extremely bizarre time [of professional golf].” He claims that in addition to “six or seven guys,” different members, together with himself, “don’t at all times put probably the most thrilling product on the golf course.”
Nonetheless, different common members supported Glover’s sentiment this week, together with this put up on X from main champion and “Full Swing” star Matt Fitzpatrick.
Max Homa, a high performer on the PGA Tour, reposted the video under on Instagram of LPGA participant Charley Hull blasting pace-of-play issues.
With the division that exists in skilled golf between LIV and the PGA Tour, gamers have extra energy than ever. The Coverage Board has no choice however to capitulate or the tour dangers additional irrelevance and possibly even extinction. It’s rightfully scared, for instance, to implement pace-of-play guidelines and lose the help of its stars.
In line with the Sports Business Journal, the PGA Tour “averaged 2.2M viewers for its Sunday telecasts (no majors) in 2024, a drop of 19% from 2.7M in 2023.” Followers aren’t avoiding ultimate rounds of occasions due to the members on the backside however due to who isn’t competing on the high.
LIV is probably not pulling in spectacular viewership numbers, but it surely nonetheless stole among the sport’s most spectacular and entertaining gamers.
The PGA Tour’s principal subject will not be its variety of members nor the dimensions of occasion fields however its warfare with LIV. The reply to declining viewership is to not additionally begin a warfare with itself.
Till each excursions deliver golf again collectively, the PGA Tour will sacrifice rising the sport for the longer term for its backside line now.
