One issue with the plans for the future of the PGA Tour has apparently caught Brian Rolapp and his team completely off-guard.
We are getting closer and closer to learning how the PGA Tour will look from 2028 onwards. It definitely does appear that plenty of changes are going to be made from the current schedule.
While everyone associated with the game could see that the PGA Tour needed to be shaken up, it was inevitable that problems would still arise.
Some tournament directors are not going to be pleased. For example, it has already been confirmed that the PGA Tour will not be heading to Hawaii for the start of the 2027 season.
Brian Rolapp set to be surprised by one problem PGA Tour players will have
Those decisions are also going to impact local communities that really benefit from having tournaments nearby.
But it also seems that Brian Rolapp and his team were not expecting players to be among those left disgruntled.
The PGA Tour plans to introduce two tracks of tournaments, with the best players ideally featuring in all of the biggest events throughout the season.
It has been claimed that players in track one will be discouraged from dropping down to play in any track two events.
According to Rex Hoggard on the Golf Channel Podcast, those at Ponte Vedra were not at all prepared for the pushback from players keen to have the opportunity to play in some track two events.
“You want to talk about unintentional consequences. There is no way Brian Rolapp and his team saw this coming as a problem. The list of things they whiteboarded out going into this, being like, okay, this will be a hurdle. We’ll have to figure out all the things that we’ve just sort of addressed about scheduling and how you essentially create the priority list, who are going to be those 120 players? All of those things are complicated, and I’m sure there was minefields and they knew they had to tiptoe through them,” he said.
“This one, there was no way it was on their radar because I actually spoke with a player who had this conversation with an executive, one of the new executives that came over with Brian Rolapp. And he sort of laid out that this executive was just flummoxed. ‘Explain to me again why you would rather go play an event with an $8 million purse as opposed to an event with a $20 million purse’. And there’s also more points and everything else.
“And I think this week is a really good example. We don’t know, I can’t lean into this enough, if Colonial’s going to be a tier one or a tier two event. We don’t know if last week at the CJ CUP Byron Nelson is going to be tier one or tier two. I think it’s a safe assumption to assume that one of those will not be tier one at the very least.
“I’m sure there will be a tier one event in the Dallas, Fort Worth area. I doubt if there would be two. That doesn’t seem the way this schedule is shaping up. And so in theory, if you look at this week’s field, 21 out of the top 50 players from last year’s points list, which means those are fully exempt players into the signature events, essentially, tier one players are in the field this week at Colonial. And that’s a bit of a statement when you think about it, where players, we’ve talked about how congested and difficult the schedule is. Well, these players have made the decision. And essentially what I wanted to ask was, if this is a tier two event and you are a tier one player, is this one of those events that you’ll want to play? And by and large, everyone I talked to was like, yeah, I want to be able to play that.
“According to our buddy, Eamon Lynch, they’re going to be quote unquote strongly encouraged not to drop down and play tier two events. And there’s a couple reasons why, one, Brian Rolapp and his team need to be able to guarantee fields at these tier one events. If you’re going to have a sponsor putting up that much money, you want something as close to full participation as possible. And two, it gets a little confusing. When you have guys in tier two events, trying to scramble and play their way up into the promised land. If those players are dropping down and taking points and competing, I don’t particularly agree with that concept because in my mind, if I’m a tier two player, I want to go against the best. I’d love it if a tier one guy dropped down and I got to compete against him here at Colonial, wherever the case may be, but this is one of those sticking points.
“And probably the one that hammered it home, the Canadian players on the PGA Tour, they’re going to want to play the Canadian Open in a few weeks. That’s their national open. They’re going to want to go home and do that. In a world where the Canadian Open is not a tier one event, and we don’t know what all the tier one events are going to be, it’s not a signature event right now, so it’s not guaranteed it would be, you will not be able to tell the Canadian players they can’t drop down and play that event. This shows how complicated it is.”
The PGA Tour may be forced to compromise to appease disgruntled players
The PGA Tour will have to come up with a compromise that ensures that the majority of the membership is not upset with the plans for 2028 onwards.
One of the reasons some players did not join LIV Golf when they had the opportunity was the fact that their entire schedule would be dictated to them.
Of course, the signature events do have a large say in building the schedules of most PGA Tour players, whether they are in them or not. But players are able to skip those tournaments if they wish. None of the last three signature events have included both Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler in the field.
Perhaps the tour could look at allowing every player the chance to play in one track two event each season.
Meanwhile, they could potentially look at stopping players qualifying for the playoffs unless they play a certain number of track one events.
It is definitely a complicated process. And it probably does not help that Rolapp apparently did not expect any problems regarding this issue.
