Now that the PGA Tour has outlined its criteria for the Championship Series in 2029, the next move comes from Augusta National on how players qualify for the Masters, and whether they provide invitations to winners of tournaments on both tiers.
The objective of Augusta National is to keep the field under 100 competitors to enhance the experience of the players. It’s been that way the last six decades. Tradition is a big deal at the Masters.
Last year, the Masters offered an invitation to the winner of 27 tournaments, from the RBC Heritage through the Texas Open (not including majors). All but two of them wound up inside the top 50 the week before the Masters and would have qualified, anyway.
The Masters does not award invitations to opposite-field winners, and it becomes a question of whether the club looks at the lesser Challenger Series the same way. The Challenger Series also will have a number of standalone events that could get viewed differently.
The PGA Championship awards a spot to all PGA Tour winners, even opposite-field events, and it uses special invitations to the fill the field. The changes on the PGA Tour are not likely to affect that.
The U.S. Open and The Open Championship do not have criteria for PGA Tour winners. Rather, it’s whether those organizations wish to tweak their exemptions to reflect the two-tier system that starts in 2028. Both use the FedEx Cup standings as a category.
