Before he stepped to the podium Tuesday morning to introduce several details for the PGA Tour’s revolutionary competitive model, Brian Rolapp chatted with Rory McIlroy.
It was just days ago that McIlroy shared some of his thoughts on the Tour’s impending two-track system, mainly calling the second tier – what we now know to be the Challenger Series, though, that and the first-tier Championship Series are working titles – a group of “glorified Korn Ferry events.”
On Tuesday, Rolapp responded to that notion with several points that make it clear: Rolapp still views both tracks as one PGA Tour.
“One tour, two compelling series of events,” said the Tour’s CEO – and new commissioner, which was also announced Tuesday.
The new Tour, Rolapp argues, will feature roughly the same number of tournaments that it does right now. This season, the Tour schedule is comprised of 47 events, including The Sentry, which was canceled. Beginning in 2028, the plan is to host 23 to 24 $20 million events, including the majors, playoffs and Cups, as part of the Championship schedule, and at least 20 $4 million Challenger tournaments, which will include some combination of current PGA Tour and KFT stops, and like the Championship lineup, which is expected to add almost a half-dozen tournaments in new markets, likely some new venues.
The unifying argument against Tour changes in recent years, mainly opposing the smaller-field, no-cut signature events, has been the dwindling of playing opportunities. While about 130 players will hold Championship membership to start 2028, down from the nearly 160 full PGA Tour members for 2025-26, when one considers that Championship members can’t play lower-level events and Challenger fields will range from 130 to 144 players, the Tour will easily serve over 250 members when it transitions to this new structure.
“We think we’ve just organized the same tour into a much more interesting and competitive system,” Rolapp said. “If you look at the Challenger Series events, they’ll be at venues you recognize. They’ll be for healthy purses (equal to this year’s opposite events like the Puerto Rico Open, but four times that of most KFT events). They’ll include a subset of the same 200 and change players that we have today. That is much different than what the Korn Ferry Tour is today.”
Rolapp stated publicly Tuesday what he’s been wanting for months, that his goal is to have “20 Players Championships.” At the same time, he stresses of the Challenger tournaments, “They need to feel like PGA Tour events, and they will be.”
That, of course, is easier said than done. There are aspects of a tournament that the Tour can control – purses, sponsors, infrastructure. Who qualifies for these tours, however, is up to the meritocratic structures put in place.
Rolapp seems confident that the Challenger fields will be strong, but will the fans agree? While this isn’t apples to apples, look at the current FedExCup standings; if you draw a line between the top 130 players and everyone else, here are those first handful of players below that cutoff: Adrien Dumont de Chassart, S.H. Kim, Christo Lamprecht, Davis Chatfield and Zach Bauchou. All are enticing, young pros, but none of those players are ranked inside the top 150 of the Official World Golf Ranking either.
If the Championship takes theoretically the 130 best players, then that leaves the next 150 or so for the Challenger. In this year’s FedEx standings, there are 209 players who have earned a point; the Korn Ferry Tour has 214 ranked players.
It’s safe to assume that at least half of these new Challenger fields will consist of current Korn Ferry-level talent, yet how these fields will actually be determined remains the most pressing unanswered question.
As one current Korn Ferry Tour player said, “Everything announced today sounds pretty good, but all the status stuff is where it gets complicated.”
Rolapp adheres by the belief of being “rigid on the vision but flexible on the details.” And he knows there is still much fine print to hash out, including the eligibility criteria, not only for the Championship and Challenger circuits but also the Tour’s array for pathways – the actual Korn Ferry Tour, PGA Tour Americas, Q-School, PGA Tour University and its partnership with the DP World Tour – which, according to Rolapp, would remain in place in some capacity.
While there was rumored to be some legwork done on a potential universal points system that would rank all players and allow for seamless movement among tracks, the Tour ultimately settled on almost no midseason promotion and relegation between the new levels. The Tour is nixing the Aon Next 10 and Swing 5 concepts, plus sponsor exemptions and alternate lists for the Championship events. Players who win multiple times in one season on the Challenger series will be instantly promoted to the Championship, but other than that, the plan is for the top 20 finishers in the second track to graduate at season’s end.
Meanwhile, when Rolapp says the top 90 players “at a minimum” will keep their Championship status, that leaves the door open for that 130-player membership to include players on medical extensions or high-achievers (i.e. Tiger Woods).
“I think there’s an effort from the committee to recognize career accomplishments,” Rolapp said, “but at the end of the day, it will be the meritocracy that wins out.”
Eligibility will be finalized by year’s end, Rolapp says, both for 2028 and next year’s bridge year. Currently, the top 100 players in the FedExCup keep their PGA Tour status, with the top 50 getting into the signature events, while the top 20 players from the KFT, top 10 from the DPWT, top 5 from Q-School and the No. 1 player in PGA Tour U all graduate to the big tour. With roughly 130 Championship members and 150 Challenger members, it’s clear that the Tour will need to take more finishers from the FedEx or tap into more of its pathways to fill these circuits for the initial season. Also, a big concern is what to do with current multi-year exemptions that will run through and past 2028.
“Before they start 2027, they will know exactly what they’re playing for,” Rolapp said.
A few other eligibility questions that pros had upon hearing Tuesday’s announcement:
• Will Augusta National invite winners of the Challenger events? That is up to the club, but 10 players qualified for this year’s Masters by winning a full-field PGA Tour event; most of those either won a tournament that will likely be a Championship event in 2028 or would’ve qualified elsewhere down the eligibility list.
• Will there be promotion and relegation between Challenger, Korn Ferry Tour and PGA Tour Americas? For example, if a player loses Challenger status, do they relegate back to Korn Ferry? If a player loses Korn Ferry status, do they relegate back to Americas? Or does this four-to-six-event fall series and Q-School help determine eligibility aside from what goes on between the two top tracks?
• Rolapp said that the Challenger events will have sponsor exemptions and Monday qualifiers, but how many? In recent years, the Tour has cut both.
• Currently, PGA Tour U sends its top player to the PGA Tour, Nos. 2-10 to the Korn Ferry and Nos. 11-25 to Americas. Will that relative structure remain, with No. 1 now going to the Championship, Nos. 2-10 to Challenger and Nos. 11-25 to the new KFT? It would be difficult to envision the Tour sending the best player in his class like Ben James – or down the pipeline, Preston Stout, Kihei Akina and Miles Russell – to the Challenger, and everybody else to the KFT and below.
• Is this all sustainable? “We feel very confident that we are building an economic model that can support those purses,” Rolapp said. “We wouldn’t have announced them if we didn’t.” Golf Channel’s Todd Lewis also reported that sponsors are “lining up” to get behind these $20 million events. It would also seem that $4 million purses are doable for the Challenger events, which are expected to be televised. But is there enough juice in what would be the KFT and Americas to entice sponsors? If you consider that the Championship, Challenger and KFT will combine for about 400 members, Americas fields would project to include players who currently hold no status.
“The best part about our sport is no one subjectively decide when you get a promotion; if you shoot a number and you play well, that meritocratic framework is what decides our Tour,” said Maverick McNealy, who is a player director on the policy board. “So, figuring out the Challenger Series and making sure we decide the right eligibility for those guys to be able to play their way up to the Championship Series, and to get the best players up through the system quickly and give everyone the best chance to compete and make it to the top of the game is what we’re most interested in.”
So, glorified Korn Ferry Tour? I guess that’s the prerogative of the individual – and even McIlroy released a statement on Tuesday in support of the Tour’s big step. But for Rolapp and company, this new-look Tour, at every level, is what they believe is the “best version … something that could endure and outlive us all.”
“I also think when we’re done with this, it won’t be the end,” Rolapp added. “If you’re going to make a commitment to innovate and make your sport better, you’re always going to change and react and make the necessary changes. That’s what I mean by honoring tradition but don’t be overly bound by it. That’s not how you move a sport forward.
“I think this is one stop in the journey, and we’ll keep at it.”