The PGA Tour is preparing for major changes to its season-ending structure.
PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp unveiled the news on Tuesday morning at East Lake Golf Club ahead of this week’s Tour Championship. The new-look end to the season, which will launch in 2028, will be contested over three weeks at rotating venues with the final two weeks using a match-play format.
Just don’t call it the playoffs.
“We’re trying to make the Tour Championship matter more,” Rolapp told Golf Channel’s Rich Lerner and Brandel Chamblee after his presser. “Let’s be honest, I think calling the Tour Championship the playoffs doesn’t really land in golf. It’s not the NHL, it’s not the NFL; it’s just different. So, I think we started from, how do we just make a separate but equally grueling and challenging and interesting championship tournament to capstone our season?”
Currently, the FedExCup Playoffs are contested over three weeks, with fields of 70, 50 and finally 30 players competing in traditional stroke play to determine the FedExCup champion. Starting in 2028, though, the top 90 players in season-long points will qualify for what is dubbed the Championship Series Finale, which will be standard, 72-hole stroke play.
Note that season-long points won’t reset before the 90-player series finale, and the top 32 players in points after that event will advance to a two-week, match-play competition, the new Tour Championship, which resembles international soccer’s World Cup. The first week will feature group play with eight, four-player groups. The top two players from each group, 16 total, will then move on to the second week at a different course, where the format will shift to a head-to-head bracket. Ties for group stage will be broken using sudden-death playoffs.
The player who goes 4-0 in the 16-man bracket will win the Tour Championship, while every player will play four matches with the rest of the standings will be determined based on what many call a consolation bracket, though the PGA Tour does not use that verbiage. So, on the final day, there will be a championship match, plus seven other matches for third place, fifth place, etc.
It’s unclear how players will be seeded in the 16-player bracket.
Sports Business Journal reported that Los Angeles Country Club, Interlachen Country Club in Minnesota and Sleepy Hollow Country Club in New York are among the early possibilities to host these new season-ending events.
Rolapp added Tuesday that East Lake is being considered for future Tour Championships and he expects to announce the 2028 Tour Championship hosts on Feb. 22, 2027.
“When you host a PGA Tour event, certainly a Championship Series event, the attendance is big, the footprint is significant, the build-out is significant,” Rolapp said. “Having partners who are willing to do that is very important. That can be a great thing. It can also be limiting. I think we wanted to take that out of the equation so we could reach the best courses in the country, so I think we’re open to a smaller footprint. ... We haven’t sat down with our broadcast partners, but I imagine as we do that, the way they produce it will be different. And I think it will be something like you’ve never seen before, or at least you don’t see very often.”
Rolapp said the PGA Tour hopes to finalize the compensation model for these new tournaments by its November board meeting.