Fewer cards.
Smaller fields.
And a potentially truncated schedule.
To borrow a football phrase, Harris English notes, “The goal posts are moving a little bit.” Fitting, too, since the PGA Tour’s new commissioner, Brian Rolapp, came over from the NFL.
But speaking of football, English revealed Wednesday ahead of the RSM Classic, the final tournament of the FedExCup Fall slate, that the PGA Tour season could start later – much later. There’s talk, English says, of a post-Super Bowl start.
“I think [that] is a pretty good thing,” English said, “because we can’t really compete with football.”
Of course, with the PGA Tour not getting going until mid-February, that cuts dates currently held by the Hawaii events and some of the tournaments on the West Coast swing. Two of English’s five PGA Tour victories have come in January.
There’s more, too. English added that signature events could be disappearing after next season.
“I think that’s what they’re going to change down the road, maybe in 2027, is have all the tournaments be equal, and not have the eight elevated events and the regular events,” English said. “They’ll have 20-22 events that are all the same. I think that’s a good model to have. That’s where you’ll see all the top players play every single event because you can’t really afford to take one off.”
So, then what happens to the fall? The PGA Tour added two new fall tournaments for 2026, in Austin, Texas, and Asheville, North Carolina, though there remains skepticism just how much the fall remains in the cards for a tour pushing to be more cutthroat and for more scarcity.
English, 36, finished outside the top 50 in points last year, though he used last fall to solidify his place inside the Aon Next 10, also known as Nos. 51-60 in points, which came with spots in two signature events, at Pebble Beach and Torrey Pines, which replaced Riviera as host of the Genesis this year because of the Los Angeles fire devastation. English went on to make the Tour Championship, where he tied for 13th, before qualifying for his second Ryder Cup.
This fall has looked decidedly different for English; the RSM Classic is just his second start since East Lake, first since the fall-opening Procore Championship.
Still, English appreciates these fall stops.
“I’m putting my faith in the guys at the helm and having the direction of this tour to make it the best it can be,” English said. “Tournaments like this, I don’t want to see them go away because I know how much they mean to this community. A lot of these fall events, we go to a lot of places in the country that they don’t get a whole lot of golf tournaments, and you can tap into a different fan base. I don’t really want to see them go away, but I think they’ll find a time and a place for some of those.”