The PGA Tour’s schedule change has 1 ‘hot topic.’ It highlights the new reality

Lucas Glover won’t join the PGA Tour’s Policy Board as a player director until 2027, but the former U.S. Open champion is already aware of the conversations underway about the reshaped schedule that CEO Brian Rolapp just revealed.

At last week’s Travelers Championship, Rolapp unveiled the sweeping changes that were ratified by the membership. The changes are set to begin in 2028. (GOLF.com’s Sean Zak has a detailed breakdown that you can find here.) The PGA Tour will adopt a two-track system in 2028. Track 1, the Championship Series, will have roughly 130 players who will play for $20 million purses. Track 2, the Challenger Series, will have substantially more players competing for purses of around $4 million. Which tournaments will be Tier 1 and which will be Tier 2 are still being ironed out, but the changes come with a number of sticking points depending on which part of the PGA Tour membership you are talking to.

One of the biggest is the expected rule that players on the Championship Series will not be allowed to drop down and play in Challenger Series events. Jordan Spieth said that would create a “strange” situation in which players who win Challenger Series events would likely be unable to defend their titles the following season after being promoted to Track 1.

Glover knows there are many players, including himself, who will want to play in Track 2 events because of their location or their personal connection to the tournament.

“That was a very, very, very hot topic on the PAC and amongst the [policy board] from what I understand,” Glover said on Thursday at the John Deere Classic. “I don’t go on the board until next year. I’m used to having a home tournament. So many guys live in the West Palm area. So many guys live in Scottsdale. So many guys live in Dallas. That was a tough one.”

Glover is referring to The Cognizant Classic (West Palm), the CJ Cup Byron Nelson (Dallas), the Charles Schwab Challenge (Fort Worth) and the WM Phoenix Open (Scottsdale) as tournaments that have a large number of PGA Tour pros living in their areas. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler makes the CJ Cup Byron Nelson an annual stop. A number of PGA Tour stars used to make the Cognizant Classic, formerly the Honda Classic, a regular stop before the Signature Event model and schedule alterations post-LIV’s arrival made it a tough tournament to play in. Those thin fields have left the Cognizant in a precarious position as the new schedule arrives in 2028.

Glover and many other pros would be more than willing to forgo playing in a big-money Tier 1 event for the ability to play in a Tier 2 event that is meaningful to them. However, after talking with members of the current board and others around the PGA Tour and PGA Tour Enterprises, Glover understands that the reality is unlikely to come to pass, given how much money companies sponsoring Tier 1 events are putting up to have the top 130 players in their fields.

“I would choose to come here and play for less points and less money than a Track 1 event with more money and more points because, chances are, I’m going to do better here than there. I’m trying to win; I don’t care about the money,” Glover said. “Then it was explained to me commercially and what we’re going to be asking these sponsors to do, one compared to the other. It stinks, but it kind of made sense.

“I was on the side of I sure would like to choose and be able to play one or two down, but with what they’re going to be asking these sponsors to pony up, that’s going to be a tough sell.”

The schedule changes come with pros and cons for the membership. It’s a give-and-take that will likely result in players ending up in a better reality than the one they currently inhabit.

While players on Track 1 won’t be able to play down and players on Track 2 won’t be able to play up unless they win twice and receive a mid-season promotion, the PGA Tour’s new schedule does give players something they don’t currently have: scheduled predictability. In the current structure, many players make their schedule as the weeks and months go by due to their PGA Tour priority ranking. In short, the current structure of the PGA Tour has somewhere around 200 to 250 pro golfers with some semblance of status, and many of them aren’t sure how many starts they’ll get in the current year when the calendar flips to Jan.1. But when the new schedule changes take effect, over 200 players will know exactly how many starts they’ll get and when they will. be. They will either get 21 stroke-play starts on the Championship Series or 20 on the Challenger Series. That’s an important detail that will please almost all members.

Is it perfect? No. Some Championship Series players and the Challenger Series tournaments won’t be happy about the rule prohibiting them from crossing paths. But that’s part of a big puzzle being constructed to create a better version of the PGA Tour.

Glover has been one of the PGA Tour’s most outspoken voices in recent seasons. He has been critical of the Tour’s direction regarding elevated events, no-cut events and having fewer full-status members. But he sees where Rolapp and the Future Competitions Committee, led by Tiger Woods, want the PGA Tour to go. He understands the moves even if he doesn’t agree with everything likely to come wth it. The goal of the sweeping changes is to create a competitive product that is easy for fans, media, players and sponsors to understand. Everyone will have to give a little to help the Tour move forward. But they’ll benefit in the long run.

“People a lot smarter than me are making those decisions, but that was a huge, huge point of contention and discussion, but it’s just going to have to be the way it is,” Glover said about Track 1 players not being able to play lower-tier events.