the addition of the Miami Championship in early May at Trump National Doral<\/a>, slated to be the ninth signature event in the 35-tournament schedule.<\/p>\nThat means that more than a quarter of the 32-tournament regular season will be comprised of limited-field events offering purses of $US20 million and higher. It also translates to a potentially more hectic load for the game\u2019s top players. Starting with the Masters in early April through until the Travelers Championship in June after the US Open, eight of 13 events are majors or signature events. A six-week run from Augusta to the PGA Championship features only two \u201cswing\u201d events.<\/p>\n
The rich get richer. And busier\u2026 if they plan to appear in all of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tough. I definitely understand it,\u201d said Justin Thomas, the two-time PGA champion, of the condensed schedule of bigger tournaments. \u201cIt definitely has felt a little bunched over the past couple of years, honestly. I\u2019m not sure how different it could feel, you know what I mean? But it\u2019s something that it\u2019s always a work in progress.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like the fact that the tour is looking at it in the sense of: here we are, this is what we have this year, and we\u2019re just going to keep trying to change it for the better, as opposed to just putting it off until however many years until we feel like we have the perfect model, perfect fit kind of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be a great time to be playing well, wouldn\u2019t it? It would be a great time to come into form,\u201d said Tommy Fleetwood, referring to a stretch that features the Masters, RBC Heritage, Zurich Classic team event, Miami Championship, Truist Championship (with an opposite-field event in Myrtle Beach) and the PGA.<\/p>\n
But would Fleetwood play in all of them? Rolapp might want to pay attention here.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we all have an option to play or not play whatever we want, so you can schedule it however you want,\u201d the Englishman said. \u201cIf you want to play all of them, what an amazing stretch of opportunities for you in terms of big events. Great thing about golf is all of those weeks can completely change your year and change your career.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it\u2019ll be tough, and it\u2019ll be busy. But again, we all have the option of scheduling it however we want in terms of what we play, what we don\u2019t play, how we feel like our bodies will cope with it, how we feel like we\u2019ll mentally cope with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
And what about Fleetwood\u2019s Ryder Cup teammate, reigning Masters champion Rory McIlroy? The world\u2019s No.2-ranked player was instrumental in helping develop the signature-event concept but then skipped three of them this year \u2013 the Sentry, RBC Heritage (the week after winning at Augusta) and the Memorial Tournament. Then he opted out of the first leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, the FedEx St Jude Championship, knowing he already was a lock for this week\u2019s $US40 million finale.<\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t the only high-profile player to sit one out \u2013 world No.1 Scottie Scheffler passed on the Travelers Championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll always look at the schedule at the start of the year and see what best fits me and my life and everything else that I sort of do, whether it\u2019s with family or other opportunities that I\u2019m pursuing outside of golf,\u201d McIlroy said. \u201cThis year, that meant skipping a few signature events. I might skip less next year. I might skip the same amount, I don\u2019t know. The luxury of being a PGA Tour player is we are free to pick and choose our schedule for the most part, and I took advantage of that this year, and I\u2019ll continue to take advantage of that for as long as I can.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"2224960051\"\/](\"https:\/\/golfdigest.sports.sndimg.com\/content\/dam\/images\/golfdigest\/fullset\/2025\/8\/justin-thomas-rory-mcilroy-british-open-2025.jpg.rend.hgtvcom.966.644.suffix\/1755715902312.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Of course, the 30-man field for the Tour Championship is filled with players who will benefit from yet another signature event in 2026, one that offers not only a $US20 million purse, but also elevated FedEx Cup points (with 700 points for the winner as opposed to 500 in swing events). The \u201chave-nots\u201d, for lack of a better term, do have opportunities to play their way into the signature tournaments, but with only 100 tour cards offered \u2013 a reduction from 125 that kicked in this season \u2013 their prospects for remaining on the tour are less certain.<\/p>\n
One player who can speak to that is Harris English, who returns to the Tour Championship for the first time since 2021. He began the year not eligible for signature events beyond the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and Genesis Invitational \u2013 via finishing in the top 60 in the points standings at the end of the early (or \u201cFall\u201d) portion of the schedule \u2013 but won the Farmers Insurance Open in January, which ensured his entry into those tournaments.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it\u2019s going to suck not being in those events,\u201d said English, who also parlayed his elevated status to an automatic berth on the US Ryder Cup team, \u201cbut kind of how the PGA Tour has set itself up is if you want to get in those tournaments, you\u2019ve got to play [well]. You\u2019ve got to beat people. You\u2019ve got to play better. I was a little bit in that position last year of I barely missed out on getting in the top 50. I didn\u2019t have a good round at Memphis last year. I had to play a lot in the [autumn] to stay in that top 60 because I wanted to get in the first two signature events, and I knew my schedule for that year wasn\u2019t set, so I had to go out and get it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re playing good, you get in the best tournaments. I love how there\u2019s still a pathway there and they\u2019re going to continue that.\u201d<\/p>\n
English, 36, said he intended to play in all of the 2026 signature events. It remains to be seen how many players will join him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[PHOTOS: Ben Jared] Viewed through the prism of Brian Rolapp\u2019s press conference in Atlanta on Wednesday morning, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-83867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}