{"id":82800,"date":"2025-08-20T04:09:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T04:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/82800\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T04:09:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T04:09:07","slug":"the-pga-tour-may-be-ruining-its-momentum-with-new-2026-schedule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/82800\/","title":{"rendered":"The PGA Tour May Be Ruining Its Momentum With New 2026 Schedule"},"content":{"rendered":"

ATLANTA \u2014 The PGA Tour is returning to Miami, a place it left nine years ago over sponsorship issues, going back to the iconic Trump Doral Resort<\/a> with a signature event that will undoubtedly cause some angst on the 2026 PGA Tour schedule.<\/p>\n

The original tournament at Doral dated to 1962\u2014Jack Nicklaus\u2019s rookie year on the PGA Tour\u2014and didn\u2019t return after what was then a World Golf Championship event lost its title sponsor following the 2016 tournament.<\/p>\n

Going back to Doral is a win for the PGA Tour in that the course has been a venue for LIV Golf each of the past four years.<\/p>\n

But at what price?<\/p>\n

The Tour is unnecessarily adding a ninth signature event that will cause scheduling concerns for some of the top players in the world and put undo stress on regular events that are already fighting for relevance and trying to attract good fields.<\/p>\n

RELATED: View the 2026 PGA Tour schedule<\/a><\/p>\n

According to the announcement Tuesday preceding this week\u2019s Tour Championship at East Lake, the new Miami Championship\u2014a title sponsor is said to be imminent and is all but necessary in the new for-profit PGA Tour world\u2014will precede the Truist Championship and the PGA Championship.<\/p>\n

So follow along with the schedule:<\/p>\n

The Masters, RBC Heritage (signature event), Zurich Classic, Miami Championship (signature event), Truist Championship (signature event) and PGA Championship will all be played in a row.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s two major championships and three signature events in a six-week period. And just two opportunities (including an opposite event) during that period for the rank-and-file.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s not good.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s terrible for Zurich, which is a team event and can\u2019t expect to compete with all that.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not great for the Truist Championship, which could very well see some players skip Quail Hollow as it is the week before a major championship.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s horrible for the rest of the PGA Tour regular events, which at least had some hope of name players working those tournaments into their schedule. But now there is yet another $20 million tournament\u2014without a 36-hole cut\u2014as competition.<\/p>\n

The PGA Tour has enjoyed a nice run in 2025, with television ratings rebounding<\/a> to pre-LIV days, Rory McIlroy completing the career Grand Slam<\/a> at the Masters and winning the Tour\u2019s flagship event, the Players Championship, and Scottie Scheffler putting together another historic season.<\/p>\n

Those are huge positives to carry into a new regime under PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp.<\/p>\n

And while the Tour is obviously going to want to enhance money-making opportunities for its players, especially with no deal in sight with the Public Investment Fund and LIV Golf, this is an unfortunate self-own.<\/p>\n

The Tour should be cutting back on signature events, not adding to them.<\/p>\n

Scheffler skipped the Truist this year because he wanted to play his hometown Byron Nelson and Colonial events in Texas. McIlroy skipped three signature events, including controversially at Nicklaus\u2019s Memorial Tournament<\/a>, as well as Hilton Head the week after his Masters victory.<\/p>\n

There are bound to be other defections from some of these big-money events, which defeats the purpose of having them.<\/p>\n

Certainly, the money being offered is not going to be a lure to the best of the best. Scheffler made $23,962,883 in official prize money this season while missing a signature event. McIlroy banked $16,597,418 while skipping three. There are 16 players who have made more than $7 million and five over $10 million. The money is not the problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite a bit of a workload for the players to play that much golf in that stretch, but I think it\u2019s not as if we\u2019re having to travel halfway around the world to do it,\u201d McIlroy said. \u201cThese are all pretty easy stops on the East Coast for the most part.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he acknowledged his own schedule will be dictated by various factors. And he\u2019s not been afraid to skip signature events in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll always choose the schedule that best fits me, and this year that meant skipping a few signature events,\u201d he said. \u201cI 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

Of course, having those choices and so many of them makes those tournaments easier to skip, which goes against the very idea of why they were put together in the first place.<\/p>\n

Eliminating at least one and maybe two signature events is a far more reasonable approach. Hilton Head and the Travelers\u2014both of which follow major championships\u2014are prime candidates. They are popular events without the added incentives. And they\u2019d return to full-field events which gives those on the outside looking in more of an opportunity to qualify for the signature events through the main avenues offered.<\/p>\n

Instead, it\u2019s one less chance, and it comes in the first year of the Tour having just decreased playing opportunities. In 2026, only the top 100 on the final FedEx Cup points list are fully exempt. Sure, there is going to be one more opportunity in the fall (the Mexico Open is moving from its date following the Genesis Invitational to the FedEx fall), but that doesn\u2019t help players get into the signature events.<\/p>\n

It’s curious that the Tour felt this need to make Doral a signature event when it could have put the event back on the schedule and waited for a change with one of the others. It\u2019s quite possible that President Trump inflicted his will in those discussions, the irony not lost since he\u2019s been critical of the Tour since it left Doral following the 2016 tournament\u2014because it lost a title sponsor\u2014and went so far as to accuse Tour leadership in 2022 of stealing funds from the player pension fund<\/a> in order fund increases purses to compete with LIV Golf.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Tour representatives including commissioner Jay Monahan made two visits to the White House as part of negotiations with the PIF and spoke highly of the President and his efforts to bring to the two sides together. While that didn\u2019t happen, clearly a relationship was forged that led toward getting back to Doral<\/p>\n

Now Trump\u2019s got the PGA Tour back.<\/p>\n

But it will come with a cost to the Tour, much of it obvious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATLANTA \u2014 The PGA Tour is returning to Miami, a place it left nine years ago over sponsorship…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-82800","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}