![\"Rory](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/37aff5ae-aadc-42c0-9d3e-594c9cf262fa.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe playoffs are made up of three rounds through August, starting with the Tour\u2019s 70 top-ranked players competing at the FedEx St Jude Championship at \u200b\u200bTPC Southwind in Tennessee. The top 50 progress to the second round, the BMW Championship at Caves Valley Golf Club in Maryland, before the top 30 players contest the Tour Championship shootout at East Lake Golf Club, Georgia.<\/p>\n
The quadruple points on offer through the first two events offer players the chance to quickly climb the rankings. But McIlroy, who is currently second in the FedEx Cup standings behind Scottie Scheffler after winning the Masters and the Players this year, is already assured of a place in the top 30 and so has chosen to rest rather than take part in the opening tournament.<\/p>\n
McIlroy\u2019s decision comes after the PGA Tour removed the much-maligned \u201cstarting strokes\u201d from the Tour Championship, in which the top ranked players were rewarded by starting the tournament several shots under par. This season, all 30 players will start the finale on level par, removing any incentive for McIlroy to play in the opening playoff round beyond the financial rewards \u2013 there is around \u00a32.7m up for the winner \u2013 and the five-time major winner is doing OK in that regard.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Rory McIlroy has opted out of the opening FedEx playoff<\/p>\n
Who is Rory McIlroy and what is golf’s Career Grand Slam?<\/p>\n
McIlroy signalled his intentions a year ago, as soon as starting strokes were set to be abolished, saying he doesn\u2019t get on well with TPC Southwind.<\/p>\n
But Peter Malnati, a player director on the PGA Tour Policy Board, said he was \u201cvery concerned\u201d by McIlroy\u2019s decision to skip the event, which means the FedEx Cup playoffs begin without one of the game\u2019s biggest stars when the remaining field of 69 players get underway on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Asked if the Tour would look to change the rules to prevent something similar happening in the future, Malnati added: \u201cI think there is stuff in the works and I\u2019ll leave it at that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fellow player director Webb Simpson empathised with McIlroy\u2019s decision, having done something similar in 2020 when he chose to sit out the second round in order to rest for the Tour Championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s too hard of a thing to make guys have to play, we\u2019re still a sport where you can play when you want to play,\u201d Simpson said. \u201cI knew I couldn\u2019t fall more than one spot and I thought losing one stroke at East Lake was worth a week of rest because I was toast. I don\u2019t know Rory\u2019s reason but I totally get it. It\u2019s a hard thing to fix.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The playoffs are made up of three rounds through August, starting with the Tour\u2019s 70 top-ranked players competing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,2623,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-48706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-rory-mcilroy","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}