Tee times and pairings for the team event featuring major winners and family.<\/p>\n
Under the current system, the Korn Ferry Tour is still the most robust pathway to the PGA Tour with the season\u2019s top 20 players earning cards. But if the PGA Tour\u2019s schedule is trimmed \u2014 some estimate it could be reduced from 38 events in 2025 to as few as 20 or 25 tournaments \u2014 that traditional climb from the secondary circuit could be narrowed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems like a lot tougher path. I don\u2019t know a lot about it, but it seems like the opportunity to be on the outside and getting in is more difficult,\u201d Lehman said. \u201cI think the opportunity to prove how good you are is shrinking. I\u2019ve always believed that more players is better than fewer players, that way if you get that opportunity you can take advantage of it. But if you reduce the opportunity, it\u2019s going to be more difficult to be that guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The PGA Tour went through a belt-tightening this year, with the top 100 players from the season-ending points list earning full status in 2026, down from the top 125. The number of fully-exempt PGA Tour spots from the Korn Ferry Tour (20) was also reduced from the top 30, and the cards available via Q-School was trimmed slightly to the top-5 finishers, not the top-5 finishers and ties.<\/p>\n
If the Tour moves toward fewer events with smaller fields, the circuit would potentially have to trim those pathways again.<\/p>\n
Couples reflects on family at PNC Championship<\/p>\n
Fred Couples discusses how much he enjoys the PNC Championship, how long he hopes to keep playing, why he loves being in the Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club, how golf is changing and why \u201cpower is key.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBy shrinking the Tour to a smaller number of tournaments, I don\u2019t think that changes the way to get on the Tour, you\u2019re still going to have players leaving the Tour and you\u2019re still going to have to replace them,\u201d said Stewart Cink, who also earned his PGA Tour status via the Korn Ferry Tour.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only way it becomes more difficult, other than just the quality of the players you\u2019re playing against just gets better and better, is if they shrink the number of [available] spots and just squeeze that, which they\u2019ve already done by shrinking from 125 to 100 [on the PGA Tour]. If they continue to make everything small then that, naturally, would also get smaller.\u201d<\/p>\n
For players from Cink and Lehman\u2019s generation, playing your way onto the Tour via Q-School or the Korn Ferry Tour was essentially the only option, so any potential changes \u2014 and, again, Woods was clear that the committee is reviewing \u201cthousands\u201d of options and that there is still plenty of work to be done \u2014 would be scrutinized. That\u2019s not to say, however, that Rolapp\u2019s vision for the Tour isn\u2019t shared by many.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe not as much [of a pathway],\u201d Mark O\u2019Meara conceded before adding, \u201cI do think over the years that there was almost too much golf. When you look at golf it\u2019s almost a 12-month-a-year game with all these different tours. It never stops. Most major sports have a big break, so people are hungry to watch.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s a bad thing to cut back, [but] I don\u2019t think I\u2019d cut back that much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether or not there are cuts in store for the Tour is unclear, but for players from previous eras, the circuit\u2019s future could look vastly different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 The possibility of a leaner, meaner PGA Tour has piqued a generational curiosity from some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-360907","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}