{"id":682401,"date":"2026-06-03T19:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T19:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/682401\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T19:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T19:28:09","slug":"jack-nicklaus-sees-a-problem-with-pga-tour-schedule-not-exactly-in-favor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/682401\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Nicklaus Sees a ‘Problem’ With PGA Tour Schedule: ‘Not Exactly in Favor’"},"content":{"rendered":"

At 87 years old, Jack Nicklaus has seen professional golf evolve over generations. <\/p>\n

He has some trepidation about the next iteration of changes, though. Particularly with the schedule overhaul the PGA Tour is set to implement by 2028. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to comment on the Tour\u2019s schedule because I\u2019m not exactly in favor of what they\u2019re doing right now,\u201d Nicklaus said Tuesday in his pre-tournament presser at the Memorial Tournament. <\/p>\n

Currently, the Tour\u2019s signature event model, which was introduced in 2023, includes eight tournaments, plus the majors and the Players Championship. That can have players teeing it up in five of six weeks. <\/p>\n

\u201cI hate to see tournaments bunched too much together with too many big tournaments too close together,\u201d Nicklaus said. \u201cThat\u2019s a problem, I think. And I think that’s going to be a problem for the Tour in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut anyway, that\u2019s neither here nor there. I probably shouldn’t have brought it up here. I\u2019ll get chastised for that later.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nicklaus, however, continued to expand on his stance. <\/p>\n

For example, earlier this season, the Tour contested the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and Genesis Invitational, both signature events, then the Cognizant Classic<\/a>, followed by the Arnold Palmer Invitational and Players Championship. <\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, what chance does [the Cognizant Classic] have? I mean, it sits right in the middle of those,\u201d said Nicklaus. \u201cThey don\u2019t have a chance. The other tournaments also say, you know, I got four out of five. It\u2019s hard for guys to play that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Cognizant isn\u2019t much better off in 2027<\/a>, though the Tour did some reshuffling to lighten the load around the majors next year. <\/p>\n

Nicklaus isn\u2019t alone in his sentiment. The Tour played three signature events between the Masters and the PGA Championship, drawing the ire of some of golf\u2019s current stars. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tough,\u201d Thomas said of the schedule at the RBC Heritage. \u201cI mean, it\u2019s not how I would prefer to draw it up, I would say.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because, according to Nicklaus, downtime is imperative. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s hard for the players to really be focused to play that much and be on top of their game,\u201d the 18-time major champion said. \u201cAnd that, to me, is\u2014look at it from the way I was as a player. I could play a couple weeks in a row, maybe three weeks in a row, but I needed some time off to be able to recharge the batteries. And I think everybody needs to recharge their batteries. So to jam it all in in one period of time, and then leave the rest of the year open, I think it\u2019s tough.\u201d<\/p>\n

But changes to the Tour\u2019s structure are coming. New PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp wants to double the number of signature tournaments and have two tiers of events. The first track would be 23 elevated events, with 16 regular-season tournaments, three FedEx Cup Playoff events and the four majors. Now, regular-season signature events have fields of 70 to 80 players and only three of the nine have a 36-hole cut. However, that is expected to change under Rolapp\u2019s vision, increasing to 120-man fields.<\/p>\n

Nicklaus believes that the next version of the Tour\u2019s calendar could burn out players. But he\u2019s willing to give his two cents to avoid that. <\/p>\n

\u201cI want to sit down with Brian and [commissioner] Jay [Monahan] and have that conversation,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

More golf from\u00a0Sports Illustrated\"\"Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At 87 years old, Jack Nicklaus has seen professional golf evolve over generations. He has some trepidation about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-682401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682401","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=682401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}