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ATLANTA — PGA Tour players are mostly supportive of the new season-ending Tour Championship format, which will have a World Cup feel featuring groups and sudden-death match play for the first time beginning in 2028.
“It’s cool—I think they’ve taken a big swing,” Rory McIlroy said shortly after the announcement of the format on Tuesday. “And conceptually, I think I really like it.”
Nearly $100 million of bonus money has been paid out this season after last week’s BMW Championship—the second of three playoff events. The 30 players at this week’s Tour Championship are competing for a $40 million purse, including $10 million for the eventual tournament winner and FedExCup Champion.
Under the new structure—which will come alongside the PGA Tour’s shift to a two-track scheduling model—a regular-season champion at the top-tier Championship Series will be crowned and season-long bonus money will be paid out after the final regular-season event. The top 32 players in the season-long points list will advance to a revamped two-week Tour Championship, which will have its own prize money pool.
“I think all the incentives are there, and the regular-season champion is going to be adequately rewarded after that final stroke-play event,” McIlroy said.
The first week of the new Tour Championship will feature eight groups of four players, who will each face off in three head-to-head matches. The top two players from each group will advance to the second and final week, where the remaining 16 players will compete in a single-elimination bracket across four days to determine the Tour Championship winner.
“I think it’s exciting,” PGA Tour rookie Alex Fitzpatrick said. “I’m a massive fan of football—obviously the World Cup has that group stage, and then you keep playing until you have a winner. I think it’s a good take on the game, and it’s different than the regular season.”
Added Wyndham Clark: “The two-week thing kind of reminds me of a major in tennis, and it’s kind of fun. Those guys spend two weeks at Wimbledon, and that’s what it is. It’s unique to golf and new to it, but I think over time people will accept it and like it a lot.”
Si Woo Kim said he has “always liked” match play. “It’s going to be fun,” he said. “I don’t know how other players like it, but to me, it’s going to be way more fun than 72-hole stroke play.”
New Tour Championship Feel
The new-look Tour Championship will be played at two different courses each year, rotating among venues that typically do not host PGA Tour events. That will mark the end of East Lake Golf Club’s longtime run as the annual host of the Tour Championship dating back to 2004.
With the shift, the Tour Championship is likely to have fewer fans than typical professional golf tournaments with fewer grandstands and little-to-no corporate hospitality buildouts.
“It really depends where we go,” PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp said Tuesday. “I think there’s an acknowledgment and understanding on some of these sites that you don’t see very often at a PGA Tour event, the footprint might be smaller.”
Those logistical demands associated with top-tier golf events can be “limiting,” Rolapp said. “I think we wanted to take that out of the equation so we could reach the best courses in the country.”
Specific host venues have not been announced. Highly ranked, ultra-private clubs like Pine Valley (New Jersey), Cypress Point (California), and Seminole (Florida), as well as top-tier public resorts like Bandon Dunes (Oregon), have been in the rotation for the Walker Cup, a biennial Ryder Cup-style, match play competition for amateur golfers from the U.S. and Great Britain and Ireland.
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