PGA Tour Weighs Delaying Future Season Starts Until After Super Bowl

As a new Tiger Woods–led committee explores ways to revamp the PGA Tour, major changes being discussed include delaying the season’s start until after the Super Bowl, reducing the primary schedule to around 20 events, and getting rid of the $20 million signature events.

“Sometimes change is good,” Harris English said Wednesday, ahead of the RSM Classic, revealing some of the details. 

“I get that they want all the best players playing together more often,” said English, who is currently No. 11 in the Official World Golf Ranking. “And the talk of the Tour potentially starting after the Super Bowl I think is a pretty good thing because we can’t really compete with football.”

In August, new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp announced the creation of the Future Competition Committee, which is chaired by Woods and is “aimed at a holistic relook” of the sport. “That is inclusive of regular season, postseason, and offseason,” Rolapp said at the Tour Championship.

While Rolapp also said he would like to start implementing changes “as soon as we can,” the 2026 schedule is set, so significant shifts like beginning the season after the Super Bowl wouldn’t come until 2027 at the earliest.

Before the PGA Tour’s 2026 season opener The Sentry was canceled due to water supply issues on Maui, there were five tournaments scheduled to take place before Super Bowl LX, including the Sony Open (Honolulu), The American Express (Palm Springs), Farmers Insurance Open (Torrey Pines), and WM Phoenix Open, which annually concludes on Super Bowl Sunday. 

The first event after the Super Bowl on the 2026 schedule is the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. LIV Golf’s 2026 season begins Feb. 4–7, the weekend of Super Bowl LX, in Saudi Arabia.

Mark Your Calendars

The 2026 PGA Tour schedule will run for 33 consecutive weeks (which would have been 34 with The Sentry) from January to August, with four weeks including multiple tournaments as “opposite field” events are played alongside higher-profile ones. Eight of those will be signature events, which have limited fields and a larger $20 million purse. (The Sentry was going to be a ninth signature event.) Those are in addition to the four major championships, which count as part of the PGA Tour season but are not run by the PGA Tour. 

“I think that’s what they’re going to change down the road—maybe in 2027—is have all the tournaments be equal and not have the eight elevated events and the regular events,” English said. “They’ll have 20, 22 events that are all the same. I think that’s a good model to have. That’s where you’ll see all the top players play every single event because you can’t really afford to take one off.”

Many top golfers already play in fewer events than that. No. 1–ranked Scottie Scheffler and FedEx Cup champion Tommy Fleetwood each played in 19 events during the PGA Tour season, while No. 2–ranked Rory McIlroy played in 16.

Rolapp—leaning on his experience as the NFL’s chief media and business officer—has cited “scarcity” and “simplicity” as two key characteristics he would like the PGA Tour to have. “Competition should be easy to follow,” he said in August.