The PGA Tour announced transformational changes to the way it will operate with a new split-tour format in 2028 between a Championship and Challenger series.
The dramatic change has been a long time coming for the tour, as commissioner Brian Rolapp came from the NFL with the decisive purpose and vision in mind to make the PGA Tour more fan-friendly and more attractive from a television perspective. As he wrote to fans alongside the announcement, the main objective for the new two-tiered approach is to provide more opportunities for fans to see the top players in the world play alongside each other in a clearly defined schedule.
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But alongside the announcement comes plenty of questions for how exactly this will work for the tour’s network partners at NBC and CBS.
1) Will the top players actually buy in and participate fully?
The key point of this announcement is the promise and the expectation that the top players in the world will now have a fully defined tour in which to align their schedules. That has been something that the PGA Tour has been chasing for decades. Before Greg Norman helped launch LIV, he was trying to get a world golf tour together featuring top pros all the way back in 1994.
The lack of schedule consistency has always been a puzzler for sports fans who aren’t serious golf watchers. Everyone knows about the majors and probably The Players Championship. But who’s to say which of the world’s best golfers actually show up on a week-in and week-out basis at tournaments like the Canadian Open or Heritage? Rory McIlroy has made no apologies for skipping out on designated events and even postseason events in recent years. In fact, McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler didn’t share the field once between the Masters and PGA Championship in spite of there being three signature events.
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Currently, we only know that Championship players can’t play in Challenger events. But what guarantees are in place to make sure that the best of the best actually buy in and follow through on what is the entire goal of this endeavor? If top players aren’t playing the same events, then fans might be asking what’s the point of remaking the PGA Tour if it’s just going to be the same old story with a different cover.
2) How do TV partners respond?
There’s a math equation that needs to be solved for PGA Tour broadcast partners NBC and CBS. The new Championship Series calendar will be 23-24 events, including the majors, the Players, and the postseason. In the 2026 season, NBC and CBS combined to televise 31 PGA Tour events, 23 on CBS and eight on NBC. While the events on the Championship Series should receive a nice boost, that means at least seven tournaments will be dramatically reduced in quality. With the main season now starting in February, the three tournaments that Golf Channel exclusively televised at the beginning of the year are probably in serious jeopardy.
Given CBS has the bulk of the coverage, they will probably be most affected. The non-signature summer events seem the most likely to make the switch, given the prestige of tournaments like the John Deere Classic, 3M Open, and Rocket Classic doesn’t match the pedigree of others on the West Coast or Florida swing. And while the networks might be happy to have more certainty over their biggest events, there may have to be some negotiations to get them to buy in to having fewer top-tier events on the calendar.
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3) How attractive will the Challenger Series actually be?
Let’s make no mistake about it, the PGA Tour Championship Series will be, in every way that matters, what we know and think of as the PGA Tour today. It will feature the top 120 players on tour with 90 spots guaranteed to the top finishers in the rankings for the next season. That should account for everyone who matters from the standpoint of being a television draw.
The Challenger Series, though? That’s basically going to be a souped-up version of the Korn Ferry Tour. The PGA Tour says that seven Challenger events will be elevated during Championship bye weeks, meaning they would presumably fill those missing network television windows mentioned above. But take a look at the fields that could be on display, and you immediately wonder just who’s going to watch.
Are we really expecting networks to be able to successfully market Adrien Dumont de Chassart and Pierceson Coody as must-see TV? That’s going to be tough for anyone to sell, even with the storylines of promotion and relegation. What makes it even more difficult for those events will be the ban on Championship Series players from participating. In years past, you could at least have one or two big names to tune in for when watching even the most mundane of PGA Tour events. But now that won’t be possible. And it makes Challenger Series events content that will only be consumed by golf sickos.
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Odds are, the Challenger Series will likely take up Korn Ferry Tour real estate while what is now the Korn Ferry Tour becomes more of a development pathway.
4) Which events make and miss the cut?
The PGA Tour certainly has its haves and its have-nots when it comes to the calendar. And it has shown a certain ruthlessness if markets and venues can’t pay up and keep pace with the millions needed to satisfy burgeoning purses, with each Championship event boasting a $20 million pot. The tour ended the World Series of Golf in Akron and turned it into a Champions Tour senior event after it was one of the most high-profile events consistently. The Sentry at Kapalua and the Sony Open in Hawaii, favorite events of fans and players to start the year, are unlikely to be played again.
While Brian Rolapp appears to be getting a lot right in his messaging around the change, one of the biggest risks is chasing white whales in major markets. While the new commissioner wants events in New York, Chicago, and other big cities, sometimes that doesn’t always work out well. The bedrock of the PGA Tour features longtime venues like Hilton Head, Hartford, and Pebble Beach. Which events are going to be sacrificed or dropped down to the Challenger series, and will any new events actually stick and bring the Tour the added relevance it is searching for? It might be attractive to swap the Quad Cities for Chicago and Philadelphia, but it’s not a guaranteed success. And it could be the one thing that still leaves the tour fishing for answers.
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5) Will the PGA Tour postseason finally break through?
Probably the most exciting aspect of the announcement is that match play will make its long-awaited entry into the postseason. While the new format hasn’t been fully decided, it’s what fans have been calling for as the last, best chance to make the end of the PGA Tour season truly meaningful.
The tour has tried to do everything it can to make the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup truly mean something. But so much of the sport revolves around the major championships that there has always been a vacuum of interest from the general sports world when it comes to the playoffs. And no, the promise of already insanely wealthy golfers winning even more ludicrous amounts of money ain’t it.
However, the promise of match play could be the spark that is desperately needed. We only see it once a year at the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup. And the prospect of McIlroy, Scheffler, Young, Schauffele, and others going head-to-head for a championship is much more appealing. If you add to the fact that the tour is looking at going to new elite venues across the country that haven’t hosted events before, it becomes even more appealing. Imagine a match play event between the PGA Tour Final Four at Pine Valley? It’s something golf fans could only dream of, but maybe this new format can make it a reality.
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