Jack Nicklaus Sees a 'Problem' With PGA Tour Schedule: 'Not Exactly in Favor'

At 87 years old, Jack Nicklaus has seen professional golf evolve over generations.

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.

“I don’t want to comment on the Tour’s schedule because I’m not exactly in favor of what they’re doing right now,” Nicklaus said Tuesday in his pre-tournament presser at the Memorial Tournament.

Currently, the Tour’s 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.

“I hate to see tournaments bunched too much together with too many big tournaments too close together,” Nicklaus said. “That’s a problem, I think. And I think that's going to be a problem for the Tour in the future.

“But anyway, that’s neither here nor there. I probably shouldn't have brought it up here. I’ll get chastised for that later.”

Nicklaus, however, continued to expand on his stance.

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, followed by the Arnold Palmer Invitational and Players Championship.

“I mean, what chance does [the Cognizant Classic] have? I mean, it sits right in the middle of those,” said Nicklaus. “They don’t have a chance. The other tournaments also say, you know, I got four out of five. It’s hard for guys to play that.”

The Cognizant isn’t much better off in 2027, though the Tour did some reshuffling to lighten the load around the majors next year.

Nicklaus isn’t alone in his sentiment. The Tour played three signature events between the Masters and the PGA Championship, drawing the ire of some of golf’s current stars.

“It’s tough,” Thomas said of the schedule at the RBC Heritage. “I mean, it’s not how I would prefer to draw it up, I would say.”

That’s because, according to Nicklaus, downtime is imperative.

“It's hard for the players to really be focused to play that much and be on top of their game,” the 18-time major champion said. “And that, to me, is—look 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’s tough.”

But changes to the Tour’s 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’s vision, increasing to 120-man fields.

Nicklaus believes that the next version of the Tour’s calendar could burn out players. But he’s willing to give his two cents to avoid that.

“I want to sit down with Brian and [commissioner] Jay [Monahan] and have that conversation,” he said.

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