More Limited-Field, No-Cut Events Will Reshape the PGA Tour in 2024
ORLANDO - The PGA Tour is headed for a much different look in 2024 that will see several designated events have their fields reduced while eliminating a 36-hole cut.
The potential changes will be controversial since they are bound to leave a number of players who are competing in these tournaments on the outside looking in, because field sizes will be between 70 and 80 players.
Golfweek first reported the changes were approved by the PGA Tour policy board Tuesday.
Rory McIlroy confirmed during a media session at Bay Hill that a good bit of what has been speculated on in recent weeks will occur, although no decisions have been made on the number of no-cut events that will be part of the schedule.
“I love it,” McIlroy said Wednesday at the Bay Hill Club, where the tournament begins Thursday. “Obviously I’ve been a part of it and been in a ton of discussions. I think it makes the Tour more competitive. I think we were going that way, anyway.
“I’m all about rewarding good play. I want to give everyone a fair shake at this. Which I think this structure has done. There are ways to play into it. It’s trying to get the top guys versus the hot guys, right? I think that creates a really compelling product. But a way that you don’t have to wait an entire year for your good play to then get the opportunity. That opportunity presents itself straight away.
“You play well for two or three weeks, you’re in a designated event. You know then if you keep playing well you stay in them. So, for example, someone like a Chris Kirk last week that wins Honda, he’s set. Winning is really important on this Tour and good play and rewarding that.
“At the end of the day, I think with all these designated events and this event schedule, at the end of the day we’re selling a product to people. The more clarity they have on that product and knowing what they’re buying is really important. It’s really important for the Tour. I think this solves for that.”
Largely in response to LIV Golf, which has a 14-tournament league schedule that has 48-player fields with no cuts, the PGA Tour quickly enacted significant changes for this year that include 12 set “designated events” that have all seen hefty purse increases with all but one being $20 million. The five major championships and the Players Championship, which will be $25 million next week, are also part of the designated events.
Going to more limited field events with no cuts will undoubtedly lead to concerns from lower-ranked players as well as pushback from LIV Golf, which saw its format of limited fields and no cuts mocked.
“Imitation is the greatest form of flattery,” said the official LIV Golf Twitter account. “Congratulations PGA Tour. Welcome to the future.”
The resistance to do things such as the PGA Tour is doing now—basically rewarding the stars—is ultimately what led to LIV Golf, which picked off the likes of Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Cam Smith, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau last year to form a circuit that has been highly controversial, not the least of which is because of the massive upfront contracts and large purses.
“I don’t think we would be here this soon without LIV, but I would hope at some point we would have looked at this and said, ‘Hey, there might be a better way to do it,’” Max Homa said. “It does seem like the emergence of LIV forced us as players and the executives of the PGA Tour to just look at their product. I think there are things that they have done—they got to make something from scratch, which is a lot easier than us building something that has been around for so long that’s been on the shoulders of someone like Arnold Palmer, who has built a lot of what we do today.
“They don’t have to deal with tradition. So they got to just kind of set out a piece of paper and say, ‘What should we do?’ And I think one of the things that they have that’s great that this will provide now is a guaranteed product. You know who is going to be at each event.
“I think that’s important for fans. Especially the ones who come to the events, who are on-site. Because you know, hey, if I go to Mexico for Mayakoba, Dustin Johnson will be at that golf tournament. Dustin Johnson is my favorite golfer and I want to see Dustin Johnson in person. Whereas, some other events, how we’ve done it in the past, it’s tricky.
“I joke that my friend Steven is a humongous Rory McIlroy fan and I got tired of listening to, Is Rory going to play in the event? I was thinking he should know if he’s going to be in an event.”
Nonetheless, there is bound to be pushback, especially from players who are not eligible for those designated events next year. Eddie Pepperell, who is not a member of the PGA Tour but plays on the DP World Tour, expressed his doubts in a Twitter thread.
“The cut is an integral part of being a professional golfer,” Pepperell said. “It’s sometimes brutal being on the cut line. Plus, LIV golfers should not feel more entitled to their [Official World Golf Ranking] points.”
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said last year that “those who play in LIV Golf exhibitions are missing out on the legacy, competitiveness and tradition of the PGA Tour.”
Tiger Woods, who along with McIlroy helped spearhead the original changes, questioned the LIV plan before last year’s British Open, saying, “What these players are doing for guaranteed money, which is the incentive to practice? What is the incentive to go out there and earn it in the dirt?”
And yet, in this new system, the top 50 players—those who make it to the BMW Championship, a 50-player tournament—would be guaranteed pay through a number of no-cut events in 2024. (It is also important to note that those players would be qualifying for those events through various means.)
The PGA Tour has yet to comment, but according to a memo it sent to players Wednesday by Monahan, in addition to those 50 who qualify for BMW, the top 10 players on the current FedEx Cup point list not already eligible would also qualify for designated events, as well as five more places earned through the most recent designated events.
Also qualifying would be current-year PGA Tour winners, the top 30 in the Official World Golf Ranking and four sponsor exemptions restricted to PGA Tour members.
McIlroy noted that no-cut events have been part of the PGA Tour for some time. The Sentry Tournament of Champions as well as the final two playoff events, the World Golf Championship events and tournaments such as the Zozo Championship and the CJ Cup were limited fields with no cuts.
In the current schedule from January through August, there are five no-cut events: the Sentry Tournament of Champions, the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play Championship and the three FedEx Cup playoff events.
The Match Play’s future is in doubt but it’s possible there could be as many as seven more no-cut events if the invitationals such as the Genesis, Arnold Palmer and Memorial are added, along with the four floating no-cut events.
“It’s a better model overall for the Tour to have a set of events that are aspirational,” said defending Arnold Palmer champion Scottie Scheffler. “You earn your way into those events. It’s more of a reward for the guys who are playing the best on the Tour.”
As part of the designated event system, the Tour stipulated that players are required to play 19 of the 20 to be eligible for or receive full payment from the $100 million Player Impact Program. Monahan’s memo said that bonus would be reduced to $50 million next year with the other money added to the FedEx Cup bonus pool and the Comcast Business pool. Also, there will no longer be a stipulation to play in all the designated events.
All of this came together very quickly last year, and the Tour had to scramble to put together its 2023 schedule that included four “rotating” designated events: the WM Phoenix Open, Wells Fargo Championship, the RBC Heritage and the Travelers Championship.
While those events are likely to change, it’s hard to envision any of them going to a shorter field with no cut.
“I think it’s easy to frame these changes as a way to put more money in the top players’ pockets,” Homa said. “But it has been made to make it easier and more fun for the fans. I know it’s low-hanging fruit to jump on, ‘Oh, this is just a money grab.’ This is to make it better for the fans.
“It is a guarantee on who will be at events, more or less, and leaning more on the more there. It is more opportunity for the top players to battle it out late on Sundays. Which, you look back at times of Phil [Mickelson] and Tiger, the two best players growing up for me watching, and they had like maybe two real battles. So we’re going to have more of that.
“We just had Scottie and Jon [Rahm] battle it out in Phoenix, and that was awesome. Two of the three best players in the world going at it. So I think that’s great.”