Next Year's PGA Tour Designated Event Rotation Is Anyone's Guess, and It's Complicated
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We know there will likely be 11 no-cut events during the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup schedule in 2024, including the three FedEx Cup playoff events and the season-opening Sentry Tournament of Champions. We know that with the major championships and the Players Championship, the elite players will likely be together 16 times. We know they won’t be required to be at any of those events, but the big purses (more $20 million) and extra FedEx Cup points (believed to be 700 to the winner) will entice them.
What we don’t know is which four tournaments will comprise the designated tournaments outside of the legacy tournaments (Genesis, Arnold Palmer and Memorial).
This year’s rotation is the WM Phoenix Open (won by Scottie Scheffler) followed by the RBC Heritage (the week after the Masters), the Wells Fargo Championship (two weeks prior to the PGA Championship) and the Travelers Championship (the week following the U.S. Open).
PGA Tour officials have been in the midst of trying to figure all of this out. And it is quite likely what will emerge is a multi-year deal for whatever tournaments are chosen.
The picturesque RBC Heritage is a designated event on the PGA Tour this year. But its schedule spot after the Masters may prevent it from future designated status.
Richard Burkhart/USA TODAY Network
A good bit will go into these decisions. The increase in prize money from a regular event to a designated event is at least in the $12 million range. Who pays? That is part of the negotiation, with the title sponsor and the Tour having to come to some agreement as to who picks up the extra tab.
Scheduling is another matter. When the plan was unveiled a few weeks ago, it was suggested that non-designated events would not be put in the unenviable position that events such as the Honda Classic and Valspar Championship saw this year—being preceded and followed by designated events.
The hope is to have some space between them, so that the non-designated tournaments can be used as mini-qualifiers for the next designated event.
Pebble Beach already has emerged as a possible contender for one of the designated event spots. So has Phoenix, Wells Fargo and Travelers. RBC Heritage seems a bad fit the week after the Masters following a long stretch of big tournaments, and next year there are only two weeks following the Masters prior to the Wells Fargo as the Mexico Championship is moving to earlier in the spring, following the Genesis Invitational.
If Pebble Beach does become a designated event, does it move to the week prior to the Genesis so there can be two in a row followed by Mexico and the event in the Honda Classic's spot? Before Pebble would potentially be the Sony, American Express, Farmers and Phoenix. If Phoenix remains in place to repeat as a designated event, how does that impact Pebble Beach? You’d then have the potential for three designated events in a short period.
The spacing becomes easier without a WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play. Following the Arnold Palmer-Players double, you’d have three events—Valspar, likely Houston and the Valero Texas Open—leading up to the Masters. Those three could serve as a mini-qualifier for Heritage if it stays designated, or a bigger one for the Wells Fargo.
While the Charlotte event would be just two weeks prior to the PGA Championship, the Byron Nelson and Colonial—which follows the PGA—could serve as a mini-qualifier for the Memorial.
And if Travelers stays on board, it would mean just one mini-qualifier preceding it—the Canadian Open.
Got all that?
One thing that seems clear is no matter how this shakes out, there won’t be any designated events (other than the British Open) following the Travelers prior to the FedEx Cup playoffs.
That will give some added importance to events such as the Rocket Mortgage Classic, John Deere, Scottish Open, 3M Championship and the Wyndham Championship. Those events then become crucial to those outside of the top 70 in FedEx points as well as those outside the top 50, who are looking to become fulling exempt for the following year’s designated tournaments, which will have just 70 to 80 players.
All of this is still to be determined. So is the number of events and where they will be this fall, which will play a role in determining fields for the early-season designated events.