More No-Cut Golf Coming to the PGA Tour Schedule in 2024

The PGA Tour has yet to announce its highly anticipated 2024 schedule—which will return to a calendar-year season for the first time since 2013—but it appears that there will be some key changes to its structure and cadence. One of those adjustments includes the elimination of 36-hole cuts at the majority of the Tour’s designated events.  

According to Golfweek, 12 of the non-major PGA Tour events will be considered “designated,” but only four of those tournaments—the Players Championship, the Genesis Invitational, the Memorial Tournament and the Arnold Palmer Invitational—will include 36-hole cuts. The Genesis Invitational is hosted by Tiger Woods, while the Memorial is Jack Nicklaus’s event.

At the rest of the season’s limited-field big-money events, there will be four days of stroke play with no cut. 

The no-cut plan will allow top players to play four guaranteed days, a move that will please both the tournament title sponsors and TV partners. The decision was made in part as a reaction to LIV Golf’s structure: 54-hole events with limited fields and no 36-hole cut. 

Golfweek reported that aside from the Players Championship—which will remain a full-field event—the three invitationals with 36-hole cuts will have a maximum of 80 players in the field with a cut to the top 50 and ties. 

Additionally, unlike during the 2023 season, the designated events will not be “mandatory” for top players. This year, top players were allowed to skip one designated event. Rory McIlroy, however, missed two—the Sentry Tournament of Champions and the RBC Heritage—and he was reportedly docked $3 million from his Player Impact Program bonus for doing so. 

Next year’s designated events will be scheduled for back-to-back weeks for the most part. The change that allows for non-exempt players to qualify into the top-tier tournaments and build on strong finishes. 

One tournament that won’t have the “designated” label next season will be the Waste Management Phoenix Open. It will be sandwiched between the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, which will have designated status for 2024, and the Genesis Invitational. 

The "framework agreement" between the PGA Tour and the Saudi PIF, the backer of LIV Golf, is not expected to impact the 2024 schedule.