Three Things to Love About the PGA Tour’s New Playoff Format, Which Starts in 2028

The PGA Tour, which will finish its 2026 season this week at the Tour Championship in Atlanta, announced Tuesday the changes it is making to the playoff format starting in 2028, and if you’re a golf fan you’re going to really like how things are going to look in the near future.

The PGA Tour currently has three playoff events to end its season, in which 20 players are eliminated after each of the first two events. The top 30 then head to East Lake Golf Club for the final event where the season-long FedEx Cup champion is crowned.

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That’s going to look a lot different starting in 2028 thanks to three big changes. There will still be three events, but the first one will be a 72-hole stroke play tournament with the top 90 guys in the season-long standings in the field. If any of the players don’t play in the event, they will not be able to qualify for the Tour Championship.

The top 32 players in the standings after the first event will the advance to what the PGA Tour is calling Tour Championship Week 1. This will be a match play tournament in which the players will be split into eight groups for round-robin play, with the top two players from each group moving on to the final event.

The championship event, which the PGA Tour is calling Tour Championship Week 2, will be match play as well, with 16 players battling in a bracket-style format.

Here’s how that will look, via the PGA Tour:

“The championship culminates with head-to-head match play, as all 16 participants will play four days of matches on a different venue than the one utilized the week prior. Players advance through the bracket based on their win-loss record, with the two players who remain undefeated after the first three days of competition battling on the final day to be crowned TOUR Champion. Individual player records across all four days of competition will be used to determine the final championship standings.”

PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp had this to say about the sweeping changes to the championship format:

“From the beginning, the goal of the Future Competition Committee was to create an easier-to-follow competitive model for our fans with greater consequence and a stronger season-long narrative,” PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp said in a statement. “Throughout this process, we listened carefully to our fans, players and partners. One message came through clearly: the culmination of our season should be worthy of the journey it takes to get there. The result is a season-ending structure that rewards excellence over the course of the year while building toward a reimagined TOUR Championship. We are creating something different, something distinct within professional golf that can resonate far beyond it.”

Here are three things that we love about these changes.

Match play is back

Fans have been very vocal over the years about wanting match play to not only return to the PGA Tour, but also to be used in the postseason to determine a true champion. Now we get two such events to close out the year where a lot will be at stake and it will be easier to figure out who’s in contention to win the season-long title and who is not.

New ‘prestigious’ courses will be featured in the final two events

The Tour Championship has been played at East Lake Golf Club outside of Atlanta since 2005. That is going to change starting in 2028, which is tremendous news because, to put it bluntly, East Lake stinks. It’s a boring, uninspiring course that doesn’t have a single iconic hole that strikes up fond memories of championships from the past. Also, playing it in August is generally awful because Georgia in late summer is an absolute steamfest.

We don’t know which courses will host these tournaments yet, but this from the PGA Tour’s breakdown of the changes has me pretty fired up by what should see in a few years:

“The [final two events] will see the best players in the world compete in match play across a rotation of prestigious venues—including courses the modern PGA TOUR has not traditionally been able to feature.”

Count me all the way in on that.

It’s great to see the PGA Tour trying something new because the current playoff format is equal parts bland and confusing

The PGA Tour has tried to make its playoff format interesting for fans over the years but just hasn’t been able to find something that sticks. We’ve seen some big-name players skip events because they are already qualified for the next two events. We’ve also seen announcers using whiteboards and hard-to-follow formulas to try to explain to the viewers who is in danger of being eliminated and who is in position to win the championship. Math is rarely fun. Math on a summer Saturday or Sunday when you’re trying to watch what’s supposed to be championship-level golf is even worse.

Match play will do away with all that and create a product that is much more enjoyable for everyone involved.

The PGA Tour will announce the dates and venues for the 2028 championship events during a live show on Feb. 22, 2027.

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