The PGA Tour may have a big decision to make soon, with Rory McIlroy’s intentions and ambitions potentially set to change.
McIlroy is one of the PGA Tour‘s two crown jewels, alongside Scottie Scheffler, of course.
The Northern Irishman has won 29 PGA Tour titles, including five major championships throughout his career to date.
He achieved huge success in the 2025 season, with wins at The Masters, The Players Championship and the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, but it wasn’t all sunshine and roses for him.
McIlroy avoided PGA Tour press conferences for around a month from May through to June.
However, 2025 will go down as a memorable year for the 36-year-old on the whole.
McIlroy’s incredible win at The Masters saw him complete the career Grand Slam, joining only five other golfers in the history of the game in that ever so elusive club.
However, McIlroy may now have a completely new outlook regarding what the future may hold for him.
PGA Tour urged to make change due to new challenge which is appealing to Rory McIlroy
McIlroy is at the stage of his career now where he wants to seek out new experiences, rather than playing the same golf tournaments every single year.
And as a result, the PGA Tour may well have to change tack.
Ryan Lavner was speaking to the Golf Channel about where the PGA Tour is at right now regarding the schedule.
“If your biggest star, and look, Rory is not Scottie, Scottie has made it abundantly clear that he prefers what is happening right now on the PGA Tour, against the very best fields, located almost exclusively in the United States, having started a young family.
“Rory, at a different stage of his career and his life I guess, finds it more appealing to go to places where he has not previously been.
“He compares it to what Roger Federer told him years ago. When Roger was in his late career stages, he really got a lot of enjoyment, or a lot of personal satisfaction of going and playing in Cincinnati, or going and playing in Turkey, where he had not played previously. That, at that point of his career, was something new, something exciting, something that could get his competitive juices flowing.
“Rory McIlroy very clearly finds himself at a similar crossroads at this point.
“Is he going to find personal satisfaction teeing it up at the Truist Championship? Probably not. Is he going to find personal satisfaction teeing it up at the RBC Heritage? Probably not.
“But, he plays in India, new country, he experiences new things. He goes to Australia later in the year, new country, experiences new things.
“That is all very appealing to him.“
Lavner then went on to suggest that the PGA Tour needs to at least consider switching to a more global schedule in the future from September through to December.
He said: “When you look at the fall schedule, what the PGA Tour are essentially doing with this elongated Q-School, to lock up the top 100 to be fully exempt, or the top 125 for conditional status.
“What I think is the untapped potential is for the big name PGA Tour players, and potentially incorporating more with the DP World Tour.
“There are a host of tournaments that have got really good fields. The Spanish Open, the Irish Open, the BMW PGA, Dunhill Links, this week in India, we still have Abu Dhabi on the horizon and Australia.
“There are a host of tournaments Rex, that are very appealing to top players in that window from September through December, which the PGA Tour said, rightly, they do not want to compete with the NFL or college football.
“I think that is very smart. However, if you sort of zoom out and go worldwide, if you go global in nature, technically you wouldn’t be competing With the NFL, if those were big money events that were incorporated into the PGA Tour schedule. Those tournaments are all ending right around 1 o’clock eastern time, right around when the NFL slate is kicking off.
“I really do think if the PGA Tour and Brian Rolapp determines that January through August can be elongated throughout the calendar year again, I think the only option is to go global in the fall because you’re not competing against the NFL and the college football behemoth.“
What Rory McIlroy has said about the PGA Tour schedule
McIlroy offered his thoughts on the 2026 PGA Tour schedule back in August.
The five-time major champion said: “I mean, geez, I think it’s all positive when you have — golf builds through the January, February, March months, and obviously golf gets a huge popularity spike or whatever through Augusta; and then to try to keep that momentum going, keep that momentum going through the next few weeks, through the PGA, U.S. Open, I think it’s a good thing.
“It’s quite a bit of a workload for the players to play that much golf in that stretch, but I think it’s not as if we’re having to travel halfway around the world to do it. These are all pretty easy stops on the East Coast for the most part.
“But I think it’ll be good. It’ll be a good schedule, and I think if the TOUR and the top players get off to a good start, I think that builds momentum for the TOUR, and I think the TOUR can just sort of ride that momentum through that stretch.“
However, McIlroy also noted how he will play where and when he chooses.
The Northern Irishman explained: “I’ll always look at the schedule at the start of the year and see what best fits me and my life, and everything else that I do with family or other opportunities that I’m pursuing outside of golf.
“This year that meant skipping a few signature events. [Next year] I might skip less, I might skip the same amount.
“The luxury of being a PGA Tour player is we’re free to pick and choose our own schedule for the most part. I took advantage of that this year and I’ll continue to take advantage of that for as long as I can.“
The bottom line here is that professional golfers are independent contractors. They are free to play whatever tournaments they want, and as a result, the likes of McIlroy will undoubtedly miss some of the PGA Tour’s biggest events throughout the year, just as the reigning Masters champion did in 2025.
However, should the PGA Tour join forces with the DP World Tour and offer up more of a global schedule later in the year, who knows what kind of fields they may be able to attract? It’s certainly worth thinking about at the very least.
Receive exclusive golf news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
