The PGA Tour is making some drastic decisions with its new leadership, and not everybody is comfortable with the direction it is taking.
New CEO Brian Rolapp warned fans he’s not bound by tradition when he was appointed to his new role, and that’s become abundantly clear with the first major choices he’s made.
The man with a quarter of a century of experience working for the NFL seems determined to replicate that league’s recent success with golf.
Firstly, the PGA Tour has reduced the number of fully exempt tour cards to 100, down from 125. That created real stakes at the end of the year, as distraught players lost their cards despite playing well enough to have retained it the year before.
And Harris English recently revealed that the PGA Tour plans to move to a 20-event season, which starts after the Super Bowl. Every event would hold equal value, and some legendary courses, such as Torrey Pines, could be removed from the schedule.
That’s drawn comparisons to LIV Golf, and Rex Hoggard says there’s a major concern about the decision Rolapp and the tour is making.
Rex Hoggard says PGA Tour must do ‘something ridiculous’ to avoid moving towards LIV Golf model
The reported changes to the PGA Tour schedule have split fans’ opinions. On one hand, the best players are likely to play more events, but that’s to the detriment of those further down the rankings who are stretching and clawing to retain their cards.
Hoggard, speaking on the Golf Channel Podcast with Rex and Lav, is worried that the PGA Tour won’t be able to make this schedule work for those players. He explained: “If you go to 20 from 42 PGA Tour events, you can’t make up that difference.
“You have talked about field sizes, but what the number of fully exempt PGA Tour players is right now, which is far less than it was last year, will not be able to get equal number of starts based on 20 events unless you go to 250 player fields.
“And I’m throwing that number out there, but you would have to do something ridiculous to try to get it to that number. There is at the end of the day, if you put it on a spreadsheet, X number of playing opportunities this year on the PGA Tour, that is far less than it was last year.
Would you prefer to see a 20-event PGA Tour schedule which runs for six months rather than the current system?
“And that was far less than it was the year before. If you go to 20, which is, as I pointed out, numerous occasions, more than half less than half of what we essentially had last season on the PGA Tour, just do the simple math.
“You’re coming up with half as many playing opportunities regardless of how big the field size as you think you could possibly make, and I wouldn’t imagine they’re ever going to go beyond 100-120 going forward. That seems to be the magic number that they really like.
“So I’ll go back to parity comes from this idea that you have a healthy promotion and relegation system. This seems to me that we’re heading in an area that it’s not quite as healthy. And I’m not here to pick on LIV Golf, but we can all agree that four players in and four players out on LIV Golf, that’s their relegation, that’s really not a healthy promotion and relegation system.
“I’m not saying the tour is going to become that, but you’re moving closer to that model, and I think that’s the concern going forward.”
As LIV Golf adopts a 72-hole format, it seems the two rival tours are only coming closer together.
How PGA Tour players feel about Brian Rolapp’s changes
As they are among fans, opinions on the new PGA Tour direction is split among players.
English, who revealed the tour’s plans for a new schedule, was mostly supportive of the move. He said, “The talk of the tour potentially starting after the Super Bowl is a pretty good thing. We can’t really compete with football.”
But Justin Thomas, speaking about the tour’s plans to shave down the schedule and remove key events, said there needs to be more variety.
He said on the No Laying Up podcast, ““It was always so fun my first couple of years on Tour, we had that tournament on Tour, The Barclays, which was up in New York or New Jersey. And then we would go to Boston. So many people came out and it was so fun.
“Obviously New York and Boston are massive markets and I just think it’s hard when someone comes to those events and offers up a huge sum of money, it’s hard to say no to, but it’s hard for us to get as excited about playing some of these places when they are not the atmosphere we should be having at a playoff event.
What city would you like to see host a brand new PGA Tour event?
“Like Chicago, the amount of good golf courses in Chicago we don’t play, it sucks really. The amount of players and fans that have experienced it, I can’t imagine one player who thinks it’s a good move missing those events.”
And as expected, some of those missing out on a fully exempt PGA Tour card next season were furious. Justin Lower lost his at the RSM Classic, and slammed the tour afterwards.
He said, “I totally get the need for the changes. Do I agree with them? No. I don’t think our product is that bad to where we have to blow everything up, which is what it seems like.”
One thing is clear: the PGA Tour are not afraid of upsetting fans and players in order to make what they feel will be a better product moving forward!
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