While some details about the PGA Tour’s 2024 schedule were leaked last week, there remained plenty of juicy tidbits to chew on when the tour made its official announcement overnight about next season. Among them:
- Of the 36 events in the FedEx Cup regular season, there will be eight designated tournaments – now called “signature” events – with limited fields and $US20 million purses in addition to the four majors and Players Championship, along with 18 full-field tournaments and five “additional” events.
- Three player-hosted tournaments – the Genesis Invitational (Tiger Woods), Arnold Palmer Invitational and Memorial (Jack Nicklaus) – will have 36-hole cuts, with the top 50 players and those within 10 shots of the lead reaching the weekend. Those events will also pay $US4 million to the winner (a 20 percent share of the overall purse), while the remaining signature tournaments will have no cut and pay the standard 18 percent to the winner.
- The FedEx Cup Playoffs champion will receive $US25 million, up from $US18 million for this year.
- In a dramatic change for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the tournament is a signature tournament for ’24, with a field of only 80 players, and will be contested only at Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill. Additionally, the celebrities and amateurs will compete only on Thursday and Friday.
The tour also addressed one of the biggest concerns expressed by those among its rank-and-file members: how would they be able to get into the most lucrative tournaments? In the new system, beyond the players from the top 50 of the previous year’s FedEx Cup standings and top 30 in the OWGR, there are categories called the Next 10 and the Swing 5. The Next 10 is composed of the top 10 members, not otherwise exempt, from the current FedEx Cup standings. The Swing 5 are the top five FedEx Cup points earners, not otherwise exempt, from the swing of five full-field and additional events that precede each signature event.
Translation: for players who get hot at just the right time, they get into the bigger tournaments.
“While winning on the PGA Tour continues to be the ultimate – and most difficult – challenge, we have further connected every tournament, with more at stake each week,” PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in the press release. “From The Sentry through the FedEx Cup Playoffs and into the soon-to-be-announced FedEx Cup Fall, this new cadence will create consistent excitement for our fans and reward players like never before. We are grateful to the membership – especially the Player Directors and Player Advisory Council – as well as our tournaments and partners for the collaboration that has set us up for an exciting 2024.”
In addition to the aforementioned signature events, the others are the season-opening The Sentry (which dropped “Tournament of Champions” from its name), RBC Heritage, Wells Fargo Championship and Travelers Championship.
The playoff events are the FedEx St Jude in Memphis, BMW Championship (to be played for the first time at Colorado’s Castle Pines) and the Tour Championship at East Lake in Atlanta, which concludes on September 1.
The top 50 players in the points standings after the St Jude advance to the BMW and earn fully exempt status for 2025, and everyone else must battle for their cards during the FedEx Fall series. That portion of the schedule has not yet been announced.
Among the other interesting notes provided by the tour in its release:
- Due to continuing conflicts with the NFL playoffs, the Farmers Insurance Open (January 24-27) at Torrey Pines will conclude on Saturday for a third consecutive year.
- The Mexico Open at Vidanta (February 22-25), moves to February after being contested in April 2023.
- After losing Honda as a sponsor, the tour has scheduled The Classic in The Palm Beaches (February 29–March 3) at PGA National Resort. The tour said it expects to announce a new title sponsor in the near future.
- With a new five-year title sponsor, the Texas Children’s Houston Open (March 28-31) moves from the autumn portion of the schedule.
- The new Myrtle Beach Classic (May 9-12), a 300-FedExCup point event played in the same week as the Wells Fargo, debuts at Dunes Golf & Beach Club. Other “additional” events are the Puerto Rico Open (March 7-10), Corales Puntacana Championship (April 18-21), Barracuda Championship (July 18-21) and another tournament the tour expects to announce for July 11-14.
- For the third consecutive season, three tournaments will be part of both the FedEx Cup and the DP World Tour’s Race to Dubai: Genesis Scottish Open (July 11-14); the yet-to-be-announced event (formerly the Barbasol Championship) scheduled for July 11-14; and the Barracuda Championship (July 18-21).
- The tour will not hold an event the week of July 29–August 4, when the Men’s Olympic Golf Competition will be contested at Le Golf National in Paris. The 2024 FedEx Cup regular season concludes the next week at the Wyndham Championship (August 5-11).
