[Photo: Christian Petersen]
PGA Tour chief executive Brian Rolapp is expected to announce sweeping changes to the tour’s future next week, with a re-imagined schedule at the core of the proposal. One of his biggest stars, however, doesn’t appear sold.
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In the absence of public leadership during golf’s civil war, Rory McIlroy became the de facto face of the PGA Tour, standing up for the organisation because he believed it was the right thing to do. He would later say the role exacted a toll he didn’t fully reckon with until long afterwards. After the surprise framework agreement with LIV, McIlroy stepped back. Commissioner Jay Monahan receded further into the background in the ensuing years and Rolapp arrived. And now the tour is finally attempting to deliver the structural overhaul it has been promising for years.
In recent months, players have been briefed on a two-tiered framework. The top circuit would feature roughly 20-plus events (majors included) with fields of about 120 players and purses of $US20 million. The bottom 20-to-30 finishers at season’s end would be relegated to the second tier, while top performers there would earn promotion back up.
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McIlroy may no longer sit at the negotiating table, but he remains the tour’s undeniable gravitational force, and a man with views on where the game is heading. Asked on Tuesday at the US Open about the proposed changes, he was pointed.
“I don’t really know. I guess, just recency, an event like last week, the Canadian Open, potentially going to one of these Track 2s. Track 2 is a glorified Korn Ferry event,” McIlroy said. “That’s what Track 2 is going to be. So I don’t think the Canadian Open should be one of those.
“I just think there’s going to be certain events that might lose their stature if a sponsor doesn’t pony up $30 million. So that’s the tough thing.”
The resistance is not a surprise. Since Rolapp signalled consequential change at his Players Championship press conference in March, pushback has come from every corner – players, sponsors, and tournament operators alike. Some players see the proposal as the existing PGA Tour/Korn Ferry hierarchy repackaged with a smaller event count. Tournament officials bracing for a second-tier designation are asking why they’d commit substantial prizemoney to what amounts to a feeder league. Media partners want clarity on what, exactly, they’re paying for under their current deals.
And as McIlroy noted, all of it was triggered by something that appears to be dying anyway.
“I think, as they’ve done all this work, you start to realise that the way the tour was before LIV came along was actually pretty good,” McIlroy said. “It was a pretty good structure, and everything sort of worked pretty well.
“LIV created this false economy where we had to up prize funds and had to cut fields and try to support the top players and all that stuff, which I think needed to happen because that was the only way to retain talent at the time, but now that LIV looks like it’s less of a threat, I think, as I said, the old ways of the PGA Tour weren’t actually that bad.”
The tour’s path forward is expected to come into focus next week at the Travelers Championship, where Rolapp is scheduled to address players and the press.
