PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolup speaks during the announcement of the PGA Tour’s new competition model ahead of the Travelers Championship TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Conn., June 23, 2026.
Ben Jared | PGA Tour | Getty Images
Golf fans finally have details on a new chapter of the PGA Tour aimed at increasing competition and increasing prize money for winners.
PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolup announced a new competition model for professional golf’s premier circuit ahead of this week’s Travelers Championship outside Hartford, Conn.
Lollup has prioritized modernizing the tour since being named CEO in June 2025 after a 22-year career in the NFL. The Tour board also approved Lorup to replace Jay Monahan as commissioner upon his retirement at the end of the year, the Tour announced Tuesday. Mr. Lorup will retain his role as CEO.
“We had a productive meeting yesterday and the Board of Directors approved the Future Competitions Committee’s recommendation to establish a new competition model for the PGA Tour beginning with the 2028 season,” Lollup said in a statement Tuesday.
Rather than having one main tour schedule, the new format will feature two distinct tournament series. One is a top-tier track called the PGA Tour Championship Series, and the other provides a pathway to top events called the PGA Tour Challenger Series.
The new format will be familiar to fans of other sports such as soccer. Some leagues feature differentiated divisions that promote and retain the best-performing teams while relegating poor-performing teams to lower circuits.
In a press release, Lorup calls it “a new competitive model based on meritocracy, with clearer paths, higher stakes, and more consistency as the best players compete together.” He added that the focus now will be on finalizing details and preparing to implement the system for the 2028 season.
Windham Clark, who is on the verge of winning the U.S. Open on Sunday, praised the changes Tuesday and said in an interview with CNBC that the tour is in a “great place.”
“This two-track system will bring meritocracy, make the PGA Tour easier to follow, and match play should be a lot of fun to watch,” he said. “I think the tour has made an incredible effort to improve and improve the product.”
The proposed two-track system would create a schedule that would include approximately 23 to 24 events during the season, including The Players Championship, the Masters Tournament, PGA Championship, U.S. Open, British Open Championship, season-ending tournaments, and annually contested international team events such as the Ryder Cup and President’s Cup.
The season runs from February to August each year and typically consists of four 18-hole rounds of tournaments, with approximately half of the field advancing to the full event after the 36-hole cut.
The tour will also bring back playoff events featuring so-called “match play,” where the winner is determined by a process of defeating other players in head-to-head competition, rather than “medal play,” where the winner is determined by the highest total score of four rounds of play.
Match play is most similar to other championship formats in sports, such as NCAA basketball or World Cup soccer finals.
Another big difference can be found in the prize money wagered each week.
For the Championship Series, the weekly minimum prize money will be $20 million, and the venues will be higher-profile locations and larger media markets. Challenger Series events feature at least $4 million in prize money in at least 20 events during the season at “prominent venues that have traditionally hosted PGA Tour events.”
Separate points systems will be introduced for both circuits, with a minimum of 90 players remaining in the Championship Series at the end of each season, promoting a promotion and relegation system where 20 players in the Challenger Series will be promoted and those who lag behind will be demoted.
The announcement of the PGA Tour’s new format comes at a time when the competitive dynamics of professional golf are at a crossroads. The past few years have been marked by what some golf fans are calling a “civil war” in the golf world, ever since the upstart LIV Golf League debuted with much fanfare in 2022 and received unlimited funding from the Saudi Public Investment Fund.
Some of the sport’s top players have left their PGA Tour memberships and joined LIV Golf in search of big paydays. However, earlier this year, the future of LIV Golf was thrown into doubt when the Saudi sovereign wealth fund announced that it would no longer provide funding to LIV Golf after this season.
LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neill is in the process of raising new capital to fund the league’s operations in a post-PIF world. The league has a blue-chip investment bank, Ducera Partners, and is actively soliciting investment. CNBC previously reported that the league was considering raising funding in the range of $250 million to $350 million to help implement a revamped, unique schedule and format that would place greater emphasis on team golf franchises and competition in the future.
The PGA Tour’s revamped structure was the result of careful consideration by the Future Competition Committee, which is comprised of six player representatives and three business advisors from the Tour’s ranks.
The committee is chaired by golf great Tiger Woods, and includes fellow golfers Patrick Cantlay, Maverick McNeely, Keith Mitchell, Adam Scott, and Camilo Villegas, as well as members of the current PGA Tour Policy Board and PGA Tour Enterprises. – Includes board chairman and former Valero Energy CEO Joe Gorder, Fenway Sports Group founder and principal owner John Henry, and Fenway Sports Group senior advisor and former Major League Baseball executive Theo Epstein.
Woods, in his first public appearance since his arrest for drunk driving in March, said at the event, “It was about bringing different perspectives together, having honest, tough conversations, and thinking broadly about what’s best for the game we all love.”
