PGA Tour Unveils New Postseason Format Starting in 2028
CEO Brian Rolapp says the revamped playoffs, featuring two weeks of match play, will be one of the toughest tournaments to qualify for and win.
The PGA Tour is overhauling its postseason once again, unveiling a new format Tuesday that CEO Brian Rolapp described as "one of the most difficult tournaments to qualify for and win."
Under the new system, beginning in 2028, the season will open with as many as 20 tournaments featuring the strongest fields. The top 90 players in points advance to the BMW Championship, where the No. 1 player at the end of the week is crowned season winner.
The top 32 players then move into a two-week Tour Championship built around match play: four players in eight groups, with the top two from each group advancing. The competition concludes with single elimination, though the format is designed so more than two players remain on the course through Sunday.
The change effectively separates the Tour Championship winner from the FedEx Cup champion, a structure the Tour used in earlier years before combining the trophies. That earlier setup produced awkward split outcomes, such as in 2009, when Tiger Woods won the FedEx Cup and Phil Mickelson won the Tour Championship despite shooting a lower score. In 2018, Woods won the Tour Championship in his comeback victory, while Justin Rose claimed the FedEx Cup.
Rory McIlroy, the only three-time FedEx Cup winner, said Tuesday that he didn't always consider himself the best player in years he won the title. "You could argue that each of the FedEx Cups I've won I maybe wasn't the best player of the entire year," McIlroy said. "But I always felt like it was a way to redeem myself or end the year on a really positive note."
The Tour has repeatedly tinkered with its postseason format over the past two decades, including a controversial "starting strokes" system introduced after the 2018 season that gave the points leader a two-shot head start before play began.
Whether the new two-city, two-week match play format proves durable remains to be seen. As with previous iterations, its ultimate success may be measured by how long it survives before the Tour changes it again.
This article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI), in accordance with our editorial policy.
