The PGA Tour’s plan for major change around the 2028 season is coming into focus. In a meeting at the Truist Championship in Charlotte two weeks ago, the tour presented players with the concept of a plan that would include two tiers, or “tracks,” as CEO Brian Rolapp mentioned earlier this year.
In the plan presented to players, according to sources with knowledge of the meeting, the first track would include 23 elevated tournaments: 16 regular season PGA Tour events, three FedExCup Playoff events and then four majors. The regular-season tournaments would be expected to have 120-man fields under the plan, the people said.
Included in that first track are expected to be at least three new markets. Rolapp has talked at length about the need to hit bigger markets, and sources said Boston, Philadelphia, Denver, Nashville and San Francisco have been under consideration. SBJ last week reported on additional interest from the tour in the Seattle market.
Multiple people said the tour has been in the market seeking as much as $30M annually from potential title sponsors for the new events. SBJ previously reported the tour was in the market for $30M for the Cadillac Championship.
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Meanwhile, sources said the plan included 20 “track 2″ tournaments that would include 140-man fields. It wasn’t immediately clear what the cadence of the track 2 tournaments would be with relation to the track 1 events. Also unclear was the downstream effect on the Korn Ferry Tour or PGA Tour Americas should the plan be approved.
Sources cautioned that the plans hadn’t been finalized and were still subject to change. The PGA Tour has a board meeting planned for the week of the Travelers Championship in late June, at which point Rolapp is expected to address the media and give more answers on the tour’s future.
More player meetings were scheduled for this week around the CJ Cup Byron Nelson in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area.
Meanwhile, the PGA Tour is still in the process of mapping out its 2027 schedule. As of Tuesday, 13 tournaments (majors included) have had their dates confirmed for the 2027 season through the PGA Championship in May. Aside from exiting Hawaii altogether, the calendar looks mostly similar to 2026.
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The biggest potential change could come to the tour’s Florida swing. Currently, no dates have been confirmed for the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Cadillac Championship, Cognizant Classic or Valspar Championship, all tournaments in Florida in the spring.
The PGA Tour declined to comment for this story.
