PGA Tour in talks to change Tour Championship to bracket-style event: Sources

The PGA Tour is in advanced discussions to revamp the Tour Championship format into a bracket-style event, according to persons briefed on the matter. The championship, the culmination of the official PGA Tour season and the three-event FedEx Cup playoffs, could be reimagined as early as this year, if ongoing conversations with player directors, TV partners and corporate sponsors continue as planned.

The sources, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the tour is eyeing a bracket-style format with head-to-head play — a structure familiar to most sports fans because of the NCAA basketball tournaments and College Football Playoff. Both stroke play and match play are being discussed as options, with the possibility of players earning a “bye” based on their FedExCup points heading into the season finale.

If format changes are enacted for the 2025 season, the 30-man field and tournament dates (Aug. 21-24) will remain unchanged. But long-term planning for the event could involve an even more significant evolution.

A source said the TV broadcast could be adapted for a bracket-style format relatively easily. NBC, set to broadcast the 2025 Tour Championship, has experience broadcasting non-traditional golf events, including the Ryder Cup, Presidents Cup and NCAA golf championship.

The current iteration of the Tour Championship hasn’t necessarily struck a chord with golf fans, leading to calls for the event’s makeover. The convoluted format and scheduling conflicts against the start of the NFL season have proven to be major issues. That’s why a unique twist, such as a match or stroke play bracket, with an added level of suspense and more potential storylines, has been floated by influential voices in the golf industry for several years.

The current Tour Championship format debuted in 2019, when the “starting strokes” model was first introduced. Top players in the FedEx Cup ranking are given a scoring advantage — effectively, a “handicap” or head start as a reward for season-long play. First place in the FedExCup points system begins the event at 10-under-par, second starts at 8-under, third at 7-under, and so on.

From 2007-18, the Tour Championship often crowned two champions: The player who performed the best in Atlanta, and the one who finished at the top of the FedEx Cup points list, making for a confusing and oftentimes anticlimactic finish. In 2018, fans mobbed Tiger Woods as he stormed to victory at East Lake but Justin Rose still hoisted the FedEx Cup. The most recent event format has prevented the possibility of two winners. The PGA Tour once promoted it as an improved, more digestible model for fans and sponsors. It hasn’t always been perceived that way.

Now the event is en route to its biggest change yet.

The PGA Tour featured a bracket-style matchplay event from 1999-2023, the WGC Match Play Championship. But when the PGA Tour schedule was reworked for 2024, the tour removed the event from the calendar, leaving open the possibility of a match-play tournament returning in the future. Byes and a stroke-play bracket event could remedy some of the issues presented during the WGC Match Play, such as matches ending earlier than anticipated and top players being eliminated early.

The discussions around the reimagination of the event coincide with some other significant shifts in the way the PGA Tour operates. Starting in 2026, the tour will offer only 100 players full membership, instead of 125. Many open qualifier events will be eliminated from the schedule and fields will shrink in size. The PGA Tour is rapidly getting smaller, but believes that will better competition and create a streamlined product. The tour is also actively searching for a chief executive to act alongside commissioner Jay Monahan.