ORLANDO, Fla. – For those in favor of a new Tour Championship format this season, there’s still hope.
During a half-hour scrum with reporters on Tuesday ahead of this week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said that the topic was covered “significantly” in last week’s policy board meeting and will again be heavily discussed later Tuesday when the Tour’s player advisory council meets.
“If we’re spending this amount of time on it and getting this level of input, and the players are taking an active role in helping us define what would ultimately be an improvement in the Tour Championship, I’d like to think that that’s going to lead to a result,” said Monahan, who added that the Tour is “shooting for” changes, if any, to be implemented in time for this year’s FedExCup playoff finale at East Lake.
Earlier this year, it was reported by multiple outlets that the Tour was discussing changing the Tour Championship format from the current starting-strokes model to a bracket-style, match-play competition. Medal match play, in which competitors essentially play stroke play against each other, was also reported as an option.
Monahan said Tuesday that the biggest concern with changing the format was the “strong consumption” that the event has received since the staggered start was rolled out in 2019.
“We want to make sure that the moves that we’re making, No. 1, respond to fans, and that the players themselves believe in and have advocated for before we make any changes,” Monahan said.
There is not hard deadline for when format changes need to be finalized by, though Monahan said that it could not happen once the playoffs had already started.
