More scheduling challenges await top players in 2026

NBC Sports

a day ago

ATLANTA – The PGA Tour's 35-event slate for 2026 had few surprises. The majors will remain major, the signature events will again dominate the landscape and everyone else, both non-signature tournaments and players, will continue to scramble for relevancy.
Outside of Trump National Doral's return to the lineup – a somewhat curious move given the Blue Monster's status as a LIV Golf venue the last four years – next year's schedule looks much like this year's version and that is not entirely a good thing.
While the expansion to nine signature events with the addition of the Miami Championship seemed inevitable given the success of the limited-field, big-money events, the return to Doral only compresses a schedule that was already as congested as Interstate-20 at rush hour.
Consider one six-week stretch next spring features two majors (the Masters and PGA Championship) and three signature events (the RBC Heritage, Miami Championship and Truist Championship). For star players who were already looking for relief – not to mention tournaments like the CJ Cup Byron Nelson which now finds itself wedged between the Truist Championship, Charles Schwab Challenge and the Memorial, an invitational and signature event, respectively – next year's schedule is even more loaded with can't-miss stops.
It's not just the star players who will feel more of a pinch in '26. Those players who will begin the year outside the top 50 on the FedExCup bubble will face a nine-week stretch from April to early June that includes just four full-field events, with two of those being the Zurich Classic (a two-man team event) and an opposite-field event that awards less than half the FedExCup points (300) than a signature event (700).
There will be a similar crunch heading into the Florida swing with the Cognizant Classic framed by two signature events (the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and Genesis Invitational) and the Arnold Palmer Invitational and The Players Championship, yet another signature event and the Tour's flagship event, respectively.
The Tour's new CEO Brian Rolapp, who is scheduled to meet with the media Wednesday at the Tour Championship, has probably already discovered the foolishness of trying to please everyone but it is noteworthy that next year's schedule doesn't seem to land with either the stars or journeymen.
'I look at it in the sense of if there's a particular golf course or there's something to where I don't feel like I can play well or it's a place that maybe doesn't fit my eye historically, whatever it may be, then as a professional golfer, I have a hard time [going],' Justin Thomas said. 'If there are places that I think people look at that way, then you have to do what's best for that particular person. Obviously, the perfect model would be for all of us to be at all the events as often as possible.'
Whether the addition of Doral as a signature event was an inevitable expansion that could signal the Tour's long-term intent or a political reality is unclear, but it does further aggravate the fear of 'load management' for the game's top players. It is a fear that took on new life earlier this month when Rory McIlroy skipped the year's first playoff event in Memphis.
Never mind that McIlroy appeared to strongly indicate following last year's FedEx St. Jude Championship that he would not be returning to TPC Southwind in 2025, or that he was the only player out of the 70 who qualified to skip the opener, the handwringing reached feverish levels.
'I'll always choose the schedule that best fits me, and this year that meant skipping a few signature events. I might skip less next year. I might skip the same amount, I don't know,' said McIlroy, who played five of this year's eight signature events. 'The luxury of being a PGA Tour player is we are free to pick and choose our schedule for the most part, and I took advantage of that this year and I'll continue to take advantage of that for as long as I can.'
The working theory at East Lake is the Tour is considering making participation in all the signature events mandatory to be eligible for the Tour Championship, which would be another workaround that will likely be equally unpopular among the star players.
To be clear, players are not against the kind of limited-field, big-money events that are becoming the norm on Tour. What they typically don't like, however, is the kind of scheduling that requires five starts in six weeks which is why professional golf's version of load management has become a legitimate concern.
When the Tour first introduced signature events there was an attempt to leverage bonuses from the Player Impact Program with participation but that was met with mixed results. On this the independent contractors are surprisingly unified. Instead of trying to concoct a new way to mandate participation in top events the Tour would be better served by focusing on building a better schedule.