Cut Line: PGA Tour proposes change but fall concerns remain

No PGA Tour golf, no problem with this week’s edition unpacking the circuit’s plan to cut field sizes and playing opportunities, and a breakdown of the fall schedule’s future.

Made Cut

A senior moment. With next week’s PGA Tour Champions finale in Phoenix, Arizona, looming, and a rare bye week for the PGA Tour, it’s apropos to acknowledge one of the fall’s best feel-good stories.

Tim O’Neal’s path to his breakthrough victory on the over-50 circuit had taken him to nearly every corner of professional golf and when the 52-year-old started the final round at the Dominion Energy Charity Classic two weeks ago, he was eight years removed from his last victory on any major tour.

“I don’t know. It was just how it was supposed to happen, I guess,” said O’Neal, who won his first PGA Tour Champions event with a closing 65 at the Country Club of Virginia to qualify for next week’s Charles Schwab Cup Championship.

For a player who spent his entire career toiling on the cusp of the major leagues, O’Neal’s breakthrough is the fall’s best story.

Made Cut-Did Not Finish (MDF)

A new era. Tuesday’s memo outlining the proposed plan to cut field sizes at nearly every Tour event along with a corresponding reduction in unconditional memberships was received with mixed reviews, but there were some who embraced the general idea of the plan, if not the execution.

“We should have done this a long time ago,” said one Tour player.

The best example of how bloated the Tour membership had become can be traced to the circuit’s priority rankings, which set the order for how fields are filled. There are currently 44 categories on that list, from major champions to “veteran members.” Under the proposed plan, that would be reduced to 23 categories with an overall reduction in full memberships of about 20 percent.

If approved later this month at the year’s final policy board meeting, the plan would cut the number of full exemptions to the top 100 — down from the top 125 —from the previous season’s FedExCup points list; the top 20 — down from the top 30 — from the previous season’s Korn Ferry Tour points list; and also reduce the number of sponsor exemptions and open qualifying spots at some events.

The goal behind the changes was to find “ideal field sizes” which would improve pace of play, storytelling and keep events on schedule. The plan would, according to the memo, also provide a more level playing field for those who do have full status.

The Tour’s move to improve the product in the face of competition from LIV Golf and the introduction of private equity into the professional game is both understandable and admirable, but tectonic sifts like the proposed plan almost always come with unintended consequences.

Watching the fall. Before the Tour interrupted the news cycle with Tuesday’s memo, the conversation was being dominated by the fate of the circuit’s fall schedule.

Because of the Tour’s return to a calendar-year schedule, the fall is in a sort of limbo with the majority of top players taking this part of the season off while others scratch and claw for status and playing opportunities next year.

It’s the fall’s lack of spark, combined with sponsor handwringing, that has clouded its future.

Last month, Shriners Children’s Hospital announced it was ending its title sponsorship of the Las Vegas Tour stop and Wayne-Sanderson Farms extended its sponsorship of the circuit’s Mississippi event for one year after initially announcing it would not be back as a title sponsor after ’24.

It’s also worth noting that RSM’s deal to sponsor the Sea Island, Georgia, event and the Bermuda Tourism Authority’s agreement, a co-sponsor of the Bermuda Championship, are both up after the 2025 fall.

Tour commissioner Jay Monahan has plenty of items on his to-do list but the current landscape suggests fixing the fall should be a priority.

Missed Cut

Gaslighting. Tucked into Tuesday’s 17-page memo to the Tour membership, was also plenty to be questioned.

According to multiple members of the PAC, there was a move to offset the loss of playing opportunities by expanding signature-event fields, which recently instituted a floor of 72 players.

If, for example, those fields were expanded to 80-90 players it would certainly soften the blow of the proposed new reality and, in some minds, help level the playing field.

That suggestion, however, was a non-starter with Tuesday’s memo claiming, “any modifications [to signature-event field sizes] at this stage would be disruptive and could increase fan confusion.”

Fan confusion? Turning a 72-player field into an 80-player field is no more confusing than taking a 156-player field and making it a 144-player field, right?

The case for the proposed changes also felt like a bit of gaslighting, with some pointing out the historic retention rates of Nos. 21 through 30 from the previous year’s Korn Ferry Tour point list were less than the players who finished Nos. 1 through 20.

Given a large enough sample size this would always be the case with better players, relative to the field, always outperforming, and it will continue to be the case under the proposed plan with Nos. 1 through 10 likely to outperform Nos. 11 through 20.

There are plenty of interesting elements to the new proposal, but some of Tuesday’s rollout felt contrived.