Tour official says ’24 schedule almost finalized, but not settled on no-cut events

DUBLIN, Ohio – PGA Tour officials said the overhauled 2024 schedule is “90-plus percent completed” and the lineup will be announced later this summer.

The Tour transitions back to a calendar-year schedule in ’24 and the goal was to create a better cadence to the lineup with the addition of designated events.

“Our objective is, we used 2023 as a transition and we’d announced our schedule in June 2022. Subsequently, we identified we wanted to create designated events so we boxed ourselves in,” said Andy Pazder, the Tour’s chief tournaments and competitions officer. “It created situations in the current season where you have isolated events, tournaments in between designated events which is far from ideal. The process we have gone through leading up to announcing [next year’s] schedule is we now have the ability to put together a flow to the schedule that will not have isolated events.”

According to a “sample” schedule that has been circulated to players and managers, that cadence includes at least two full-field events between designated swings. On that schedule, for example, the Sentry Tournament of Champions, a designated event, is followed by three full-field events – likely the Sony Open, The American Express and Farmers Insurance Open – before the next designated swing (which would be the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and Genesis Invitational the first two weeks of February).

Pazder said feedback from players indicated they’d prefer to play consecutive weeks which also allowed officials to eliminate the “isolated” weeks like this year’s Honda Classic, which was played between the Genesis Invitational and Arnold Palmer Invitational.

Although Pazder didn’t provide many details, he did confirm the Tour still plans to keep the designated-event fields to 70 to 80 players, but added that there might be some flexibility when it comes to cuts at the elevated events. Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said earlier this month the plan is to not have cuts at the designated events, but Tiger Woods pushed back when asked about not having a cut at the Genesis Invitational, which he hosts.

“We are having a further conversation about that. I’m aware that certain hosts of designated events have voiced the viewpoint that they’d like to see a cut at their event or some of the designated events,” Pazder said. “We’ve announced that they would be no-cut events but that’s something that if there’s support for a change there, could be that it’s some of the designated events, all of the designated events or none of the designated events [have a cut], we’ll have a conversation around that.”

Pazder also said the Tour is “fully sponsored” for next year even though Honda ended its title sponsorship of the event in West Palm Beach, Florida, this year. He said the Tour has a “number of prospects” and there would be a replacement named for the South Florida tournament “eventually.”

On the “sample” schedule, the Tour seems to be considering a date change for the Memorial to the week before the U.S. Open, which would create a three-tournament, designated-event swing with the Travelers Championship played after the U.S. Open. Pazder declined to give specific dates for tournaments on next year’s schedule.