What to know about the significant changes to PGA Tour eligibility
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Mark Schlabach, ESPN Senior Writer
Six-time PGA Tour winner Lucas Glover called the circuit’s newly announced changes to reduced field sizes and the number of fully exempt cards “terrible.”
In an interview with Golfweek, Glover said the PGA Tour Player Advisory Council and policy board were “hiding behind pace of play” to justify the radical changes.
“They think we’re stupid,” Glover said.
Matt Fitzpatrick, the 2022 U.S. Open winner, seemed to support Glover’s position in a post on his X account Monday: “He’s so right, pathetic that pace of play is [spoken] about every year and nothing ever gets done.”
Regardless, the PGA Tour will be smaller starting in 2026. The number of golfers with full-time membership will be reduced by 25; only the top 100 finishes in the FedEx Cup points standings will have full status the next year.
The tour will also have smaller field sizes in most tournaments starting in 2026.
With 170 golfers attempting to capture one of 100 full-time cards, the PGA Tour figures to be more competitive than ever.
“If you’re one of the guys that you feel like you’re going to be affected by it, you’re very upset by it, and I understand that,” said 2023 Open Championship winner Brian Harman. “I would feel the exact same way. But there’s a ton of different ways to look at it.”
Here’s a closer look at some of the most significant changes.
PGA Tour cards
With only 100 full-time cards available each season, the tour is reducing its membership by about 20%, making the cards more difficult to obtain than ever before. It’s the first reduction of full-time cards since 1983.
Golfers finishing Nos. 101-125 in the FedEx Cup standings would receive conditional status starting in 2026.
Tournament winners will still receive two-year exemptions.
“We’ve been through a lot of changes over the last four or five years,” PGA Tour chief competitions officer Tyler Dennis told ESPN. “It was really about the meaning of having a PGA Tour card. What comes along with that is an equitable amount of playing opportunities for all the different categories that are exempt.”
Dennis noted that Puerto Rico’s Rafael Campos, who earned his first PGA Tour victory at last week’s Butterfield Bermuda Championship, made only one start on tour in both January and February, after finishing last among the 30 Korn Ferry Tour graduates who earned PGA Tour cards in 2023.
“That’s not what we want the meaning of a PGA Tour card to be,” Dennis said. “That’s not an equitable opportunity against all the other guys. The biggest part of this was if you’re getting your card and coming on as a new guy, whether you’re from the DP World Tour, Korn Ferry Tour, PGA Tour U. or Q-School, we think you should have certainty of schedule.
“All of these changes are going to allow these guys to get into virtually all of the full-field events.”
Six-time winner Chris Kirk, who is tied for 27th in FedEx Cup points, said opportunities are there for everyone on tour — if they’re playing good golf.
“I have found over the years that when you play really well, it doesn’t matter a whole lot what the tour policy board decides, things will work out pretty well in your favor,” Kirk said. “When you don’t play as well, that’s kind of when those things matter a little bit more.”
Tournament field sizes
In two years, full-field events on tour with ample sunlight in the summer, such as the RBC Canadian Open and 3M Open, will have 144 players, instead of 156.
Some tournaments in the winter and fall with fewer hours of daylight, including the WM Phoenix Open and the Shriners Children’s Open, will be reduced from 144 or 132 golfers to 120.
The Players Championship, played at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, in mid-March, will go from 144 golfers to 120.
In an executive summary sent to golfers in October, the PAC noted that 28% of tournaments in 2024 (12 of 43) had at least one round that wasn’t completed on the scheduled day due to darkness. Dennis said there were at least another dozen that were completed in the dark.
“It’s a significant number of tournaments, a significant number of rounds,” Dennis said. “It’s always been like that, but it’s not the product that we want to put forth.”
In a tournament that is reduced from a 156-man field to 144, there will be one less group teeing off on the front and back nine in both the morning and afternoon waves in the first two rounds.
The tour hopes that’s enough change to speed up play.
Glover, Fitzpatrick and others have argued that speeding up play by enforcing the tour’s pace-of-play rules would help golfers get around courses faster.
“You get a better pace of play policy or enforce the one you have better,” Glover said. “If I’m in a slow twosome and an official came up and said, ‘You guys are behind, this is not a warning — y’all are on the clock and if you get a bad time, that’s a shot penalty,’ guess who’s running to their ball? That’s what we need to be doing.”
PGA Tour golfers are rarely docked strokes for slow play, but Dennis said an unspecified number are getting “potentially significant fines” for lagging behind their competitors in average shot times.
Dennis declined to say how many golfers have been fined by the PGA Tour for slow play in recent years.
“It’s a huge focus, but it’s not as simple as, ‘Are people getting penalty strokes out on the course?'” Dennis said. “It has a lot to do with the number of players on the course, and it has a lot to do with the individual playing habits of each player.”
Pathways to PGA Tour
Field sizes and full memberships aren’t the only things that will be reduced starting in 2026. There will also be fewer full-time cards given to top Korn Ferry Tour golfers (30 to 20), Q-School graduates (top five and ties to only five) and Monday qualifiers (two for 132-player fields and four for 144-player fields), making it more difficult for golfers to reach the PGA Tour.
The top 10 golfers from the DP World Tour not already exempt will continue to receive full-time status.
Sponsor exemptions that were restricted to golfers from the DP World Tour, Korn Ferry Tour and Q-School and those reserved for PGA Tour members will be reallocated to the next players in priority ranking. Open events will still have four sponsor exemptions to award to anyone.
“I’m not numb to the fact that we’re cutting opportunities, right?” said Harman, a member of the Player Advisory Council. “It’s not something that sits well with me and it doesn’t sit well with anyone that was in any of those discussions. But all these decisions that get made, they’re all not good or all bad.
“We’re looking at every single kind of pro and con to every piece that moves around and trying to figure out the most equitable, fairest way to have a great product at the same time providing enough playing opportunities for everyone.”
