PGA Tour announces doubling of ‘signature events’ as soon as next year

THE PLAYERS Championship is the aspirational standard the PGA Tour has in mind as it reshapes its schedule as early as next year.

PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp announced Wednesday the Ponte Vedra Beach-based tour will double the number of signature events, from eight to 16, in a calendar year. Doing so, Rolapp says, will create more competitive fields throughout the men’s professional golf season.

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Rolapp said the PGA Tour is open to almost anything when it comes to its future schedule. But, that doesn’t include moving The Players Championship from March.

“I think in our discussions, moving this tournament has not been part of it,” Rolapp said. “It seems to work well here. I think we like it here. So, while we are really operating with a blank sheet of paper. To date, we have not discussed moving the date of this tournament.”

Location, location, location

As for the rest of the season, the PGA Tour says its season will have between 21 and 26 events between the end of January and Labor Day.

Beyond the signature events, that schedule will include THE PLAYERS as well as the Masters, PGA Championship, U.S. Open and Open Championship. The schedule will also include a three-tournament playoff that culminates at the PGA Tour Championship.

Rolapp says the PGA Tour is considering events in or around New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston and Washington, D.C. He says The Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass is the blend of course and location the tour seeks as it seeks new locations.

Currently, the tour’s signature events are held in large media markets like Orlando and Miami; suburbs of mid-sized markets like Columbus, Ohio, Hartford and Charlotte; as well as far-flung locales like Pebble Beach, California, and Hilton Head, South Carolina.

The PGA Tour’s only signature event held within one of the 10 largest media markets is The Genesis Invitational that is held every February at Riviera Country Club just outside Los Angeles.

The former National Football League executive who was named PGA Tour CEO in June 2025 was asked whether there was space in the schedule for the “Green Bay Packers and the Jacksonville Jaguars in the PGA Tour.”

Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Jacksonville are two of the four smallest media markets in the 30-city NFL. Jaguars leadership has long noted the size of the television market has motivated the team’s decision to play in London and pursue creative relationships with sponsors.

“It’s just important that we have a system that competitively and economically can support both big markets and small markets,” Rolapp said. “But, the motivation to go for big markets is not that complicated. We’re hearing that from partners, and we’re hearing that from fans. We’re hearing that from fans that we have who live in those markets…we know there’s huge population centers of new fans when you look at the data. There’s plenty of people picking up golf for the first time since COVID who have not experienced professional golf. You need to go to where they are as well, and those big markets certainly have that.”

“We hear, as I mentioned, from our partners that it serves their business interests, quite frankly, to be in bigger markets as well. And finally, we’ve heard it from players who like big galleries, who like to play in front of crowds. You go where the people are,” he said.

Second track,not second rate

The PGA Tour’s revamped schedule would have what it calls a second track of events. Players who tee off in these competitions could earn their way into the track of events that includes the tour’s signature tournaments.

It’s a de-facto promotion and relegation system. It could be implemented as early as the 2027 season. Rolapp expects it will start in earnest for the 2028 season.

The PGA Tour says creating the two tracks will provide one scoring system players and fans can understand.

“What you will have is a true meritocracy leading into the competitive nature of golf in a more seamless way. So, when you watch any one of those tournaments, you’ll know exactly what the stakes are.”

Money moves

Wednesday was the first time in a half decade that the annual CEO conference was not dominated by questions about the fractures in men’s professional golf.

Rolapp’s predecessor Jay Monahan used his 2025 CEO remarks to highlight how the multi-billion investment from Strategic Sports Group helped stabilize the PGA Tour. Wednesday, Rolapp declined to give specifics about how those dollars have been spent, other than to add it will be used “in service of this change in competitive model.”

The PGA Tour’s competitive changes have helped draw some of biggest names back to its ecosystem.

In January, five-time major champion Brooks Koepka returned to the PGA Tour from LIV Golf – the golf league funded by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.

Koepka will compete at THE PLAYERS this week for the first time since 2022. Patrick Reed is in the process of requalifying for the PGA Tour now that his LIV Golf contract expired.

“What we’re trying to do is make it more valuable for our sponsors,” Rolapp said of the tour. “That’s the whole point of the exercise.”