A significant change could soon be made to PGA Tour Champions, with Brian Rolapp and his team continuing to look towards overhauling the structure of the game.
The PGA Tour is set to look significantly different from 2028 onwards. Rolapp is keen to introduce two tiers, with all of the big names ideally playing in all of the signature events across the season.
Meanwhile, the dream for all of those on track two will be to earn their way to the highest level of the game.
But it seems that there could also be a notable change made to the senior tour.
Significant change to PGA Tour Champions is now being discussed
PGA Tour Champions is looking extremely strong right now. There are a number of household names from one of the game’s most successful periods now plying their trade on the senior circuit.
And perhaps PGA Tour Champions will soon receive a further influx of star power.
Speaking on the Golf Channel Podcast, Rex Hoggard revealed that the Player Advisory Council this week discussed the idea of lowering the age you need to be to play on the senior tour.
“One of the things that also came up in the presentation, and I did stumble on this at first, but then it makes sense, along with all of these changes, they’re thinking about dropping the qualifying age for PGA Tour Champions to 45 years old. Now, why do you think that would be? Because there’s a lot of 40 somethings right now on the PGA Tour, maybe, even take it a bit further, 38 to 48, somewhere in that category right now, if you’re in that category right now and you’re a player thinking to yourself, ‘where do I fit in and all of this?’ That gives you a free out,” he said.
“That gives them a little bit of wiggle room. You can figure out who the players are on your own. But it certainly helps in the negotiations and make no mistake, these are negotiations. What Brian Rolapp wants versus what the players want to give up.”
In response, Ryan Lavner suggested that he would be baffled by that sort of change.
“45, that’s Justin Rose. Adam Scott,” he said. “Adam Scott’s about to play his 100th consecutive major championship in a couple weeks at the U.S. Open, but all of a sudden he could be playing against Ernie Els and Steven Alker and Stephen Ames and Bernard Langer. That’s crazy to me.”
What the PGA Tour must do to make fans care about track two
What would make the decision even more surprising is the fact that there may soon be a need for a lot more depth on the PGA Tour.
Track one on the PGA Tour is likely to involve around 120 players, so there will presumably be a similar number on the second tier.
Obviously, that may mean that a number of Korn Ferry Tour players are promoted. But it is going to be interesting to see how track two will survive with the bigger names likely to not be involved.
Speaking on the podcast, Lavner outlined how important it is for the PGA Tour to make the track two events matter to the casual fan.
“I keep an open mind on this. I will say for the most part, I like what I’m hearing. I like the direction that the PGA Tour is going. I like that a PGA Tour card is going to mean something and everyone who is fully exempt into those track one tournaments all basically are on an equal footing. And whoever plays the best is going to retain their status and whoever does not is going to be demoted to track two. I like that sort of direction. I like the idea of off weeks. Again, it’s just going to be a lot of coordination,” he said.
“I think a lot of branding too as well to sort of make the even the casual golf fan understand what’s happening, where I think right now you do have the delineation between a signature event like we have this week at the Memorial and last week at the CJ CUP Byron Nelson. But if you are trying to promote these track two tournaments as being meaningful and being significant and sort of working towards a larger goal of PGA Tour promotion eventually, you have to do a better job of branding them as opposed to just Korn Ferry Tour plus players. It’s going to be hugely imperative on the PGA Tour, I think, to make this series simplistic for the viewer and understanding what’s at the end of the season.”
Rolapp has enough credit in the bank to ensure that he will get the chance to make the changes to the PGA Tour that he believes will help maximise its potential.
But clearly, it is going to be a significant gamble given how different the landscape could soon look if he gets his way.
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