Brian Rolapp, the chief executive of US golf’s PGA Tour, has announced the property is looking to expand the number of its top-line ‘Signature’ events across the season as part of several sweeping changes for the tour calendar.
The changes come from discussions between Rolapp and the tour’s advisory Future Competition Committee (FCC), headed by the legendary Tiger Woods, which is exploring ways to expand the PGA Tour’s profile.
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Speaking ahead of this weekend’s Players Championship, Rolapp discussed six “themes” that are being considered by the FCC, which are likely to come into effect over the coming years.
Currently, eight signature events are featured annually, including the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Pebble Beach Pro-AM, with Rolapp suggesting the number of those events could double.
These 16 signature events would form part of a reformatted elite PGA Tour schedule, running from January to September, comprised of between 21 and 26 events aimed at ensuring the tour’s top players compete against each other more often, as opposed to the more scattered approach currently in place.
This elite track, which would run in concert with a secondary track of smaller events, would also include the four majors as well as other prominent events such as the Players Championship (long considered a pseudo fifth major), and could feature smaller competitor fields, consolidating action among the elite players on the tour.
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By GlobalDataPromotion and relegation between the two tour tracks is a possibility, Rolapp advised, with a “merit-based” system set to be introduced.
In terms of new locales, Rolapp expressed his desire to see the tour player in larger US markets.
Currently, only four of the US’s 10 largest media markets feature in the tour, and now the property is evaluating the likes of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington DC, and Boston for potential future events.
Finally, he explained that to increase jeopardy in the season-ending stages, matchplay (where players compete hole by hole against an opponent) could be introduced across the FedEx Cup playoffs or the Tour Championship finale.
These changes “remain a work in progress,” says Rolapp, explaining that they are simply concepts that the FCC has “started to see meaningful consensus” on.
He added that some of these changes will take place sooner than others, with a number of wider-ranging moves not likely before the 2028 PGA Tour campaign.
“I think there is a bit of a misconception that scarcity means a dramatic cut in the number of events of the PGA Tour as we know it,” Rolapp explained, “but rather scarcity is about making every event we have matter.
“This is why we are evaluating the role of promotion and relegation between these two tracks within our competitive model, an added element that we would bring to life in the second track of events I described earlier.
“What we envision is a merit-based system that leans into what makes professional golf so compelling, players earning their way to the top, with every event having greater meaning.”
Rolapp pointed to English soccer as an example of where the promotion and relegation format has allowed for increased interest and higher playing standards.
Rolapp, an experienced sports executive who spent more than 20 years with the NFL, was named as the PGA Tour’s first-ever chief executive in June 2025, after it was confirmed that commissioner Jay Monahan would depart in 2026.
