The PGA Tour’s main season for 2025 is done! It’s time for the first playoff of the season. The $20 million tournament will host 70 of the highest-ranked golfers on the FedEx Cup standings. They will battle each other at TPC Southwind for a huge paycheck and nothing more. The new rules for the TOUR Championship ensure that the result of the first playoff has no effect on the third leg of the three-event series. And hence, despite hosting a 70-player field, only 69 of the best on the PGA Tour will be in Memphis this week. Despite facing a lot of heat, Rory McIlroy has decided to skip the 2025 FedEx St Jude Championship, deeming it irrelevant to his schedule.

Jay Monahan’s announcement of the TOUR Championship’s rule change must have been music to the Irishman’s ears. Determined to lighten his PGA Tour schedule, McIlroy knew which events he could definitely cut. His reasoning? “I finished basically dead last there this year and only moved down one spot in the playoff standings,” he said in an interview with the Telegraph after finishing 5 spots above the bottom of the table at the RBC Canadian Open. Rory had already won enough this year to not have any motive to play in the first playoff, nor the second. He will be focused and fresh for East Lake while his peers will be trying to catch their breath.

But can Brian Rolapp and Jay Monahan really afford to have the face of the PGA Tour skip important playoff events? Can they really afford to host limited field tournaments with 1 player short? When Monahan & his team laid out the plan for the new TOUR Championship format, they probably didn’t think this through. And now they are paying the price already. But the question is, are they already devising a plan to ensure Rory McIlroy doesn’t inspire other players to skip the playoffs in the future, lowering the prestige and value of the event?

Apparently, they do have something in place. In an article by Golfweek, Adam Schupak revealed that Player Director, Peter Malnati, was ‘very concerned’ about the entire situation. Being the face of the PGA Tour, McIlroy’s actions reflect poorly on what the team is trying to achieve. They didn’t anticipate that the Irishman would find such a loophole within their first season of implementing the new rule. However, when asked if the board is thinking of a change, he hinted, “I think there is stuff in the works and I’ll leave it at that.”

While there are no reports of a change in the playoff format, there are certainly some ‘Rory McIlroy rules’ being discussed to ensure 69 players don’t take the field at the FedEx St Jude Championship from 2026 onwards. But until then, the first playoff and maybe the BMW Championship as well will not see the Irishman on the course competing for the $20 million purse. What do others have to say about this entire situation? Let’s learn what one of Rory McIlroy’s peers said about him skipping the FedEx St Jude Championship.

Did Jordan Spieth anticipate the ‘Rory McIlroy rule’?

Rory McIlroy saw the opportunity to skip the tournament and took it. Interestingly, he pushed the blame to some other tournaments he felt he shouldn’t have played. The 36-year-old said, “There’s a few tournaments that I played this year that I don’t usually play and that I might not play next year. I played the Cognizant in Palm Beach Gardens, the Valero Texas Open in San Antonio, and the RBC Heritage at Hilton Head.” That’s what led to him suggesting that he won’t be on the field at Memphis.

Interestingly, Jordan Spieth anticipated something like this to happen. The Ex-PGA Tour Policy Board Director said, “You might have 1-2 guys do that for an event, but I don’t think it will become a thing because they are still huge events against the best players in the world. I think they’re trying to figure out how to make sure you don’t skip both of them and ideally neither of them.” And as Malnati confirmed, a strategy is underway to make sure Rory McIlroy or anyone else in the top 70 doesn’t skip the playoffs in the future. When and where that will be implemented is yet to be seen. How it will be implemented is what will pique everyone’s interest.