Before the Tour Championship concluded last week with Scottie Scheffler claiming both the title and the FedEx Cup, the PGA Tour announced changes to the format of its season-ending playoffs. Although the new format will not take effect until 2028, many believe the overhaul is long overdue. Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard is among them, offering a reality check on the playoff era that is now ending.
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“The PGA Tour tried to force-feed the public, tried to force-feed the players, tried to force-feed the media the idea that this is going to be the playoffs,” Hoggard said about the current format. “The person that comes out first at East Lake at the Tour Championship, that’s going to be the FedEx Cup champion. That’s going to be the season-long winner. And it never really tasted right.
“That’s why we’re ending up where we are right now, where the only way Brian Rolapp and the future competitions committee could make this work going forward is to convince the players that when you finish the finale, when you finish whatever that last regular season event’s going to be, that’s your champion… And then these next two weeks, the match play two weeks are just going to be something different.
“I think that’s going to be easier to sell to the public and the media than what they’ve tried to do over the last 20 years.”
The PGA Tour’s season-ending playoffs will be restructured into a three-week finale. It will begin with a 72-hole stroke-play PGA Tour Championship Series Finale, featuring the top 90 players on the season-long points list. This event will still be important for determining the season-long standings and, crucially, will narrow the field for the Tour Championship.
The top 32 players from that 90-man finale will then advance to a revamped Tour Championship, a standalone two-week match-play event. Rather than starting with a seeded knockout bracket, the 32 players will be divided into eight groups of four. Each player will compete against the other three players in their group, with the top two from each group advancing.
That leaves a 16-player knockout stage for the second week. From there, players will compete head-to-head in a single-elimination bracket, with winners advancing through the rounds until one player remains and is crowned the Tour Championship winner. The overhaul means the Tour Championship will no longer be a 72-hole stroke-play tournament with the FedEx Cup decided by cumulative scores.
Instead, the new structure separates the season-long points race from the final championship, while giving the top 32 players a direct head-to-head route to the title. Meanwhile, PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp told Rich Lerner and Brandel Chamblee of Golf Channel that “calling the Tour Championship the playoffs doesn’t really land in golf. It’s not the NHL, it’s not the NFL. It’s just different.”
So, he claimed, “Let’s not pretend it’s the NHL. It’s not. So let’s not call it the playoffs. Let’s create a separate championship.” And as for the current format, he added, “We have a FedEx standings that I don’t understand. I don’t think many people understand it,” which is why the Tour is overhauling the postseason for 2028 into a clearer match-play format.