Ever since PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp announced the upcoming two-tier system at the 2026 Travelers Championship, the golf world has been debating the change. Some agree with Rolapp and Tiger Woods-led Future Competitions Committee’s decision to bifurcate the tour into two tracks. Others believe that this new system would do more harm than good, especially when it comes to meritocracy. Veteran Stewart Cink is on the cautious side and claims that the tour is making it harder for rank-and-file and rising pros.

“It was kind of sad for me to see that we have been shrinking the tour and shrinking fields because I feel like the game of golf is exploding with parity and talent,” the former Open Championship winner told Golf Digest, alluding to reduced field size in many PGA Tour events. He added, “The bottom 10 players in every tournament are so much better than the bottom 10 players were when I started. If you think about it, they’re making what was the Korn Ferry Tour and bumping those to $4 million and calling it something else [Challenger Series], and the Korn Ferry Tour is still there, but it’s going to be a third tier.”

Earlier, Rory McIlroy also said that tier two, Challenger Series events are going to be “glorified KFT events.” However, the 53-year-old Cink, who is participating in the 2026 U.S. Open, went a step further. The veteran questioned the financial viability of the system and lamented that it might price out the players who are trying to rise through the ranks. Stewart Cink explained why he fears the new system might cause financial strain on rank-and-files.

🤔 golf trivia

This Should Be an Easy One, Right?

01/10

Which Golfer Had an “USA” Haircut?

Sam BurnsMichael BlockBrooks KoepkaRickie Fowler

Oops, bogey!

But don’t worry, there’s still the back 9 to prove your high golf IQ

PLAY GOLF TRIVIA

“Look, we had a Major League [PGA Tour] and Triple-A [Korn Ferry],” Cink added, referring to the MLB and its developmental circuit. “Now we’re going to have Major League, Triple-A and Double-A. It’s just that [pros at the new] Triple-A [Challenger Series] are getting paid way more than the old AAA [Korn Ferry] was. That’s what we’re having. So the players that are not in the top rung are going to be taking a pay cut—a pretty big pay cut.”

Cink, who has been a PGA Tour Policy Board member himself, warns that while the PGA Tour is presenting the new system as more competitive, it might just boomerang. Under the new system, there will be the Championship Series and the Challenger Series.

The Championship Series will feature $20 million purses in events with 120 pros, while the tier-two events will comprise a 144-player field in most cases. But the prize money will be a minimum of $4 million. At the end of the season, some golfers from the elite track will be relegated to the Challenger Series and vice versa. But that leaves Korn Ferry Tour, the main feeder tour through which a bunch of today’s top pros earned their PGA Tour card, in a lurch. Consider the case of Ben Griffin.

He has won three times on the PGA Tour and has a bunch of top tens. But Griffin also said he lost around one third of the money he earned. Traveling, accommodation, coaching, paying the caddie—all of this amounted to almost $50,000 per week. Another pro golfer revealed most players can’t afford to play the season-ending tournaments despite being eligible if they have a poor run of form. Cink suggests the new system is only going to exacerbate the problem.

Rank-and-file pros and journeymen who switch between the PGA Tour Americas, Korn Ferry Tour, and other mini tours are likely to play for a tournament purse that is less than what a winner in any signature event earns. In addition, if the Challenger Series tournaments have a minimum purse value of $4M, KFT tournaments will likely have less.

Griffin, himself, quit playing golf after accumulating $17,000 in credit card debt. He became a loan officer at Lord, Abbett & Co., and only after the CEO agreed to sponsor his return did Griffin decide to come back to golf. So Stewart Cink’s worry is not without reason even though Tiger Woods and others have vehemently stood by the decision.

We have to look forward and beyond today and over the horizon to set up the PGA Tour and our sport for the future generations of players and fans,” said Tiger Woods from the Travelers Championship.

There are many others, such as PAC chairman Lucas Glover, who support it.

However, Stewart Cink believes that there’s so much talent on the PGA Tour that this added layer might lead to disparity. While he only mentioned the two tiers and the Korn Ferry Tour, there’s a lot more complexity here. For instance, there’s DP World Tour, which has a strategic partnership with the PGA Tour. So, for an overseas pro, aiming to make it to the Championship Series is much more difficult because access might be limited.

They will have to first make it to the top 10 in the Race to Dubai Rankings to get a PGA Tour card for the next season. From here, if these golfers get to play directly in the Championship Series, there won’t be much change. However, if the PGA Tour decides that these golfers start from the Challenger Series, there’s an added roadblock before they reach the top tier.

Evidently, the new system has left more questions in its wake than it has answered, and quite naturally, Stewart Cink is not the only golfer to question the new system.

Multiple pros are against the PGA Tour’s two-tier system

Golf Digest notes that one of the past winners playing in the 2026 U.S. Senior Open said the introduced relegation system was “a joke.” According to him, a golfer doesn’t have to play that well throughout the season to maintain his position in the top 90. If the PGA Tour wants to make it more dynamic and meritocratic, it should limit it to the top 60 while keeping its Championship Series status.

Four-time PGA Tour winner Steve Flesch was cautious about the prize money. While he was okay with having two tiers, he said the issue could be purses, as sustaining $20 million in prize money could become a challenge. And if the purses are going down, it is not a good sign.

Veteran Eddie Pepperell also raised concerns for the DP World Tour pros.

“Because if we lose these players to tier 2 on the PGA Tour, then the DP World Tour are really getting no benefits because these players aren’t going to gain great visibility going to America playing the Texas Open. They would if they were playing The Memorial, but they’re not going to have access to the Memorial,” he said in an episode of the Chipping Forecast podcast.

These concerns echo Stewart Cink’s broader warning that the PGA Tour’s new structure could create unintended challenges for players outside the elite tier.