2025 has been a spectacular year, with Brian Rolapp’s team looking to celebrate as they close a great season. Despite this success, the future of the Tour doesn’t look as exciting.  Jay Monahan and his team have been in the spotlight of late. After facing heat for the slow pace in the last few seasons, the PGA Tour commissioner announced something shocking in 2024. He stated that from 2026 onwards, field sizes will be reduced and fewer players will hold PGA Tour cards, and Johnson Wagner is not a huge fan of that.

Wagner recently joined Trey Wingo on his YouTube channel for a conversation to discuss all things golf. During one of the segments, the host suggested this was the best year for the PGA Tour since Tiger Woods’s prime and asked him to describe the current state of the game. Wagner told Wingo, “I would completely agree with you on that. I think the ratings were up way ahead of where they had been the last few years.”

“I think Rory winning the Masters and completing the Career Grand Slam started the major season off right. Scheffler winning the PGA and The Open was amazing. The way J.J. Spaun won the U.S. Open was a great story. I think the game is in a good spot. I’m a little leery of the new powers that be at the PGA Tour coming in and shaking things up, I’m not a fan of 100 men, as opposed to 125 keeping their cards. I’m not a fan of shrinking field sizes and decreasing opportunities.”

Like Lucas Glover, Viktor Hovland, and Matt Fitzpatrick, it seems that Johnson Wagner doesn’t want the PGA Tour to reduce the field size either. With fewer players on the course, the gateway for new stars to rise through the ranks will be narrower. This will heavily impact the PGA Tour’s ability to attract new and young talent from around the world to join them. That is what Johnson also reflected on.

“One thing the PGA Tour does so well that LIV doesn’t is that we create stars. In the PGA Tour, when you play and you win out here, and you win at a heavy clip, you are becoming a star. The more we shrink this, the harder it is for rookies to keep their jobs the next year. I’m leery of becoming a closed shop and not creating this new breed of superstars like we’re going to see out of Clanton and Jackson Koivun, and these guys coming out of college,” Johnson said.

Unlike LIV Golf, the PGA Tour has a channel to develop and nurture young talent and help them integrate into the Tour. But with the limited fields, such players will not get enough opportunities to jump through the ranks and reach the top to test their skills. This not only puts their careers at risk but also raises a question about the future of the PGA Tour. Reflecting on that, Wingo revealed how he has worked with Brian Rolapp before. His advice for the new CEO would be, “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it,” just to try something new and prove your authority.

After agreeing with Wingo, Wagner had another thought about the current situation in the PGA Tour. “As I look from the media side, I worked the Sanderson Farms Championship last week. I’m working on three or four other fall events. I love the fall events. That’s what a lot of guys are doing to keep their jobs. I think what we’re going to see is the fall series on the PGA Tour get phased out. To be honest, it may be nice for the golf fan to miss the sport for a while. The PGA Tour players play so many weeks that the fan never has the opportunity to be like, ‘Man, I wish there was a golf tournament this weekend.’ Because there is a tournament every single weekend.” It seems like the FedEx Cup Fall might be losing its importance on the PGA Tour calendar.

With most big names skipping the Fall events, TV ratings often drop well below the main season’s numbers. Viewership falls even further when stars like Rory McIlroy and Viktor Hovland head to the DP World Tour instead. Skipping the Fall swing altogether could make more financial sense for the PGA Tour and build greater anticipation for the start of the next FedEx Cup season.

Interestingly, Viktor Hovland held similar views about the situation, as he also expressed his concerns about the PGA Tour.

Viktor Hovland’s message to new CEO Brian Rolapp

Making a return from a neck injury sustained at the 2025 Ryder Cup, Viktor Hovland sat down for a press conference preceding the DP World India Open. That’s when EssentiallySports asked him to share his thoughts on the reduced field in 2026. Hovland said, “I think having more cards is obviously good for competition, but at the same time, I think they’re trying to get to a place where you have obviously Memorial and Bay Hill and these bigger tournaments and then you also have a lot of smaller events, and trying to get both of those tournaments to work in the same league is tough, and I think they’re trying to mitigate some of that.”

While trying to stay neutral towards the subject, Hovland still expressed that he knew that having more pros on the course was better for competition. That is the narrative nearly everyone else agrees with, including Lucas Glover and Matt Fitzpatrick. So, considering the experience Brian Rolapp has gained from working with the NFL, he would probably see the same logic as well. We’ll have to wait and see if he actually applies it.