The PGA Tour is rewriting its structure, and while many players, including top names like Nick Glover and Jordan Speith, expressed concern, Jon Rahm hardly raised an eyebrow. This week, the Spaniard arrived ahead of the Scottish Open and addressed questions about the PGA Tour’s sweeping changes at a presser. When asked directly about the new two-tier system, the LIV star admitted he wasn’t aware of the changes until then, as he stays away from social media. When brought up to speed on the news, Rahm was honest.

“Yeah, I think it’s a part of golf, right? What is it? You’re going to have two different tours within the PGA Tour and then the Korn Ferry? That’s not the first time I’ve heard that, so it’s not a surprise that that would happen.”

As reported before, the PGA Tour Policy Board approved the restructuring, which will split the circuit into two tiers, the Championship Series and the secondary Challenger Series, starting in 2028. The new model is driven by the Future Competition Committee, chaired by CEO Brian Rolapp and Tiger Woods. The policy also introduced a formal promotion and relegation system. Under the policy, the top 90 players from roughly 130 Championship Series will get to keep their status each season. At least 20 players will move up from the Challenger Series. The PGA Tour has come up with this system to create an immersive fan experience and to create stronger head-to-head competition.

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That said, Rahm’s lack of surprise isn’t without precedent. LIV Golf has operated its own promotion and relegation system since 2023.

The league has used its international series and LIV Promotions events to move players since 2023. It’s a structure that has run alongside the PGA Tour for a few years now. Given how closely golf’s various circuits have tracked each other’s moves during this period of realignment, a similar mechanism arriving on the PGA Tour did not catch Rahm off guard.

Further, in his own words, Rahm admitted that the policy change seemed familiar. The pathway has long existed: the players who lost their PGA cards moved to Korn Ferry, while top Korn Ferry finishers earned their way up.

Rahm is happy with the new structure because his old schedule was troublesome. He shared that in the regular system, the FedEx Cup point race restarted just seven days after a season ended. The players who skipped the fall events to play overseas would show up in January, already far behind.

Since those early opportunities never suited his schedule, he used the period between September and December to play the DP World Tour instead. The tour officials have confirmed the new season will run from February to August, explicitly designed to free players for overseas competition, including the DP World Tour, during the latter half of the year.

With the changes, Rahm highlighted that there will be more global opportunities for players, and the schedule will open up. He even urged other players to consider the option.

“If there are any non-DP World Tour members who play the PGA that want to take full advantage of some of their events, I think it’s wonderful. Those events in Australia look unbelievable. And from what I’ve experienced there, it’s a lot of fun.”

“The Spanish Open, I would hope for it to become a bigger event. When I was growing up, Spain had five to eight DP World Tour events. They were all quite big. The Spanish Open had a bit of bigger weight to it, and I think we have enough of a footprint in the history of the DP World Tour with Seve and Sergio and all that many members have done that I think Spain deserves to have a bigger event. So if there is that opportunity for that to happen, yeah.”

However, Rahm did highlight that the right combination of things is required to persuade non-DP World Tour players to come to Spain in October.