Rory McIlroy did not meet the PGA Tour’s 15-event minimum requirement. He received an exemption to avoid losing his card for a year. However, the new points model for 2028 and beyond could make a reduced schedule much harder to sustain. The new model has no formal minimum, but every missed event means lost points, which raises the risk of relegation.
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Speaking on Fried Egg Golf’s The Shotgun Start podcast, Brendan Porath, Joseph LaMagna, and Andy Johnson discussed the new points system the PGA Tour announced for the Championship Series. During the conversation, LaMagna noted it could effectively force McIlroy and other professionals to play regularly.
“Yes, it’s been flattened significantly, and I don’t fully agree with the idea that it’s more of a reward for season-long performance,” LaMagna said.
“I think what’s really happening here clearly is Brian Rolapp is incentivizing you to show up, and you need to play as often as possible. And if anything, this is sort of a Rory McIlroy rule where he’s saying you’re not going to win one or two events and then sit out the rest of the year and coast. That’s not going to work in this new system,” LaMagna added.
The issue is that the new model’s distribution is much flatter than the current one. Right now, a Signature Event winner gets 700 FedExCup points, while a 10th-place finisher gets 150. In contrast, the new system awards 300 points to the winner of a Championship Series event and 100 to a 10th-place finisher, which narrows the gap considerably.
Say a golfer wins one event and then skips the next two. That is 300 points. A player who finishes 10th in all three events also collects 300, and anyone who finishes higher than 10th picks up even more. Sitting out costs real ground in the season-long race, which puts stars like McIlroy in a tough spot.
The Northern Irishman has repeatedly said he wants to reduce his schedule, and he has been doing so for the past couple of years. He missed numerous Signature Events in 2025 and 2026, and many fans criticized the six-time major champion for it. In fact, he played only 14 events on the PGA Tour this season, including the Tour Championship.
Seve Ballesteros (1986) and Martin Kaymer (2016) each lost their PGA Tour membership for a year for falling short of the minimum required events. McIlroy avoided that fate because the Tour invoked a player-handbook provision that allows the commissioner to reduce the requirement for a foreign member in extraordinary circumstances.
Despite the reduced schedule, McIlroy reached the 2026 Tour Championship and finished tied for fourth, helped by the 750 FedExCup points from his Masters win. Under the 2028 model, a major win is worth 300 points, so one big week would carry a light schedule much less far.
The players may not love it, but the Tour has good reason to. If stars play more, fans get more of them on TV and at the course, and that should help ratings and ticket sales.
However, the Tour has built in safeguards to keep stars from falling far. A relegated player can earn promotion back with two Challenger Series wins or one of three cards from the fall Last Chance Series.
A win in the Championship Series also buys two additional seasons of membership, so a player who breaks through once has some cover even if his form dips. Porath and Johnson think that cushion, along with the other safeguards, drains the drama from relegation.
The new system will not force anyone to play a set number of events, but it rewards the players who keep showing up. McIlroy can still pick his spots, but he will be giving up points every time he does.