Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and a loaded Rolex Series field will chase the $9 million purse at Wentworth this week. Three players who normally define this event, or who carried real momentum into September, will not be among them. Their absences say more about the modern golf calendar than anything happening on the course, and that is what makes this year’s $9M BMW PGA Championship field so unusual.

None of the three is skipping Wentworth over an injury or a controversy this time. It comes down to scheduling. Billy Horschel needs FedExCup points to save his PGA Tour card, so he’s staying stateside instead. Min Woo Lee and Hideki Matsuyama have the opposite problem: their season is already locked up, and both are on the International team for the Presidents Cup at Medinah, which starts just a week after Wentworth wraps. Different reasons, same outcome, a $9 million field missing three big names.

Horschel addressed it himself, posting a video where he apologized to DP World Tour fans and admitted his play on the PGA Tour this year just hasn’t been good enough.

Here is why each man is sitting out.

Billy Horschel

Horschel has won at Wentworth twice, first with a final-round 65 in 2021, then again in 2024 when he beat Rory McIlroy and Thriston Lawrence in a playoff. He hasn’t missed the tournament since 2020, and that was only because COVID travel restrictions got in the way. So what changed? It’s not really about this season alone. Back at the 2025 Zurich Classic, he had to withdraw with what he thought was a lower-body issue, but it turned out to be a torn labrum. Surgery that May fixed the tear and cleaned up two microfractures, and he ended up sidelined for close to six months. He missed three majors that year because of it, and when he was finally ready to play again, the tournament he chose for his return was Wentworth.

This year hasn’t gone much better: 24 PGA Tour starts, 10 missed cuts, and that includes missing the cut at all three majors he did play. His lone top-10 in 14 made cuts came at the team-format Zurich Classic, and his best solo finish was a T12 at the Wyndham Championship, with only four other top-25s. He’s got to land inside the top 100 in FedExCup points just to hang onto his card, and whatever happens in the Fall Series will decide whether he’s back on tour in 2027.

Min Woo Lee

Lee, on the other hand, has nothing to complain about. He’s been spending most of his time on the PGA Tour lately, and this year brought him five finishes inside the top six, arguably his strongest stretch yet. Pebble Beach and the Scottish Open both ended in runner-up finishes, which punched his ticket to the FedExCup Playoffs, and he came out of the gate at the Tour Championship with a bogey-free round that matched his personal best. So the withdrawal has nothing to do with form. He’s just taking the week off before the Presidents Cup at Medinah, where his International Team spot is already secured, and there’s no real upside to playing another 72 holes on top of an already packed season.

Hideki Matsuyama

Matsuyama’s absence is the least explained of the three. He has not played a competitive event since the Tour Championship in August, and the reason is unclear. What is confirmed is his spot on the International Presidents Cup team, which plays the week after Wentworth. That timing matches Lee’s, resting ahead of Medinah rather than adding a tournament. For a player who only made his BMW PGA Championship debut last year, skipping it so soon shows how much weight the Presidents Cup now carries for International players in the weeks before the matches.

Horschel, Lee and Matsuyama are just the headline absences. Marco Penge and Rasmus Hojgaard are running the same play as Horschel, both skipping Wentworth for the Biltmore Championship to protect their tour cards, sitting 112th and 107th in the FedExCup standings. Si Woo Kim, coming off 11 top-10s this year, is another Presidents Cup pick resting up before Medinah. Thomas Pieters is tied to the LIV Golf circuit, Harry Hall is taking a scheduled week off, and 2015 champion Byeong Hun An, now on LIV, will miss the event for a second straight year.

The tournament will still crown a champion out of a field that includes McIlroy, Rahm, Fleetwood, Rose and Koepka, so the $9 million purse isn’t going to suffer for it. The storyline just shifts. One former winner is out there grinding to keep his PGA Tour card, and two Presidents Cup regulars are saving their legs for Medinah instead. Put together, it’s a reminder that even players at the top of the game can’t do everything anymore. Some weeks, they have to pick a side.