We’re midway through the 2025 season, and the PGA Tour’s new CEO, Brian Rolapp, is barreling ahead by shaking things up. He started with a big move: announcing the Future Competition Committee. As Rolapp explained at East Lake, the goal of this committee is to “design the best professional golf competitive model in the world for the benefit of PGA TOUR fans, players and their partners.” Rolapp outlined that the committee will have 9 members, and “There will be six players.”

The list of golfers in the committee includes: Patrick Cantlay, Adam Scott, Camilo Villegas, Maverick McNealy, and Keith Mitchell. And, of course, Tiger Woods, who will serve as the committee’s chairman.

In his statement, Rolapp showed his excitement about Woods’ presence, saying, “[I am] also pleased to announce as the chairman of this committee, Tiger Woods has agreed to serve as chairman. The PGA TOUR is certainly fortunate to benefit from his experience and his time and his dedication. That will be important to this effort, and I’m personally grateful for Tiger for offering to take this on.” 

No doubt, it’d be a huge plus to have Woods on this team. However, alongside him and his pro golf buddies, they’ll be joined by “three other business advisors.” The three members are “Joe Gorder, chairman of both of our boards, John Henry, principal of Fenway Sports Group and enterprise board member, and Theo Epstein, whose accomplishments in professional sports are well known, and is also a senior advisor to Fenway Sports Group,” Rolapp explains.

The PGA Tour will likely reveal more about the committee soon. Meanwhile, Rolapp has already laid out the three “guiding principles” that’ll steer the committee’s work. First up is “competitive parity” – the Tour already boasts a great balance among players, and they’ll lean into this while keeping “meritocracy” intact. This means any skilled enough golfer on Tour has a shot at winning.

The other two principles are “simplicity” and “scarcity.” Simplicity means making competition “easy to follow,” with the regular season and postseason connecting in a way that builds toward the Tour Championship, something all sports fans can get behind.

Scarcity focuses on getting the Tour’s top players “to compete together more often” in events for fans and players alike. Still, Rolapp didn’t have a set number of signature events in mind. But on Tuesday, the PGA Tour did announce they’d be adding one more signature event to the 2026 schedule, bumping the total up to nine. “Those are the three principles,” Rolapp adds.

Is re-introducing LIV Golf pros into PGA Tour events part of the solution for bringing top pros “to compete together more often?” Brian Rolapp’s response was interesting.

Brian Rolapp wants to focus on “what I can control.”

When talking about bringing LIV golfers back into PGA Tour events to let the best compete against the best more often, Rolapp said, “Golf fans want to see the best competition possible in the sport that they love in a competitive model that makes sense,” and that, “Look, I think I’m going to focus on what I can control. I would offer to you that the best collection of golfers in the world are on the PGA Tour.”

He emphasized that the PGA Tour already has the “best collection of golfers in the world” based on metrics like rankings and viewership, and he’s going to lean into that. Rolapp hasn’t spoken with anyone from the Public Investment Fund (PIF), which funds LIV Golf. However, he has talked with Guy Kinnings of the DP World Tour about how that circuit fits into the PGA Tour’s competitive model.

However, this isn’t the first time he has shared such an interesting take on the merger. At the 2025 Travelers Championship press conference, Rolapp stressed, “When it comes to that situation particularly, I think the fans have been pretty clear. They want to see the best golfers competing against each other. I think everybody as a golf fan. I agree with that.”

Despite past merger talks between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf collapsing after appearing close to finalization earlier this year, Rolapp seems determined to move forward and potentially reignite talks. Interestingly, Rolapp and LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil have a past connection – they studied together at Harvard Business School – which could play a role in future negotiations. If that happens at all.