On Tuesday the PGA Tour announced a “new competitive structure” beginning in 2028 involving “two distinct series of tournaments” that it billed as being linked by a structure of promotion and relegation: the Championship Series, consisting of about 23 tournaments with the ones managed by the Tour having 120-player fields and purses of at least $20 million, and the Challenger Series, consisting of about 20 tournaments with fields of about 144 players and purses of at least $4 million. This has been described as a “split” of the existing tour that will make it “look fundamentally different“, a “complete and total transformation“, and as “one of the most significant structural changes in modern golf history“.
But reading the Tour’s announcements, I was struck by two things. First, there was no mention of the Korn Ferry Tour, the Tour’s existing developmental, second-level tour, only the continued existence of the “Q-School” qualifying tournament that has long allowed golfers to qualify for the main tour and the KFT. Second, and more importantly, the Championship Series doesn’t seem to have that many fewer players than the main tour today. Which raises the question: is this really a “split”, or just a rebranding of the KFT?