East Lake gets two more years, then it is over
Brian Rolapp did not wait for the tournament to start. Speaking at East Lake on Tuesday, ahead of this week’s Tour Championship, the PGA Tour CEO announced that the FedEx Cup playoffs as golf knows them are finished after 2027.
From 2028 the season closes with something much closer to a bracket. The top 90 players on the season-long points list will contest a Championship Series finale. The top 32 who come out of that event move into a Tour Championship played across two weeks.
Week one is a group stage. Eight groups of four, head-to-head match play, top two in each group advancing. Week two shifts to a different course, where 16 players fight through four rounds until two unbeaten players are left to settle it.
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Rolapp will not guess at LIV’s future
The other question in Atlanta was about the players who walked away. Rolapp said there are no current plans for anyone to use the Returning Member Program, the route Brooks Koepka took back to the Tour after a $5 million charitable donation.
LIV lost its Public Investment Fund backing in April, after the Saudi fund had reportedly poured $5.3 billion into the league. CEO Scott O’Neil has named a new investor without filling in the details. The team championship in Michigan was cancelled. Jon Rahm has been weighing an exit, and Bryson DeChambeau posted “It was a good run” on Instagram on Monday, a day after LIV’s season finale in Indianapolis.
“I don’t know the future of LIV,” Rolapp said. “Anyone who’s interested in coming to the PGA Tour needs to demonstrate that they are relieved of their contractual commitments or any tail obligations they might have in that legacy model.”
McIlroy and Scheffler want a price attached
Rory McIlroy was blunt last week at the BMW Championship when asked what returning LIV players would bring. “I would argue, have they brought value to LIV?” Scottie Scheffler phrased it more carefully and landed in the same place: “there obviously has to be some sort of penalties.”
East Lake has hosted the Tour Championship every year since 2004. Under the new plan it becomes one candidate among several, with Pine Valley, Cypress Point and Seminole all floated as possible venues. Site visits are already underway and could be confirmed on Feb. 22.
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