A second tier nobody in Europe wants
Wentworth had barely opened its gates for the week when Rory McIlroy was handed the question everyone in the locker room had been chewing over. The PGA Tour published its membership categories earlier today for the two-tier system it will run from 2028. Two circuits, side by side. The Championship Series at the top, the Challenger Series underneath, with movement between them decided by results.
McIlroy was asked whether DP World Tour players should be worried. He was not. His reasoning was blunt enough that it needed no follow-up: dropping into the Challenger Series would not advance anyone’s career. He called it “a very lateral move”, and said most of the players around him at Wentworth see it the same way.
The detail matters here. Ninety players will hold Championship Series membership through performance, with twenty promoted each year from the Challenger Series. Win a major or The Players and you get a two-year exemption into the top tier. What the Tour did not say is how many cards will go to the best of the DP World Tour, beyond noting that the question sits inside the wider talks about the Strategic Alliance.
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Ten cards today, an unknown number in 2028
As things stand, the top ten in the Race to Dubai earn PGA Tour cards for the following year. That is the pathway European players have built their seasons around. McIlroy believes the negotiation now running between the two tours is about replacing that number with a sensible equivalent into the Championship Series, not about pushing anyone down into the Challenger ranks.
He has been a loud voice on this before. Ahead of last week’s Amgen Irish Open, where he finished tied 41st, he predicted LIV Golf players would drift back to the DP World Tour and argued the circuit would be stronger for it. The 2028 restructure also brings a Tour Championship played as match play, confirmed in August, which tells you how far the American tour is willing to rip up its own format.
Finishing where he started
There was a softer answer buried in the press conference. Asked whether he could imagine playing all his golf on the DP World Tour one day, McIlroy did not dismiss it. He pointed to the minimum event requirements and the need to stay inside the top 70 or 90 to hold PGA Tour membership, which rules it out while he is competitive at the highest level. He has already trimmed his schedule since winning the Masters in 2025.
For now he splits his year. The BMW PGA Championship starts Thursday at Wentworth, with Jon Rahm and Tommy Fleetwood also in the field.
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