The PGA Tour sent its membership a 23-page proposal Tuesday outlining sweeping changes that may soon come to its field sizes, membership structure, priority ranking and fine system. If approved by the PGA Tour policy board next month, the alterations will be put into effect beginning in the 2026 season.
Chief among the modifications is reducing exempt status from the top 125 players to the top 100 in the FedEx Cup. Those ranked Nos. 101-125 would hold conditional status with some caveats in lieu of full-time status.
Nos. 101-110 through the FedEx Cup Fall would find themselves in their own exception category, including major medical extensions, above a category for Nos. 111-125 and another for Nos. 126-150.
The top 125 exempt system has been in place since 1983.
This decision would trickle down creating smaller field sizes and fewer membership opportunities. Under the proposal, the maximum field size for a one-course tournament would be cut from 156 players to 144 players for most events, 120 players for tournaments played before daylight savings (WM Phoenix Open, Players Championship among them). Three tournaments played after daylight savings but before the Masters would have fields of 132 players.
PGA Tour cards given to Korn Ferry Tour graduates would decrease from 30 to 20 annually. A maximum of five PGA Tour cards would be rewarded through Q-School, while the DP World Tour avenue would remain unchanged with the top 10 players in the Race to Dubai (who are not otherwise exempt) receiving PGA Tour cards. Open qualifying at events with fewer than 144 players would be reduced or eliminated as well.
Here's the tour's proposed priority ranking for 2026: pic.twitter.com/tHtainmJWl
— Josh Carpenter (@JoshACarpenter) October 29, 2024
Many of these changes take into account broadcast, operations, sponsors and pace of play. To that end, the rules committee would adjust the fine structure for bad times to align with that of the DP World Tour and major championships. Fines would be reduced from $50,000 to $10,000 for bad times while excessive shot times will be cut from $10,000 to $5,000.
The Average Stroke Time (AST) policy has flagged repeat offenders and the slowest players on the PGA Tour. To incentivize those individuals to play faster, an Excessive Average Stroke Time policy has been proposed. Should a player amass an average stroke time of 12 seconds or more above the field average across four rounds, an infraction would be registered. A third infraction would result in a fine of $5,000 and an additional $10,000 for each additional offense.
