This week's Irish Open marks the start of a strong slate of DP World Tour events that will see a large contingent of international LIV Golf players mix with some of their notable PGA Tour peers as the former await clarity on their league's future.
Jon Rahm will tee it up in Ireland alongside fellow LIV members Tyrrell Hatton, Joaquin Niemann, Sergio Garcia, Adrian Meronk, David Puig, Tom McKibbin, and Thomas Detry. PGA Tour players in the field include defending Irish Open champion Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka, Shane Lowry, Alex Fitzpatrick, and Patrick Reed, who has recently completed his one-year suspension from the PGA Tour for joining LIV in 2022.
Many of those LIV and PGA Tour players will also compete at next week's BMW PGA Championship, which is part of the DP World Tour's elevated Rolex Series and has a $9 million purse. The Irish Open, which begins Thursday, has a $6 million purse but still offers a key opportunity for LIV players to earn Official World Golf Ranking points as they remain banned from the PGA Tour amid LIV's uncertain future heading into 2027. The league laid off most of its staff last week and is still working on finalizing a new funding deal with BC Partners Credit, following the Saudi PIF's exit.
Rahm told BBC Sports on Tuesday that "time will tell" what happens regarding his playing future as he is "more than willing to fulfill" his LIV contract that has multiple years remaining reportedly still worth more than $100 million. PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp said last month that there are "no current plans" for another Returning Member Program like the one that brought Koepka back to the Tour in January—and was also available to Rahm and fellow LIV stars Bryson Dechambeau and Cam Smith.
While the DP World Tour will continue to provide vital playing opportunities for LIV players this fall, things could change next year. Nine LIV players, including Rahm, were granted conditional releases for the 2026 season that allowed them to retain the DP World Tour membership despite competing in some conflicting LIV events. But it is "highly unlikely" that those same conditional releases will be available in 2027, sources have previously told Front Office Sports.

#rahm #irish #future #golf

The PGA Tour finally pulled the trigger on a massive overhaul for its season finale. After years of sticking to the same starting-strokes format at East Lake, the circuit is shifting to a two-week match play event. We're seeing a complete reinvention of how the season ends, not just a tweak. The changes kick in for the 2028 season. Fans who love the drama of head-to-head golf now have a reason to tune in for the final two weeks of the year.
The new structure breaks the final event into two distinct parts. The first week features a group stage, according to Golf Monthly. Thirty-two players will split into eight groups of four. They will play three rounds of stroke play within their groups. The top two from each group move on. Week two shifts to pure match play. This format hasn't been seen on the PGA Tour since the 2023 WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play. Brian Rolapp, the PGA Tour CEO, addressed the media ahead of the current Tour Championship to clarify the path forward. He noted that the current model is just the start of a broader evolution.
The goal is to create more excitement and higher stakes. The season-long points list will still determine who qualifies. The top 32 on that list earn their spot in the finale. But the way they compete will be totally different. The top 90 players on the points list will still retain their cards, but only the elite 32 get to fight for the trophy in this new way.
For years, East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta has been the only home for the Tour Championship. That ends in 2028. The tournament will now rotate between prestigious venues. The Tour has promised to include courses that the modern circuit hasn't traditionally been able to feature. This opens up the door for historic layouts to host the finale. Rolapp confirmed that conversations are already underway to secure these new locations. He told reporters that East Lake is still a strong option for the future, but it won't hold a monopoly anymore.
East Lake remains among the options being considered for upcoming Tour Championship events. This flexibility allows the Tour to bring the championship to different markets and fan bases. It also adds a layer of novelty that the starting-strokes format lacked. The rotation ensures that the final event feels like a grand tour rather than a local fixture.

#east #play #season #golf

Earlier this week, PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp stated that the PGA was re-evaluating Good Good Golf's sponsorship of its Austin, Texas, tour stop, which was set to begin in November.
"It's a bit of a fluid situation," he told reporters while expressing his disappointment with the way the YouTube channel-turned-golf brand had handled the fallout from an ill-advised ad for a co-branded Callaway driver that featured the company's CEO pushing a woman to the ground and yelling at her not to touch his golf club.
That fluid situation seems to have solidified, as both Good Good and the PGA announced Thursday that the brand will "step away" as sponsor of the Austin tour event.
"We recognize that we have work to do as an organization, and our focus right now is on our team, our culture, and ensuring we learn from this situation," Good Good said in a statement on its social media accounts. "We are grateful for our relationship with the PGA Tour and appreciate their partnership over the years. We remain committed to earning back trust, and we hope to work together in the future."
"We agree with their decision to use this time to focus on their organization and the work ahead," said the PGA Tour in a statement. "The PGA Tour believes in golf's ability to bring people together and create a welcoming environment for all."

#tour #situation #organization

Last week, Good Good Golf released an ad spot for its co-branded Callaway driver. In it, Good Good co-founder Garrett Clark tackles a woman who dared reach for his driver, stands over her, and says, "Do not touch my new driver."
After swift and intense backlash, the ad was deleted, but not before several people preserved it on the internet.
"We posted a video to our channels that ultimately depicted actions that are not aligned with our values as a brand," Good Good Golf, a YouTube phenomenon-turned brand, said in an official statement posted Saturday. "We have since taken that content down, and sincerely apologize. Good Good has always stood for making the game of golf more inclusive to all, and we will continue to ensure that is our mission moving forward."
Callaway Golf CEO Chip Brewer and Good Good CEO Matt Kendrick also released separate statements, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Those statements did not stop the avalanche. PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp condemned the ad and Good Good's "disappointing" and "defensive" response. Golf Channel postponed the premiere of its Big Break x Good Good reality show. ****** 's Sporting Goods and Galaxy Golf reportedly pulled Good Good merchandise from stores.

#driver

Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Elite golfers will compete in a two-week match play competition to cap the PGA Tour Championship Series starting in 2028, officials announced Tuesday.
The PGA Tour announced in June that it would revamp its playoff system with a new competitive structure, which includes the Championship Series and PGA Tour Challenger Series.
"From the beginning, the goal of the future competition committee was to create an easier-to-follow competitive model for our fans with greater consequence and a stronger season-long narrative," PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp said in a news release.
"Throughout this process, we listened carefully to our fans, players and partners. One message came through clearly: the culmination of our season should be worthy of the journey it takes to get there."
Participants in the Championship Series will compete in 72-hole tournaments and be measured through a season-long points system. The season, which will run from February to August, will feature about two dozen events, including the Players Championship, majors and international team events.

#competitive

ATLANTA (AP) — The PGA Tour is reshaping its postseason for 2028 by ending the year with a Tour Championship played over two weeks at different golf courses involving match play.
PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp announced the changes Tuesday before the Tour Championship, which currently is 72 holes of stroke play for the top 30 players. Whoever wins the tournament is declared the FedEx Cup champion and earns $10 million in official money from the $40 million purse.
Starting in 2028, the BMW Championship — the only postseason event that rotates is being held that year at Olympia Fields near Chicago — will be for the leading 90 players on the points list. Points from the season continue, and the leader will be the season champion and bonus money distributed accordingly.
The top 32 after the BMW Championship will be broken into eight groups of four-player pools. The leading two players from each pool advance to the final event, which will be match play over four days. Even players eliminated early will play through Sunday to determine final positions.
That means the BMW Championship will offer three trophies — the BMW Championship, the Western Golf ******* ociation and the PGA Tour Championship Series Finale.

#championship #points

ATLANTA – The Tour Championship is officially changing in 2028.
In the first year that the Tour will move to a Championship and Challenger Series format, the Tour will shift to a 90-man field for a stroke-play event to determine the season-long points winner. Only 32 will move on to a two-week match-play competition at rotating venues for the newly christened Tour Championship.
The first week will include World Cup-style group play, with the 32 qualifiers broken into eight groups of fours. The top two will advance to the final week, with ties decided in a sudden-death playoff.
The finale will be at a separate venue. Week two is four rounds of match play. All 16 players competing all four rounds. Every match impacts the final standings. The player who goes undefeated will be crowned the winner of the Tour Championship.
"This new format creates an exciting opportunity to showcase some of the most renowned venues in our sport, including places like the modern Tour has never been before," Rolapp said in a release. "Since our announcement in June, we have received a tremendous level of interest from prospective host venues. As a result, multiple discussions are underway, site visits have begun and we are encouraged by the enthusiasm we are seeing for the future of the Tour Championship."

#play #format #winner

When Brooks Koepka announced his departure from LIV Golf, the PGA Tour was put into a difficult position.
While it was important to punish Koepka for jumping ship to the competition, the PGA Tour could not deny that having the five-time major champion back would be a boost.
There is a debate to be had about the terms offered to Koepka. And it seems that plenty of tough decisions may be just around the corner for Brian Rolapp with LIV Golf's future in serious doubt.
Jon Rahm is now expected to leave LIV, according to The Telegraph. That could be a big problem, with the league's prospective investors wanting all of the big names to commit to hanging around before they sign on the dotted line and fund the 2027 season.
The timing could hardly be better for the PGA Tour, with the tour set to be split in two from 2028.

#koepka #rolapp #rahm #announced

Brian Rolapp has got a lot of things right since being named the PGA Tour's CEO back in 2025.
Rolapp recently outlined the sweeping changes that will be made to the PGA Tour from the start of the 2028 season onwards.
While LIV Golf has received huge amounts of criticism since its inception, it has been good for one thing.
LIV entering the professional golf scene forced the PGA Tour into making some big changes.
Then Brian Rolapp was appointed as the CEO in 2025 and he has taken things to a whole new level entirely.

#rolapp #things #since #changes

Were it not for Brian Rolapp's disinclination to even mention LIV Golf, you'd be forgiven for thinking the PGA Tour's CEO had spent the past week trolling his opposite number with a carpet bombing campaign of upbeat commercial announcements.
On Monday, the Tour said that Sompo, an insurance company, will sponsor an event next season and an elite Championship Series tournament starting in 2028. On Tuesday, it was confirmed that Travelers will level up to the same tier. Wednesday brought news that Sentry will underwrite another of the silk-stocking stops. On Thursday, the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard was added to the public list of tournaments comprising the Tour's premier schedule. (Friday was seemingly a day of rest for sales and marketing folks at the GloHo.) Each announced tournament has a $20 million purse, though total fees incurred by sponsors run closer to $30 million.
By comparison, LIV Golf's CEO, Scott O'Neil was silent since he had no good news to share and presumably little enthusiasm for addressing damaging speculation swirling around his business. One claim — amplified by his own players — is that the team finale scheduled for August 27 to 30 in Michigan will be canceled. Then came a cautionary rumor that it might happen after all, despite no build-out having commenced at the venue. A report followed that LIV is on the cusp of signing investors to keep it afloat into 2027, an infusion pegged at $250-$300 million, or about a quarter of what the Saudis have been torching annually for the past few years. Lastly, there was renewed anticipation of a bankruptcy filing as a step toward realigning the league's financial obligations.
No wonder the PGA Tour was so eager to position itself as surging in the right direction just as its antagonist is battling the narrative that it's in a death spiral. Whether both circuits remain on their respective trajectories is another matter.
Rolapp clearly has traction with sponsors to finance the Championship Series of a restructured PGA Tour, though it's possible some incumbents were offered a friends-and-family discount rather than asked for the full $30 million.

#past #tournament #though #brian

The PGA Tour has begun revealing which tournaments will become Championship Series events in 2028 when a new two-track model is implemented.
First up for the PGA Tour's top-tier Championship Series is the Travelers Championship, which has been played annually at TPC River Highlands just outside Hartford, Connecticut, each June, typically the week after the U.S. Open. Since 2023, the Travelers has been one of eight $20 million signature events on the PGA Tour. The announcement was made on Monday.
In 2028, the PGA Tour Championship Series will comprise roughly 15 regular-season events, in addition to the four major championships, Players Championship, and playoff events. Purses for the PGA Tour-operated events (the non-majors) will be at least $20 million, with some tournaments like the Players and a revamped Tour Championship offering even more prize money. The second-tier Challenger Series will comprise at least 20 events, each offering much lower purses of at least $4 million. Both series will run from approximately February to August, and will include annual promotion and relegation between the circuits.
"Right now we have 47 events at the PGA Tour—we'll have 47 events going forward," PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp said when he unveiled the plans for the new scheduling model in June. "That current model serves roughly 230 players. We'll serve that amount of players, the same. We are just organized now in a more simple understanding competitively so our fans can understand it, our partners know what they're getting as far as value. So we think we've just organized the same tour into a much more interesting and competitive system."
The second confirmed Championship Series event will be sponsored by Sompo, a ***** anese insurance and financial services firm, the PGA Tour announced on Tuesday. The event's market has yet to be determined, though. In 2027, Sompo will back a full-field (non-signature) PGA Tour event at Silverado Resort's North Course in Napa, California, July 29 to Aug. 1—effectively replacing the Rocket Classic in Detroit, which is leaving the PGA Tour schedule after this season. In 2028, the Sompo event will relocate to a new market as part of the transition to the Championship Series.

#championship #sompo

The PGA Tour has revealed its planned changes to its competitive model, schedule and playoffs, changes that will be more substantial than any in the Tour's half-century-long history.
Most notably, the Tour will now have two different competitive tracks for players, the Championship and Challenger series. The Tour's season will also end in a new playoff format, distinctive from the current Tour Championship. These changes will begin with the 2028 season.
"At its core, this work was driven by a simple objective: To build the best version of the PGA Tour, something that could endure and outlive us all," PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp said in announcing the new framework. "So where did we land? One tour, two compelling series of events, played at the most worthy courses for the highest stakes, culminating in a true postseason that crowns the best golfer in the world."
The new format was developed by the tour's Future Competition Committee, a nine-member organization chaired by Tiger Woods that includes five players — Patrick Cantlay, Maverick McNealy, Keith Mitchell, Adam Scott, Camilo Villegas and Woods, as well as executives Joe Gorder, John Henry and Theo Epstein. The Future Competition Committee, formed in August 2025, sought to improve the consistency and quality of fields across the regular season, create a clear system for promotion/relegation, and develop a more competitive experience, with meritocracy as a central goal.
The new format will include two different series of events, running concurrently. The PGA Tour Championship will feature the tour's best players, competing in 23 to 24 events, with 36-hole cuts and purses of $20 million per event. Each Championship series event will include roughly 120 players, although players will not be required to play a specific number of events.

CROMWELL, Conn. — Maverick McNealy has been busy with Zoom calls as much as working on his golf game since PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp introduced the Future Competition Committee in August.
McNealy, a player director on the Tour's board and member of the FCC, spoke about the plan that was approved on Monday during the Tour's board meeting.
"We really went through a pretty formulaic process to figure it all out. It started with all the key parties, the media partners, sponsors, fans, and obviously the players, and really figured out what everyone wanted to see if they had a blank sheet of paper and could draw up the perfect PGA Tour," McNealy said. "I'm really confident that the proposal that was just voted on yesterday addressed most, if not all, of that. There's nothing perfect, and as Brian says, the first five-year business plan that he writes, if it's exactly the same in five years, it'll be the first. But I think we're at a really good starting point, but still a lot of details to be worked out the next six months, and I'll be wearing out those Webex calls, but we're almost there."
Asked by Golfweek to name what was most critical to the players, McNealy said, "The players are most passionate about maintaining the integrity and the history of our PGA Tour competition. We have the best competition in the golf ecosystem and I think that's one of the reasons you saw our tour succeed over the last couple of years when a certain tour might not have. We dug our heels in pretty hard on anything that was going to disrupt that. What you're going to see is a lot cleaner schedule and slightly more competitive version of the PGA Tour that we already love."
Also of critical importance to players was maintaining their freedom to play the tournaments of their choice.

The two PGA Tour boards (Policy and Enterprises) approved recommendations from its Future Competition Committee that established a revamped, two-tier tournament system—with promotion and relegation of players—that begins in 2028. The boards also approved PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp as the tour's next commissioner, replacing Jay Monahan, effective Jan. 1.
The new schedule includes the PGA Tour Championship Series for the top players in the sport and will consist of 23-24 events, while the PGA Tour Challenger Series will serve as a feeder tour with immediate promotion after two Challenger Series wins in a single season.
More from Sportico.com
LIV Golf Pitch Deck Seeks Up to $350 Million in Capital Raise

CROMWELL, Conn. – Match play is coming to the PGA Tour Playoffs.
The PGA Tour’s board of directors approved a series of sweeping changes on Monday that will go into effect for the 2028 season, including another facelift to its playoffs. For the first time, match play will be used to settle the winner of the Tour Championship beginning in 2028.
That topic seemed dead in the water just last year when the Tour removed starting strokes but opted to stop short of a more radical move on the grounds that it didn’t make sense to play stroke play throughout the entire FedEx Cup season and then shift to match play for the finale.
MORE: PGA Tour’s bold overhaul live updates: 2 tracks, fewer cards, radical finale shift
But when Tour CEO Brian Rolapp came on board a year ago, he said he wanted to start with a blank sheet and make the playoff system easier to understand and more compelling.