The PGA Tour announced Tuesday it is going back to a traditional stroke-play format for the Tour Championship, doing away with the starting-strokes model that had been used since 2019. The change came about after a vote by the Tour policy board and will be implemented this season.
By going to back to traditional stroke-play, all 30 golfers competing in the four-day PGA Tour Championship will start the tournament on equal ground. Under the starting-strokes format, the top-ranked players started the tournament with sizable leads (the top-ranked player, for example, started the championship at 10 under).
The format had been been criticized in recent years, with reigning FedExCup champion Scottie Scheffler calling it “silly.” Scheffler, as the top-ranked player in the FedExCup standings, started last year’s Tour Championship with a 10 stroke lead over the field. He went onto win his first FedExCup title by four shots over Colin Morikawa, who started the tournament six shots behind Scheffler, whose victory netted him a whopping $25 million.
“We want the Tour Championship to be the hardest tournament to qualify for and the FedExCup trophy the most difficult to win,” Scheffler said. “Shifting the Tour Championship to a more straight-up format with a tougher course setup makes it easier for fans to follow and provides a more challenging test for players – which brings out the best competition.”
The Tour Championship’s field is annually comprised of the tour’s top-30 players based on points accrued throughout the season. The field size for this year’s FedExCup will remain at 30 players but, according to a memo sent to players, that number could be subject to change in future years.
“Our Fan Forward initiative has helped us evaluate each part of the PGA Tour season and today’s announcement is an important first step in the evolution of our postseason,” PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in a statement. “The Player Advisory Council led a thorough process to respond to what our fans are asking for: The most competitive golf in the world, played for the highest stakes, in the most straightforward and engaging format.”
While the change is significant, there is still an incentive for players to generate FedExCup points throughout the season. The Tour Championship is still an extremely exclusive field, with a purse that reached $100 million last year.
But without the added incentive of strokes, elite players that aren’t in fear of falling out of the top-30 in the FedExCup points standings may miss more tournaments than in past years. This may likely include Rory McIlroy, who will not play in his third signature event of the 2025 season when the Memorial Tournament begins on Thursday.