The PGA Tour on Monday announced that a new tournament will join the FedEx Cup Fall schedule next season, the Biltmore Championship in Asheville, North Carolina. It will be held at The Cliffs at Walnut Cove, one week before the Presidents Cup at Medinah Country Club.
The Biltmore Championship marks the second change to the PGA Tour’s fall swing as the Good Good Championship was previously announced as joining the slate. That event will be held at Omni Barton Creek Resort & Spa’s Fazio Canyons Course in Austin, Texas.
Reading the tea leaves, it appears as if the 2026 FedEx Cup Fall will look relatively the same in terms of overall tournaments being played.
The Mexico Open, typically held in the regular season, was not on the 2026 schedule; it will instead take place next October. Baycurrent debuted as a new title sponsor in 2025, and it is on board for multiple years, while the Bank of Utah and World Wide Technology have deals through 2027. RSM and Butterfield go through 2028, leaving the Procore Championship in Napa, California, and the Sanderson Farms Championship in Jackson, Mississippi, in flux.
If the fall schedule holds or grows, what did PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp mean this past summer when he announced that a new competition committee would be driven by three principles: competitive parity, simplicity and scarcity?
If scarcity was going to be employed for a portion of the PGA Tour schedule, FedEx Cup Fall would be the first place to pare back, especially when considering what has taken place the last few seasons — fewer PGA Tour cards up for grabs, smaller fields, elimination of Monday qualifiers, etc.Â
However, whittling down the number of fall tournaments would contradict what Rolapp believes to be one of the PGA Tour’s greatest strengths (another one of those three principles): competitive parity.
“All sports chase competitive parity,” said Rolapp at the Tour Championship. “The PGA Tour has incredible competitive parity and balance among its players today. We’re going to lean into this while also maintaining another key characteristic of the PGA Tour: meritocracy. Anyone on Tour who’s a good enough golfer should have a shot at winning, and we’re going to lean into that and preserve that.”
The FedEx Cup Fall is outlined as a seven-tournament run meant to provide players with an opportunity to secure or improve their position in priority ranking, securing additional playing opportunities for the following season. Those ranked Nos. 51-60 get into the first two signature events, those inside the top 100 receive full-time status on the PGA Tour and down the list it goes.
The headliners of these events have not been those players but rather Scottie Scheffler and the U.S. Ryder Cup team at the Procore Championship, Xander Schauffele at the Baycurrent Classic and now Ben Griffin at the World Wide Technology Championship. Meanwhile, some notable names outside the top 50 — like Jordan Spieth and Tony Finau — have yet to play in the fall.
This may not seem like an issue on the surface — why would the world No. 1 winning be problematic? — but it may present an opportunity and chance to improve scarcity and even simplicity while maintaining competitive parity.
1. Increase cut-off points, increase the incentive to playÂ
In a perfect world, requiring those outside the top 50 in the FedEx Cup standings to play a certain number of tournaments would be the answer, but as we have seen over the last handful of years, professional golfers do not love being told what to do. Instead, adding qualifying tiers for tournaments in the regular season would be the play.
The 70-90 range in the FedEx Cup standings is a no man’s land with exciting players like Finau, Rasmus Højgaard, Nicolai Højgaard, Davis Thompson and Cam Davis. They may tell themselves they are too far outside the Aon Next 10 (Nos. 51-60) and well-positioned to avoid the top 100 cutoff. Add in exemptions from prior wins, and the incentive to play is close to zero.
The same can be said for those like Spieth already inside the Aon Next 10. He has the possibility of sponsor exemptions into signature events to cushion his fall — that’s a conversation for a different day– and has only dropped one spot in the standings from No. 56 to 57 this fall.Â
Fold in a FedEx Cup Fall champion exemption for all signature events and another cut-off point at No. 75, and it may be enough alter the schedules of players in the same position as Spieth and Finau.Â
2. Allow play on the DP World Tour to count
Look at the DP World Tour’s 2026 schedule, and one will find only three PGA Tour events: the Scottish Open, ISCO Championship and Corales Puntcana Championship. With the top 10 players in the Race to Dubai (not otherwise exempt) receiving PGA Tour playing privileges for the following season, on the surface, the strategic alliance between the two leagues has been a bit one-sided.
A way to help both sides would be allowing those inside the top 50 of the FedEx Cup standings the opportunity to play on the DP World Tour, even if a regular-season tournament goes head-to-head with a non-signature PGA Tour event.
While there is still plenty at stake during that time — like ensuring one is inside the top 50 of the Official World Golf Rankings for major-championship qualification — that can be achieved anywhere. With some higher-ranked European players like Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood in those DP World Tour fields, the added depth would mean more OWGR points up for grabs.
Factor in what tournaments are played (Irish Open, French Open, Spanish Open), where those tournaments are played (Alfred Dunhill Links plays across St. Andrews, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns, for example) and when those tournaments are played from a U.S. perspective (in the morning before football games kick off). Suddenly, the positives pile up.
3. Keep adding young players to the field
Without the top 50 players in the FedEx Cup standings participating, the composition would be much simpler and give the fall season more of an identity beyond: This is the season for those who want to improve their place on the PGA Tour for the following year.
Such a move could lead to additional spots opening in these fields — the Bermuda Championship only has one player inside the top 50 (Sam Stevens) participating — but if it does, those should go to young, up-and-coming players, including those who recently graduated from the Korn Ferry Tour.
In 2025, not a single rookie qualified for the BMW Championship, meaning no one new to the PGA Tour locked up a spot in the 2026 signature events. After Michael Brennan’s win at the Bank of Utah Championship, that number was up to 36 players.
On the outside looking in as their PGA Tour careers begin, recent Korn Ferry graduates and soon-to-be rookies would lick their lips at the opportunity of using the fall slate as a way to get their feet underneath them. Both the players and the league would be better off because of it.