In an effort to reduce his overall workload on the season, reigning Masters champion Rory McIlroy decided not to play in this week’s the 2025 St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind in Memphis, Tennessee. As such, the first leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs will run with 69 of the top 70 players in the world — McIlroy the lone missing piece from the start of the three-week postseason.
McIlroy’s decision has been met with angst from PGA Tour organizers, who are considering a rule change so that even someone of his caliber would not be mathematically locked into the second legs of the playoffs, BMW Championship and the Tour Championship. While leach leg offers four times as many points as regular-season events, McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler are so far in front of the field that they cannot be knocked past the top-50 and top-30 thresholds required for the latter events.
Peter Malnati, a player director on the PGA Tour Policy Board, said this week he is “very concerned” with McIlroy electing to skip one of the three playoff legs. When pressed on the matter to elaborate on a future rule changes to ensure this does not happen again, Malnati told GolfWeek, “I think there is stuff in the works, and I’ll leave it at that.”
McIlroy told The Telegraph last year that skipping the St. Jude Championship in 2025 was likely in the cards.
“There’s a few tournaments that I played this year that I don’t usually play and that I might not play next year,” McIlroy said. “I played the Cognizant in Palm Beach Gardens, [the Valero Texas Open in] San Antonio and [the RBC Heritage at] Hilton Head. And I’ll probably not play the first playoff event in Memphis. I mean, I finished basically dead last there this year and only moved down one spot in the playoff standings.”
With three victories this year, McIlroy has earned $10 million in bonus money with a shot at much more during the BMW Championship and Tour Championship, both tournaments in which he plans to participate.
There’s plenty of additional money-making opportunities left in 2025 for McIlroy outside the PGA Tour, including the Australian Open, DP World Tour’s Irish Open, BMW PGA Championship, India Championship and other events in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. McIlroy will also be a lead participant for Europe in the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black in New York.
Former PGA Tour policy player director Jordan Spieth doesn’t believe Mcllroy’s decision to pass on the start of the FedEx Cup Playoffs will become a trend.
“You might have 1-2 guys do that for an event, but I don’t think it will become a thing because they are still huge events against the best players in the world,” Spieth said. “I think they’re trying to figure out how to make sure you don’t skip both of them and ideally neither of them.”