Making the Case for a Match Play TOUR Championship

Among myriad negatives, one positive of the last half-decade in golf has been the willingness for huge organizations to change quickly. Typically big ships turn very slowly, but the massive disruption caused by LIV Golf has left the PGA TOUR with no choice but to take a critical look at its product and, in key instances, act with an expediency they never did before the Saudi incursion. Necessity remains the mother of innovation.

Think of how much has changed in the last three years. To name just a few: the PGA TOUR essentially created an A-Tour and a B-Tour with its signature event model; the TOUR has shrunk in size from 125 players with full status to 100; there is now a direct path from college golf to the PGA TOUR.

It appears we’re soon getting another significant move. According to a report from Gabby Herzig of The Athletic, the PGA TOUR is considering wholesale changes to the format for the TOUR Championship, namely with an eye toward creating a “bracket-style event.”

Yes, yes, yes. I’ve been asking for this for years.

The TOUR Championship, at present, is trying to serve two rather distinct purposes: fairly crowning a year-long winner of the FedEx Cup and putting on an entertaining event in Atlanta in August. I’d argue they’re accomplishing neither. It’s not for lack of effort. A bunch of very smart people gathered around and devised the current “starting strokes” format where the FedEx Cup leader enters the week at -10, the second place at -8, third at -7, all the way down to Nos. 26-30 starting at even par. It was a good faith effort to reward a season like Scheffler’s 2024. The problem is, despite the greatest season since prime Tiger Woods, Scheffler was still one twist of fortune away from losing the season-long points race.

"I talked about it the last few years, I think it's silly," Scheffler said at East Lake in 2024. "You can't call it a season-long race and have it come down to one tournament.

"Hypothetically, we get to East Lake and my neck flares up and it doesn't heal the way it did at the Players. I finish 30th in the FedEx Cup because I had to withdraw from the last tournament? Is that really the season-long race? No, it is what it is."

Again, that would be fine if the tournament itself was really compelling. It just hasn’t been. There have been a few good battles down the stretch—Rory vs. Brooks in 2019 comes to mind—but too often we’re left with a soulless and very sweaty trudge through the weekend. This year’s competition was close for a half-second on Saturday until Scheffler reeled off a bunch of birdies and cruised to victory. It was a remarkably anticlimactic finish to a tournament with way too much financing to be so flat.

Speaking of financing: having guys play for $15 or $18 or $20 million used to bring juice in and of itself. But that’s a fun Saturday in the LIV world. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but $20 million just doesn’t elicit the same response it used to in our sport when you’ve got Jon Rahm signing for $300 million guaranteed.

How, then, to fix this? It starts with abandoning the farce of the TOUR Championship determining the FedEx Cup winner. Wrap up the points race either after the regular season or the second playoff event. You’d get a worthy champion who’s earned it with his season-long play, and you now allow East Lake to stand on its own. The TOUR is already trying to emphasize the regular season more with the Aon Top 10, a prize fund for the top 10 finishers before the playoffs. Simply allocate some money from the year-end prize pool toward the regular-season prize pool. There’d still be plenty left over for the TOUR Championship to innovate with.

I’ve long advocated for more match play in professional golf. It is such a dramatic format; you get high-leverage putts from the very first hole, rather than having to wait until the back nine on Sunday for real drama. It’s the format most weekend warriors play at home. It’s also the format that’s been most successful on YouTube and lends itself easiest to new-age marketing. Put a microphone on both guys and their caddies and, after giving editors some time to cut out the not-for-kids stuff, post the full matches online in a YouTube Golf-ey style that looks and feels different from a network broadcast—saturated, jumbo-head thumbnails and all. Freedom from the season-long component would free up the TOUR’s excellent Champions Management team to essentially build a new type of professional golf tournament, a distinctly modern one, from scratch.

Adding the head-to-head dynamic to the richest event on the PGA TOUR would absolutely add some juice. Instead of Scottie Scheffler traipsing to victory because of how well he’s played Thursday-Saturday, he’d wake up Sunday morning with a marathon 36-hole day (more on that in a second) for $20 million and for the TOUR Championship trophy. Winning the TOUR Championship would once again be a significant data point on a career resume, whereas now it’s rare for the TOUR Championship “winner” to shoot the lowest score for 72 holes at East Lake. For the last few years the winner has been whoever wins the season-long race. Let’s separate those two.

How you structure the week of competition itself would take some creativity. Of course, you’d want the higher seeds in the season-long race to have a significant advantage. Here’s one idea that would keep the field to 30 players. The top four players in the standings heading into the tournament are guaranteed buys into the quarterfinals. This year, that would’ve been Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Hideki Matsuyama and Keegan Bradley. Seeds. 5-8 are into the first round. (This year: Ludvig Aberg, Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa, Wyndham Clark). The remaining players would play two rounds of stroke play, one on Thursday and one on Friday, to fill the final spots in the 12-person match play bracket to be settled over the weekend. To guard against indifference, guys would get paid more for finishing higher up the leaderboard even if they don’t qualify for match play. Saturday morning would see seeds 5-8, who come in fresh, face off against the four stroke-play qualifiers in the first round on Saturday morning, with the quarterfinals (and the top four seeds playing their first match of the week) on Saturday afternoon.

The semis would run Sunday morning with the finale of the TOUR Championship, in prime time, under the lights on Sunday evening at East Lake. The higher seed would still have a heavy advantage, but there’s absolutely room for a Cinderella run all the way from stroke play through all four rounds of the knockout competition.

Yes, it’s different. Absolutely, the players might have some push back. But isn’t that the idea here? We’ve heard “improve the product” ad nauseam over the last few years, and the product doesn’t improve without a bold new vision. I’m but one person, but this hybrid stroke play/match play format sounds a far glitzier and punchier finish to the PGA Tour season than what we have currently.

As is true across the game, now is a time for deep introspection with an eye toward improving the overall fan experience. Let’s forget what worked (or, in this case) didn’t work in the past and create a modern golf tournament that sends out the golf season with a bang.