With an abundance of off-the-course storylines over the past 18 months, many golf fans missed or forgot about some of the changes the PGA Tour instituted last year, some of which will dramatically impact the upcoming fall golf season.
Esteemed golf writer Larry Bohannan of the Palm Springs Desert Sun (part of the USA Today Network) recently wrote about the changes that will take effect after the 2022-23 season closes at the FedEx Cup playoffs.
Here are a few of them:
Fewer players
As Bohannan mentioned …
The first of the FedEx Cup playoff events, the FedEx St. Jude Championship, will feature just 70 players this year. In the past there were 120 players in that field after taking the playoffs down from four events to three. Now, it is just 70 players to start, making the next two regular-season tournaments far more important for players than in the past.
And even fewer players at other events
The BMW Championship, the season’s penultimate event, will be down from a field of 70 to a field of just 50.
The result will still be a 30-player field in the Tour Championship, but golfers will have to play better in the first two playoff events to have a shot at the Tour Championship.
No wraparound season
Although fans never took to the wraparound season, there really wasn’t much of an answer for how to handle the issue.
Again, from Bohannan.
There will still be tournaments in September, October and November, and they will still count as official PGA Tour victories for the winners. But the fall events will no longer be part of the chase for the FedEx Cup. Instead, golfers trying to improve their status for the 2024 season will use the fall to chase status.
Some stars, but not many
Although the fields will be weaker than the regular season, occasionally some big names find their way into the field.
From time to time in the past several years some of the Tour’s biggest names have not only shown up in the fall but won some events as well, like Rory McIlroy at the CJ Cup last October. So we should still get a sprinkling of big names in the coming months after the playoffs and the Ryder Cup.
Houston moves to spring
With the WGC-Dell Match Play in Austin off the schedule, Houston has slid back into the spring portion of the PGA Tour schedule. And with the movement, Bohannan wonders if others will try to follow suit.
You wonder how many other events that are now in the fall will be angling to get back into the FedEx Cup points chase.