ATLANTA — Tiger Woods will head a committee appointed by PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp that will seek to improve the competitive model and will seek feedback from other players, fans and partners.
Announced by CEO Brian Rolapp at a news conference in advance of the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club, the nine-member committee will include six players and three businessmen.
“The purpose of this committee is pretty simple,” Rolapp said. “We’re going to design the best professional golf competitive model in the world for the benefit of PGA Tour fans, players and their partners. It is aimed at a holistic re-look of how we compete on the Tour. That is inclusive of regular season, postseason and offseason.
“We’re going to focus on the evolution of our competitive model and the corresponding media products and sponsorship elements and model of the entire sport. The goal is not incremental change. The goal is significant change.”
What that means for the FedEx Cup playoffs, signature events, the Tour Championship or regular events is not clear. The point, Rolapp said, is to study it all and make sure that the Tour leans into its commitment to a meritocratic structure while also ensuring the top players compete together more often and while finding a way to better connect the regular season and the postseason to enhance the Tour Championship.
Now in its 19th year, the FedEx Cup has undergone a third significant change this year that is seeing no points carryover from the regular season and playoffs into the final event other than the top 30 who qualified for the Tour Championship doing so based on their year-long points through last week’s BMW Championship.
Unlike previous years, the winner of this week’s tournament will be the winner of the FedEx Cup.
Joining Woods on the committee with be players Patrick Cantlay, Adam Scott, Camilo Villegas, Maverick McNealy and Keith Mitchell.
“Honored to serve as chairman of the future competition committee,” Woods said via social media. “This is about shaping the next era of the PGA Tour—for our fans, players and partners.”
Joe Gorder, the chairman of both the PGA Tour Policy Board and the PGA Tour Enterprises Board and former CEO of Valero will be one of the three business advisors, along with John Henry, who is part of the Strategic Sports Group and Theo Epstein, also with Henry’s Fenway Sports and a former baseball general manager.
“Competition should be easy to follow,” Rolapp said. “The regular season and postseason should be connected in a way that builds towards a Tour Championship in a way that all sports fans can understand.”
Rolapp said scheduling will be looked at closely. The Tour on Tuesday announced a 2026 schedule that adds a signature event, bringing the total to nine—typically for only 72 players—and twice has them in back-to-back weeks.
That lessens playing opportunities during the FedEx portion of the schedule and could possibly be a strain on the top players, who might end up skipping the very events in which the name competitors are expected to play together.
“I don’t think we have a particular number in mind. I think that’s an important part of the work that we’ll work with the committee on,” Rolapp said. “I think the focus will be to create events that really matter, and how we do that, what that number is, we’ll determine, but that’s certainly the goal.”
Asked about the busy schedule that includes three signature events and two major championships in a six-week period from the Masters through the PGA Championship, Rolapp said all of it would be studied.
“How do you actually drive a competitive schedule where every event matters, that is connected to a postseason, but do it in a way where the best golfers can get together and actually perform well?” Rolapp said. “I think that’s all an open question, and those are the things we’re going to look at with an open mind.”
Rolapp was announced as the first CEO in PGA Tour history in June and began his duties officially only three weeks ago. He was introduced at the news conference by commissioner Jay Monahan, who is expected to serve the rest of his contract through next year.
The new CEO came to the PGA Tour from the NFL, where he worked in the league for more than 20 years and had considerable dealings with the various television rights deals.
“I honestly believe that we need to better serve golf fans, but I also believe the PGA Tour can better serve sports fans, and in order to do that, I think some of these characteristics need to come into play,” Rolapp said.
“Everybody wants competitive parity. Everybody wants to go into an event not knowing who’s going to win. My old job, I think we obsessed about these things. Other than the NFL, I think golf is the closest thing that I’ve seen that’s sort of competitive parity. In my old world, we could pick five teams we think are going to win the Super Bowl, and I think we’d probably both be wrong. I think golf has similar characteristics, so I think that’s a strength we're going to lean into.
“But also the events need to matter, and you need to understand as a fan what the stakes are. If this person wins, if this person loses, if this person finishes here on the leaderboard, what does that mean and how does that tie to the postseason? I think every sport who’s successful has that, and I think we’re going to chase that.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as How New PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp Is Putting Tiger Woods to Work.
