The PGA Tour is looking a radical overhaul to the format of the Tour Championship that could see the FedEx Cup decided in a bracket-style tournament for the first time.
The Athletic reports that the PGA Tour is in advanced talks to transform the Tour Championship from a 30-player stroke-play tournament with net starting strokes into a bracket-style event. The change could happen as soon as 2025, depending on the outcome of conversations with mutiple stakeholders, including PGA Tour player directors, corporate partners and TV partners.
The bracket-style version of the Tour Championship would feature head-to-head matchups, ultimately culminating in a single match for the FedEx Cup. Given that the 30-player field is locked in for 2025, that could mean a series of byes for top players to make the bracket work for the initial year. If the concept starts in 2026 or beyond, the field composition could change to make it easier for a bracket-style tournament to be played.
The matches could be contested as traditional match play (with winners determined by the net number of holes won and lost) or with medal match play (where two players simply compare 18-hole scores to determine a winner).
The change would not be a big deal for NBC, which regularly airs the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup, or CBS, which gets alternating opportunities to broadcast the FedEx Cup playoffs under the current TV rights deal.
The Tour Championship has long struggled to gain the best traction possible because it has long acted as two tournaments at once: the PGA Tour's FedEx Cup finale and the tournament that crowns the FedEx Cup champion. To that end, the Tour has struggled with a format that can do both at the same time without confusing or upsetting the viewer.
From the concept's start 2007 through 2018, the Tour Championship could have two champions: the player with the best 72-hole score at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta and the FedEx Cup points list winner. Having two winners made little sense to fans and didn't help to underscore the FedEx Cup as the PGA Tour's biggest prize.
The Tour created a points reset format that was intended to give more players a mathematical chance of winning both the Tour Championship and the FedEx Cup, provided that player won the Tour Championship. However, that wasn't always the case either.
In 2018, Tiger Woods won the Tour Championship at East Lake in front of a raucous crowd, and that meant Justin Rose winning the FedEx Cup was quickly overshadowed.
In 2019, the Tour introduced the concept of "starting strokes," which converted each of the top 30 players' standings in the FedEx Cup into corresponding handicaps on the leaderboard pre-tournament. The winner of the Tour Championship then became the player whose 72-hole golf scores combined with their starting strokes netted the lowest total to par. Fans have found the concept somewhat off-putting because the inside-the-ropes action in Atlanta didn't exclusively determine the winner. Players have found the format confusing and had been vocal, in some cases, in wanting a change.
