The PGA Tour has seen many drastic changes since its inception in 1968.

One of the most recent changes that shook the pro golfing world was the PGA Tour’s announcement in 2022. The league proposed a shift from a multi-year season format to a calendar-year season format. The rescheduled format came into effect in 2024 as the new season began in January of this year.

Nearly 11 months after the near schedule began, the PGA Tour has proposed another major change to stay in competition with LIV Golf. Let’s take a closer look at the proposal.

New PGA Tour proposal

The PGA Tour has experienced some serious loss of play due to bad lighting issues. This especially occurred in tournaments that were played after daylight savings time. This often leads to many top pros missing the cut. This also removes them from contention for a part of the purse in that specific championship.

But all this may change soon as per the newly proposed field size for the PGA Tour. Golf journalist of Sports Business Journal, Josh Carpenter, shared the breaking news about the proposed changes on his X account. He posted screenshots of the proposal in his tweet that provided all the details of the changes. It showed a cutdown in the field size to improve the quality of the events. Limiting the number of players in a tournament ensures that fewer players are involved in every round and there are better chances of completing the round on the same day. Regarding the tournaments played after daylight savings time, the clauses state that the field size should not accommodate more than 120 players. For the remaining year, the list can go up to a maximum of 144 players.

via Getty

The post also included a reordered priority ranking list for every event. The changed proposal also showed the revamped Pace Of Play Policy where the rules of out-of-position play were drastically modified. They also suggested lower slow-play fines, with bad times fines reduced from $50,000 to $10,000. The excessive shot fines were also lowered from $10,000 to $5,000 with subsequent offenses fined $10,000. The only fine that has been proposed to increase is for the Average Stroke Time Policy. It has gone up from $20,000 to a lump sum of $50,000. If approved, the new field size will be applicable from 2026.

Infuriated by the drastic changes proposed to the PGA, the fans had quite a lot to say.

What do the fans think of the new proposal?

Fans were frustrated about the fact that players are not held liable for slow plays and instead the lowest-ranked players in the entry list are made to suffer. @ATLcpa1 said, “Rather than enforcing employee pace of play rules, this tour will effectively fire 10% of their employees. Great place to work“. Speaking about the reduced opportunities for pros from lower leagues, @Ku_Bball_Fan said, “It’s hard enough for KFT/DPWT/Q-School grads to get spots in these early season tournaments. Is cutting 12 spots in a field really going to improve pace of play, be better for the broadcast and fans, etc.??? You’re just taking away chances for your members.”

One particular fan had an issue with a specific tournament. @MotownMike4 said, “The zozo proposal seems ridiculous. Others from a fan perspective are probably better for fall/winter/spring tourneys where today’s rounds don’t complete because of daylight, but also a cheap way to avoid the pace of play issue,” as Zozo Championship field size has been reduced from 78 to 72. Another fan @GolfTilDeath gave a short overview of the plan from the fan’s perspective. He said, “when the employee becomes the client… the customer loses. so now I get to see less interesting stories and watch the same guys continue to play slow, with lots of commercials. they’re mimicking their “success” on the “champions” tour and turning pro golf into a pension fund“.

@BrooceKoopka has predicted what would happen if this goes through. He said, “There is no other way to interpret this as Players in control now insuring they have smallest chance possible to lose their Cards. if I’m a KFT guy I’m pissed. If I’m in the 30-50 range I’m taking calls from LIV.” He also added another sarcastic response saying, “lol and we try to say LIV is the closed-off tour with less opportunity and field turnover“. @cicioCASTRO summarized the proposal well by saying, “So that tracks to what? Top 110 keep their card? And 10 less spots for Qschool/KFT? Take it down 25 total?”

What are your views about this entire episode? Do you think it’s fair for Jay Monahan and co. to reduce opportunities in the Tour just to compete with LIV Golf? Let us know in the comments section.