The PGA Tour announced on Tuesday that starting in 2028, the Tour Championship will be a two-week match play event instead of yet another 72-hole stroke play tournament. It is the most radical change to the format of the event in its history and could create some fascinating matches to determine the overall champion.
As Golfweek's Adam Schupak wrote, the PGA Tour Championship Series Finale will be the last stroke-play event of the season and it will have a 90-player field. At the end of that tournament, the season-long points list will be locked, a season-long winner will be known and a 32-man field for the Tour Championship will be set.
The first week of the Tour Championship will see the 32 qualifiers broken into eight groups of four. Each player will play a match against the other golfers in his group, with the top two from each group advancing to the finals the following week. If there is a tie within a group. it will be decided in a sudden-death playoff.
So what would this format look like if it were in place right now? The table below shows that we'd have some pretty amazing matches to look forward to this weekend:
While every group would be tough, Group E would be the Group Of Death, with Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland, Alex Smalley and Ludvig Aberg battling it out. Group F, highlighted by No. 6 Chris Gotterup but also featuring Rory McIlroy as the 11-seed, would be theater, too.
In case you are wondering who would be the first person out of the Tour Championship, it's Rickie Fowler, who finished last week's BMW Championship ranked No. 33 on the FedEx Cup Point list.
David Dusek is a senior writer at Golfweek covering equipment.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Here's what the 2026 Tour Championship would look like in the new match play format
Leave a Comment