Six player executives on the PGA Tour Policy Board, along with the 16 players who make up the Player Advisory Council (PAC), have proposed sweeping changes to the tour that would affect everything from field size to membership status, sponsor exemptions and Monday qualifiers.

“Throughout 2024, field sizes and pace of play, as well as playing privileges and the FedEx Cup points system, were the areas where the tour received the most feedback from membership,” the PAC wrote in its executive summary. A copy of the memo, which was announced to all PGA Tour members on Tuesday, was obtained by Golf Digest.

“Throughout this project, which began at the PAC meeting at the Charles Schwab Challenge and was approved at the Policy Board meeting in June, the PAC conducted a comprehensive review of ideal field sizes and thus the overall eligibility system. The PGA Tour will provide the best experience to members while providing our fans, sponsors, tournaments and other “offers our stakeholders a more competitive and entertaining PGA Tour.”

The proposed changes outlined below are subject to approval by the tour’s Policy Board at its next meeting on 18 November (the Tuesday of the RSM Classic). However, this approval is believed to be essentially a foregone conclusion; The Policy Board consists of six player directors who help draft the changes, and it is unlikely the process will get this far without approval from the tour’s higher levels.

The starting point for the proposed changes stemmed from the desire to reduce the field size of tournaments throughout the calendar year. The proposal creates a new maximum field size of 144 players (down from the current 156) for a single-court full-field competition, although this could be reduced to 132 or even 120 depending on considerations such as daylight. In the Players Championship, for example, the field is expected to be reduced from 144 players to 120; This means a decrease of almost 17 percent. There were discussions about increasing field sizes at signing events to offset these reductions, but ultimately no changes were made and the minimum field size was already set at 72.

“Very large field sizes make it difficult to finish the competition at the scheduled time each day and cause delays in the overall pace of play, increasing average round times,” the PAC wrote to explain the thought process for reducing fields. In a series of charts, note that a large percentage of tournaments over the last two years have experienced delays even without weather disruption, and that the main cause of slow play on Thursdays and Fridays, when groups start at nine o’clock, is the delay in return while waiting for other groups to begin their rounds.

The chart below, taken from the tour notes, shows the new proposed field sizes for each event on the calendar:

Reducing field size requires an even more fundamental change in suitability for touring; The PAC outlines a reduction in the number of PGA Tour cards available, as well as changes to exemptions that will help fill weekly slots.

“Based on recommended field dimensions and to ensure adequate attendance at open, full-field events, the number of exempt members should be reduced by approximately 20-25 percent,” the declaration states.

Conversion to tour membership will be accomplished through several different methods, including:

—A change that moves the top 125 membership category to the top 100, a 20 percent reduction and the first change since the PGA Tour switched to a “fully exempt” structure in 1983.

—The number of cards available in the Korn Ferry Tour has been reduced from 30 to 20.

—Moving from “top five and tie” to simply “top five” for PGA Tour Q-School graduates.

DP World Tour will retain its current total of 10 cards in the Race to Dubai rankings.

The Tour is proposing two additional changes within the tournaments to “minimize the impact of field size on changes in existing membership.” Most importantly, the “Open Qualifiers,” commonly known as Monday qualifiers, will be eliminated entirely in tournaments with 120 players or fewer, and events with 132 players will be reduced from four spots to two. The memo states that this change was driven by metrics showing that 65 to 70 percent of Monday qualifiers missed the cut and a desire to reward members on the priority ranking list instead.

Additionally, “restricted sponsor exemptions” – two for tour members and two for DP World Tour/KFT/Q-School members – will be reallocated to tour members’ priority order. Tournaments will retain their four unlimited exemptions.

Overall, the new system proposes a completely new priority ranking system:

The memo went on to outline other proposed changes to the tour structure, including adjustments to the allocation of FedEx Cup points. While players and second-place points in majors will increase, 11 and lower positions in these events will decrease. A corresponding reduction in points for positions below sixth in signature events is also included in the offer.

The rules committee also recommended certain changes to the tour’s tempo of play policy beyond field reductions. Interestingly, most of these suggestions involve giving players more time to hit and reducing or eliminating penalties for bad times. The two exceptions to this are the increase in penalties given to the slowest players under the Average Stroke Time policy.

As they worked to draft the proposal, the six casting directors and 16 members of the PAC were divided into four subcommittees. The Competitions and Regulations subcommittee working on the pitch size change proposal consisted of player director Adam Scott and PAC members Brian Harman, Seamus Power, Lanto Griffin and Sam Burns. The Pathways subcommittee that recommended changes to provide tour membership and access to tour events was led by casting directors Peter Malnati and Webb Simpson and included PAC members Camilo Villegas (PAC chairman), Nick Taylor, Maverick McNealy and Josh Teater. .