The unintended consequence of PGA Tour’s proposed modifications

The PGA Tour is on the point of sweeping change.

And with change comes consequence.

Man Kinnings is aware of this higher than most. As the pinnacle of the DP World Tour, he witnessed (from afar at first, however now from up shut) how change befell his tour within the period of Saudi funding in professional golf.

He is aware of how the DP World Tour was reportedly confronted with the chance to tackle substantial PIF funding, after which the way it made the choice to pursue a “strategic alliance” with the PGA Tour as an alternative, binding the 2 excursions collectively in ways in which each helped his employer (by co-sanctioned occasions and an infusion of funding) and damage it (by a feeder system that sapped the DPWT of expertise and relegated it beneath its American sibling).

Now, Kinnings is watching intently because the PGA Tour stares down the barrel of one other wave of modifications, introduced final week in a memo to gamers. Beginning in 2026, ought to the modifications obtain approval from the Tour’s numerous boards, the efficient measurement of the Tour will shift from 125 full-time members all the way down to 100, shrinking the dimensions of golf’s largest skilled tour in pursuit of a extra streamlined aggressive product for all members. As a part of the shift, the Tour additionally would decrease the quantity gamers ascending from its feeder tour, the Korn Ferry Tour, every year, and reduce down on the variety of Monday qualifiers into occasions.

The modifications are supposed to enhance the standard of the Tour’s week-in, week-out product, however they may include their very own set of penalties for the golf panorama, significantly for these in search of to enter into the best stratosphere of the professional recreation.

For a corporation just like the DP World Tour, that’s not simply information, that’s a chance — one which may persuade gamers of extra numerous backgrounds to start their pro-golf journeys in Europe, and which may, by extension, enhance the standard of the DP Tour total.

In an interview with The Scotsman’s Martin Dempster this week, Kinnings was eager to level out as a lot.

“I don’t assume it has had an enormous impact,” Kinnings mentioned, referencing the expansion of the DP World Tour’s feeder tour, the Challenger Tour, and the elevated assets Kinnings’ group has put into its occasions. “However, on the similar time, the announcement final week by the PAC might result in gamers perhaps beginning to look in another way about what’s one of the best ways for them to attempt to get a card and it doesn’t matter the place that’s.”

Underneath the proposed new PGA Tour construction, there could be no modifications to the present “strategic partnership” with the DP World Tour, in that the highest 10 finishers on the Euro tour nonetheless would get PGA Tour playing cards for the next season. In the meantime, the variety of playing cards to professionals coming from the Korn Ferry Tour would lower from 30 to twenty.

Whereas that also leaves a 2-to-1 benefit for Korn Ferry Tour playing cards over the DP World Tour, there are benefits to taking part in in Europe which may profit potential Tour stars, corresponding to venue high quality and entry to outdoors tournaments that when made the DPWT a competitor to the PGA Tour within the late twentieth century. A brand new crop of stars arising by the DP World Tour might then enhance the underpinnings of its new schedule, which features a deal with unoccupied calendar stretches by different main excursions.

These aren’t groundswell modifications — in reality, they’re nothing in any respect but. However for Kinnings and Co., they symbolize a consequence of potential PGA Tour modifications that hasn’t been addressed, and one thing that would quickly profit them.

“It wouldn’t shock me in any respect if extra People began to take a look at the DP World Tour,” Kinnings mentioned. “For those who have a look at the pathway by from the Problem Tour to the DP World Tour, it’s a very clear route and it has labored very effectively. However we simply have to observe that and see what occurs.”

Relaxation assured, the DP World Tour shall be watching intently, as a result of a smaller professional golf recreation might very effectively imply extra room for the DP World Tour inside it.