CEO Brian Rolapp, Tiger Woods meet with Hero field to discuss PGA Tour's future

NASSAU, Bahamas — Change is coming and it’s coming quickly.

That was the message from PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp on Tuesday to the field at this week’s Hero World Challenge.

According to one player who attended the meeting, the gathering lasted about 90 minutes and included a Rolapp presentation along with Tiger Woods, who is the chair of the Future Competition Committee that is steering the circuit toward what Rolapp called “significant” change.

Rolapp laid out the general concepts behind the Tour’s move toward a new model while Woods was part of the conversation and answered questions from players.

Earlier on Tuesday, Woods told the media the Future Competition Committee was tasked to “create the best schedule and product, [and] to deliver all that in '27 is something we're trying to do.”

The player who attended the meeting, which included nearly everyone in the 20-man field, said the conversation centered on a reduced schedule of approximately 20 to 25 events played in the best markets, on the best courses, with the best fields at the best time of year. He also said the idea is to create a clearly defined promotion and relegation system similar to what soccer has in the United Kingdom, and not a vague “PGA Tour A” and “PGA Tour B” framework like the circuit currently has.

The three “governing principles” of the Future Competition Committee are parity, scarcity and simplicity, with scarcity — which is being seen as a reduction of the Tour schedule — being the biggest outlier.

“The scarcity thing is something that I know scares a lot of people, but I think that if you have scarcity at a certain level, it will be better because it will drive more eyes because there will be less time,” Woods said Tuesday. “But don't forget the golfing year is long. So there's other opportunities and other places around the world or other places to play that can be created and have events. So there's a scarcity side of it that's not as scary as people might think.”