One of the main drivers of the PGA Tours recently announced eligibility changes was the belief that if you have a Tour card, you should be able to, for the most part, know your schedule.
This year, that was not the case for many of the players low in the reorder category of the Tours priority list, mainly the bottom half of the Korn Ferry Tour graduates and all five Q-School qualifiers, most of whom missed out on seven of the years first 10 tournaments.
While the percentage of KFT grads who kept their card ended up above average, at 50% (15 of 30 including Grayson Murray, who died in May but won the Sony Open in January), 13 of the bottom 15 players in priority from KFT/Q-School to start the season lost their full status by failing to finish in the top 125 of the final FedExCup standings, including all five Q-School grads. And all but two of those 13 guys failed to keep even conditional status.
As the Tour transitions to a leaner circuit in 2026, next year will be even tougher for the incoming crop of KFT/Q-School grads, who again will start the season prioritized behind the 10 DPWT grads. Not only will they struggle to get into early-season open events such as the Sony Open, WM Phoenix Open and Cognizant Classic, but they could find other tournaments maybe American Express and the pre-Masters run of Valspar, Houston and Valero more difficult to earn spots in as everyone plays more to make the top 100, which will be the new cutoff to maintain fully exempt membership.
Looking at this seasons final FedExCup standings, only 10 of the 42 DPWT/KFT/Q-School grads in the reorder category finished in the top 100, with four of them being winners six of those players finished between Nos. 81-100. It could’ve been even fewer had Rafa Campos, No. 30 in KFT last year, not won the Bermuda Championship in the penultimate event of the fall.
“It’s crazy that I feel like I’ve played better than being 100th on the points,” said Chandler Phillips, who ended No. 94, “but hey, you know what, whatever, you know?”
Here is a snapshot of how each of the DPWT/KFT/Q-School graduates performed in 2024:
The good news is once 2026 arrives, lack of full-field starts should not be an issue for any PGA Tour member aside from potentially Phoenix.
There will just be fewer members, a change that has many of the Tour’s rank-and-file upset.
Maverick McNealy, who won the RSM Classic on Sunday, said a day earlier that he would’ve liked the Tour to have increased the size of the signature-event fields.
“This is my personal opinion, but I have a hard time defending signature-event fields of 72 players if we’re going to limit the number of players that have a card,” McNealy said. “I think 120 is a beautiful number, I think it’s very competitive. I think a cut is an integral part of our sport and I think it would be really cool to play signature events at 120 players over the 72. With eight tournaments, that’s 400 more playing opportunities. It just seems like a layup to me. There’s a bunch of arguments why 72 is the number. None of them have convinced me yet, but that’s my personal opinion.
“Money and points to reflect the strength of field. But I just hope that the decision they’ve made is really what’s best for the Tour. There’s always going to be winners and losers in every decision. I just hope that the Tour as a whole wins.”