The PGA TOUR announced Tuesday that it'll debut a new postseason structure after the 2028 regular season, featuring a 72-hole, stroke-play tournament followed by two weeks of match play.
The changes build on the TOUR's revamped competitive structure introduced in June, which unveiled a two-track model with the Championship Series and Challenger Series.
The top 90 players in the season-long Championship Series points standings will compete in a Championship Series finale - a 72-hole, stroke-play event that'll crown both a tournament champion and a season-long winner.
After the Championship Series finale, the top 32 in season-long points will advance to the TOUR Championship, a standalone two-week match-play event.
In the first week of the championship, the seeded field will be split into eight groups of four for three days of group match play across a rotation of "prestigious venues." Each player will face the other three in their group in separate matches, and the top two in each group will advance to the second week. A playoff will serve as a tiebreaker if needed at the end of group play.
The 16 golfers advancing to Week 2 of the TOUR Championship will compete in a head-to-head match-play bracket at a different venue than in Week 1. Players advance through the bracket based on their win-loss record, with the final two undefeated players competing head-to-head to become the TOUR Champion. Individual records across the four days of competition will determine the final championship standings.
The new structure will mark the first time match play will be used in the TOUR postseason. Match play was last used on TOUR in 2023.
"I think one of the issues with the (current) TOUR Championship was that I don't think anyone really felt that it was culminating in crowning the best golfer in the world," TOUR CEO Brian Rolapp told ESPN's Mark Schlabach. "I feel like calling it the playoffs was almost doing it a disservice because it was just a separate competition.
"I think we've established how you determine the best golfer in the world, and then we've established a really good competition in a format that fans want to see that is just a different set of skills over a period of time."
