PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Fans of match play rejoice: the head-to-head format may be returning to the PGA Tour before too long and it could be incorporated to add some spice to the FedEx Cup Playoffs.
“We are exploring ways to add even more drama to the postseason, including the potential integration of match play, creating win‑or‑go‑home moments as the season reaches its conclusion,” Rolapp said during his opening remarks to his State of the Tour press conference held on Wednesday at the Tour’s Global Home.
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Match play has a long history on the PGA Tour, and was the format used for the PGA Championship until 1958. It has been used at other times through the years, most recently beginning in 1999 with the formation of the World Golf Championships. The WGC Match Play moved from California to Arizona and finally Texas before it was dropped from the schedule in 2023.
Brian Rolapp, CEO of the PGA Tour, speaks to the media prior to the 2026 Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
It is a beloved format at the Ryder Cup and U.S. Amateur and has been used to determine the NCAA men’s and women’s team champs, but it hasn’t been popular with TV partners because of the possibility of upsets leaving two lesser-known players battling it out in the finals and too few players on the course.
Crowning the Tour season with match play has long been bandied about as a compelling conclusion to the season. Golfweek, for one, has suggested starting the Tour Championship in its current stroke-play format on Wednesday with the winner of the Tour Championship crowned Saturday. Then, send out the top four finishers for match play on Sunday — semis in the morning with the two winners advancing to duke it out for the FedEx Cup.
“There are all sorts of models that are being talked about: Medal match play, other things. Nothing has been decided, and it would be a waste to debate that here. I think a lot of the motivation comes from our fans and our partners who want to see more drama in the events that they attend. I mean, again, the sports business is not that hard; just think like a fan, and nine and a half times out of ten, that’s probably the right answer,” Rolapp said. “It has to feel authentic. If it’s not authentic to them, if the competition isn’t authentic to them, if it is, for lack of a better word, gimmicky, it’s not going to work for anybody, including our fans. So, I think those are a lot of the debates we’re having in the committee about how to do that. There’s certainly places in the golf world where match play does work and that competitors and fans like it. So we’re working through that.”
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The Tour was in advanced discussions to revamp the Tour Championship format into a bracket-style event early last year before settling on removing the staggered-start scoring, which went into effect immediately last season. Adam Scott, a player director on the Tour board, called it a bridge year and said the full picture would become clearer in the years to come. But at the time, he said he was wary of straying too far from a traditional format.
“I’m pretty much open-minded to explore anything but I’m unsure about that,” he said of a match-play format. “It’s hard to see where match play fits into pro golf. We play the whole season one way and then have the final week be head-to-head match play, I mean, we can have a look at it, but you’d have to kind of sell me on that just a little more.”
Scott is a member of Rolapp’s Future Competitions Committee, which also includes Tiger Woods. It’s unlikely that Rolapp would have highlighted this concept without the support of the members of the FCC. But he did preface his statements that there still was more work to be done to get his vision across the finish line for 2027 and beyond.
“I can’t emphasize this enough; nothing has been finalized,” he said. “We are still doing our work and gathering input from our players, our partners, and other key stakeholders. No recommendations have gone to our player-led boards.”
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This article originally appeared on Golfweek: PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp says match play might be added to playoffs
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