The PGA Tour’s future landscape took further shape on Thursday when the RBC Heritage was confirmed as a Championship Series event under the circuit’s two-track system beginning in 2028.
That was not a surprise. It has been expected since PGA Tour boss Brian Rolapp confirmed the schedule overhaul in June that the “signature” events of the last few years would be rolled into the top-tier Championship Series. Previously, the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Cadillac Championship, Memorial Tournament, The Sentry, Travelers Championship and Truist Championship were announced as part of that slate.
The RBC Heritage news, however, may raise eyebrows in Canada. One might surmise, for example, that RBC upping the ante for the Heritage means the Canadian Open is out of the running for Championship Series status. Purses for those events — featuring fields of the tour’s top 120 players — will be upwards of $30 million. To sponsor two tournaments paying out that kind of money is a big ask of any company, although RBC does not foot the bill for the Heritage alone. Importantly, that tournament has a major presenting sponsor in Boeing, which is not the case with the RBC Canadian Open.
Aware of how easily those dots could be connected, a PGA Tour official reached out to several media members Wednesday in a co-ordinated effort with RBC and Golf Canada to quell any such concern. The message from the official was that one tournament’s status has no bearing on the other.
Still, the clock is ticking. At last week’s Tour Championship, Rolapp said 14 sponsors were vying for the four remaining Championship Series designations. Along with the tournaments mentioned above, that schedule will include the four majors, the Players Championship, a Championship Series finale, the Tour Championship (played over two weeks under match-play format) and the Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup, depending on the year.
Additionally, the PGA Tour attracted Raymond James and Sompo as new Championship Series sponsors in what has amounted to a bidding war that may have moved faster than the folks at Golf Canada anticipated. Details of the Sompo event haven’t been finalized while Raymond James takes over from Wyndham as sponsor of the tour’s long-standing stop in Greensboro, N.C. In that instance, the state of North Carolina pledged $40 million to the event over four years on the condition it became a Championship Series event. Money, obviously, talks.
Then there are the WM Phoenix Open and the signature events at Pebble Beach (AT&T) and Riviera Country Club (Genesis). Pebble Beach figures to be a no-brainer while the WM Phoenix Open, the tour’s best-attended event held signature status in 2023, which was the first season of such designations. Losing that status in 2024 had little effect on the tournament, however, because it has long been a huge money-maker given its frat-party atmosphere and some of the tour’s bigger names playing it annually regardless of purse.
But under the tour’s new system, those on the Championship Series tier will be prevented from playing tournaments on the second-tier Challenger Series, the fields of which will be comprised of the tour’s rank-and-file members. Would the folks at WM be content with no stars in Scottsdale?
As for the Genesis, nee Los Angeles Open, Riviera Country Club will host the 2028 Olympic golf tournament, which may be the hold-up on that tournament being announced as a Championship Series event since a substitute venue would be needed for the first year of the new schedule. It will also host the U.S. Open in 2031.
If those three tournaments receive Championship Series status, that leaves one spot remaining with a lot of interested parties in the mix. The tour will finalize its 2028 schedule in February.
Complicating matters further for the RBC Canadian Open is the fact that Canadian PGA Tour members would be shut out of the tournament whether it becomes a Championship Series or a Challenger Series event. The tour is adamant about protecting the equity of all tournaments and players, even if that means preventing 2023 champion Nick Taylor from playing his national open or World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler from his hometown event in Dallas.
Sources close to the RBC Canadian Open confirmed that Dave McKay, president and CEO of RBC, and Mary DePaoli, RBC’s executive vice-president and chief marketing officer, have held meetings with Rolapp to express the exceptional nature of the RBC Canadian Open and the devastating effect of not having certain Canadians in its field. Rolapp, however, hasn’t budged on his stance.
That leaves the tournament in a pickle, financials aside. Is it better to have all the stars playing in Canada but potentially no Canadians or none of the stars but at least some, or even many, Canadians?
The third option — and it should be noted that Golf Canada spearheads such decisions, not the sponsor — is a move to the fall to become part of an international series of events that is currently light on details. That would maintain the tournament’s 100-plus-year-old identity as a national open and allow Canadian PGA Tour members, as well as up-and-coming Canadians, to compete on home soil as they always have. During an interview on TSN’s “Overdrive” show on Wednesday, Taylor suggested that might be the best-case scenario.
Such a move would not be without complications. September is a busy time of year in the sporting calendar and the Canadian Open had trouble attracting quality fields when it was played in that month for 20 years prior to a schedule overhaul in 2007. Would the tour lean on stars like Rory McIlroy, who has pledged loyalty to national opens, to compete? Would McIlroy convince other big names to follow his lead? Is that time of year attractive to RBC, which has always maintained a desire to be in the most competitive part of the tour’s schedule? Is it for anchor course TPC Toronto, which already hosts a number of corporate events that month?
Some 16 months before the PGA Tour re-invents itself — again — there remain many questions, and many of them pertain to the only national open on its schedule.