The PGA Tour: Born in Mutiny, Still Rewriting the Rules
In 1968, a group of touring professionals broke away from the PGA of America, tired of club pros controlling the business affairs of players who actually competed for a living. They formed the Tournament Players Division, renamed the PGA Tour in 1975.
Commissioner Deane Beman, who took over in 1974, built the Tour into a real commercial enterprise. He created the Tournament Players Club network and "stadium golf" courses designed for spectators. By the time Tiger Woods turned pro in 1996, that infrastructure was ready to absorb a much bigger audience, and purses climbed for a decade on his pull alone. The Tour added its season-long FedExCup points race in 2007, now entering its 20th year.
That steady growth met its first real threat in 2022, when LIV Golf launched with Saudi Public Investment Fund money and Greg Norman as its face, offering guaranteed contracts the PGA Tour's win-or-earn-nothing model couldn't match. Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, and Bryson DeChambeau defected. Commissioner Jay Monahan drew a hard line, invoking 9/11 families given the Saudi state's role funding the rival league.
A year later, in June 2023, Monahan stood beside PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan to announce a framework agreement merging the Tour's business operations with LIV's — the same money he'd condemned. Players who'd stayed loyal called him a hypocrite to his face.
That deal still hasn't closed. Antitrust scrutiny, valuation disputes, and the question of how to fold a guaranteed-money league back into a meritocratic one have stalled it for three years. Both tours built separate 2026 schedules, and LIV postponed a New Orleans event, a sign of how unsettled its own footing has become.
Leadership has since turned over on both sides. Monahan steps down at the end of 2026, replaced by Brian Rolapp, a former NFL executive who joined as CEO in 2025. LIV is now run by Scott O'Neil. The two reportedly share a "common view" on eventually recombining the sport, and Rolapp has called his approach a "blank sheet of paper" aimed at a competitive model built on meritocracy.
The bigger shift may be on LIV's side. The PIF has reportedly told LIV it will withdraw funding after the 2026 season, having already spent more than $5 billion without buying the legitimacy it wanted. Whether that pushes LIV back to the table on the Tour's terms, or someone else steps in to keep it alive, is the open question shadowing every merger talk this year.
On the course, none of that has touched Scottie Scheffler. He opens 2026 as world No. 1 for a third straight year, having spent 157 consecutive weeks atop the rankings and won four Player of the Year awards. Yet he's been unusually candid about not letting it define him: "This is not a fulfilling life," he said before a major win last year, "fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment, but not from the deepest places of your heart."
Rory McIlroy supplied the season's biggest story. Having finally completed the career Grand Slam in 2025, he defended his Masters title in 2026, edging Scheffler by one shot to join Nicklaus, Faldo, and Woods as the only players to go back-to-back at Augusta. "I felt like the career Grand Slam was my destination, and I got there, and then I realized it wasn't," he said, adding he has no plans to stop at six majors.
The rest of the major season showed the Tour's depth. Wyndham Clark won a second U.S. Open wire-to-wire at Shinnecock Hills, and Aaron Rai claimed his first major at the PGA Championship with a closing 65. The Open Championship is still ahead, followed by FedExCup playoffs narrowing from 70 players to 50 to a 30-man finale at East Lake.
The most consequential 2026 news, though, may not come from any leaderboard. Rolapp has proposed replacing the Tour's one-tier structure with a two-level system — a top Championship Series and a feeder Challenger Series, with promotion and relegation between them — starting in 2028. It's an attempt to answer the question LIV forced onto golf in 2022: what a sustainable business model looks like once guaranteed money has shown players an alternative to earning their way.