PGA Tour cuts, changes will hurt many — except top players

Just days after the birth of his first child and on the brink of losing his status, career journeyman Rafael Campos came up with a ‘Hail Mary’ moment on Sunday, winning the Butterfield Bermuda Championship to safeguard his job and punch his ticket to the Masters. Meanwhile, a yacht spin away at a boardroom in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, decisions were made Monday that ensure people like him will have fewer pathways to the Tour, less opportunity to use any card they earn, and dim prospects of keeping it.

The past 24 hours could hardly have produced a more jarring juxtaposition between the marketing romanticism of the PGA Tour and its modern, miserly reality.

Changes in the administration of the Tour — the addition of private investors and the rise of players who fancy themselves such — mean the boardroom is now more likely to revere Warren Buffett than, say, Arnie or Jack. Buffett has often said that price is what you pay and value is what you get, and much of what was being deliberated today focused on whether there’s sufficient value in what they’re paying for. Even if not every constituency is being subjected to the same metrics.

Rank-and-file members didn’t emerge well from this meeting. Beginning in 2026, field sizes will be reduced, the ranks of exempt players will be cut, and the number of Korn Ferry Tour grads and Monday qualifiers will be slashed. The dominant (and wholly defensible) sentiment is that too many guys are paid too much for too scant a contribution to the business, so the herd must be culled. And to be fair, some of the player-directors who made these calls are almost certainly going to find themselves on the wrong side of the cull soon enough.

Rafael Campos of Puerto Rico reacts after putting in to win on the 18th green during the final round of the Butterfield Bermuda Championship 2024 at Port Royal Golf Course on November 17, 2024, in Southampton, Bermuda. (Photo by Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)

Also on the agenda was tens of millions of dollars of budget cuts, what private equity likes to call “efficiencies.” Addressing bloat and waste is a long overdue exercise in this organization, but many of those who work at the GloHo deserve more defenders than they’ll see when the axe starts swinging. The operations and culture of the Tour — a mix of competence, complacency and conceit, depending on who you’re dealing with — is overdue a shake-up, but people who’ve done a good job will still be hurt. Cuts ought…