As the PGA Tour looks to reshape how many players are fully exempt, field sizes for tournaments and the number of Korn Ferry Tour gradates moving up each season, one of the great traditions of the tour is about to take a big hit.
According to information circulated by the Tour to membership ahead of a November 18 vote of the PGA Tour Policy Board, the Tour intends to dramatically change the availability of spots into PGA Tour events through open Monday qualifying -- the 18-hole events typically held on Mondays ahead of a PGA Tour event.
Traditionally, the PGA Tour has offered four spots in the field that week for events designated as open tournaments on the schedule -- basically any tournament that isn't a major, The Players, a FedEx Cup playoff event or an invitational. In the 2024 FedEx Cup regular season, there were 18 Monday qualifiers -- also known as open qualifiers or four-spotters -- on the schedule, including for opposite-field events played in the same week as a Signature event or major championship.
However, the proposed changes to the Tour structure call for seven of those Monday qualifiers to be eliminated entirely. The events that would lose their Monday qualifiers are: the Sony Open in Hawaii, WM Phoenix Open (which had three spots), the Mexico Open at VidantaWorld, the Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches, the Puerto Rico Open, the Corales Puntacana Championship and the Myrtle Beach Classic.
Three tournaments -- the Valspar Championship, the Houston Open and the Valero Texas Open -- would only offer two spots through open qualifying.
The vast majority of the tournaments that would lose Monday qualifiers entirely are opposite-field events, which are meant as playing opportunities for Tour members who can't get into Signature events or majors that same week. The Tour has struggled to fill those fields with current players, and they are looking to reshape those into smaller 120-player fields.
For FedEx Cup Fall events, Monday qualifiers would not change in any way from their current structure.
Monday qualifiers do not make the cut in PGA Tour events at a large clip, and it's ever rarer that they win. Corey Conners was the last Monday qualifier to win on the PGA Tour, doing so at the 2019 Valero Texas Open.
Open-qualifier tournaments are presented by PGA of America sections, which generate significant revenue from entry fees through each stage of the process. There are pre-qualifying events for players who have no significant professional golf status, and they feed into the open qualifiers themselves. Both have entry fees that help fund sections and their programming. It's unclear how the PGA Tour might compensate the affected PGA of America sections that might see fewer entries at both stages because of a reduction in open-qualifying spots.
Part of the goal of this change is to ensure access to players that are more likely to succeed on the PGA Tour throughout a season, including the 10 players from the prior season's DP World Tour points list and the 20 players from the prior season's Korn Ferry Tour points list who earn PGA Tour cards. Both categories of player are likely to get more playing opportunities under the new structure, though it comes at the expense of one of professional golf's great rites of passage.
