The PGA Tour surely won’t be over the moon after hearing Rory McIlroy’s latest comments.
McIlroy began the 2026 season in style, winning The Masters for the second consecutive year, becoming only the fourth player in the history of the game to do so.
However, it has been quite the struggle for the six-time major champion since then.
Rory McIlroy has played only six PGA Tour events since his victory at Augusta National in April.
During those six PGA Tour tournaments, the 37-year-old has recorded zero top-five finishes and only two top-10s.
That is nowhere near good enough for a man with McIlroy’s talent.
McIlroy is clearly lacking motivation to compete on the PGA Tour, and that’s a big problem that Brian Rolapp will need to address moving forward.
He has played so few tournaments on the PGA Tour this year that he hasn’t even qualified to have his stats compiled by shot-link.
What Rory McIlroy said about his plans for the PGA Tour playoffs
It looks like McIlroy will not meet the minimum requirement of 15 PGA Tour events in 2026, but he does have a lifetime membership due to the fact that he has won 30 times throughout his career.
McIlroy has clearly reached a point in his season where he is totally devoid of any kind of motivation.
After finishing his final round at The Open Championship on Sunday, the Northern Irishman told reporters how he won’t be playing on the PGA Tour again for a while.
“Again, the PGA TOUR is in a lot of flux at the minute with a lot of their schedule and structure and everything like that,“ the world number two explained.
“So I think the change where it doesn’t matter where you are in the top 30 going into the TOUR Championship, it’s like I just need to be in the top 30 going in there to have a chance to win a FedExCup. So why would I care about the first two?
“I sort of came to that decision last year, and I’m just sort of doing the same thing.“
There may have been a negative reaction to the starting strokes format from some fans.
However, the one thing that format did guarantee was the best players in the world competing in all three playoff events.
And that’s surely what the sponsors of those tournaments want the most.
The simple change the PGA Tour should make to the FedEx Cup race
There are other ways to approach the Tour Championship format, of course, while still guaranteeing the best players competing against each other in all three events.
Perhaps a points-based system whereby the leader of the season-long FedEx Cup race begins the playoffs with a 200-point advantage over whoever is in second, a 300-point advantage over third place and so on, all the way down to a 3,000-point advantage over whoever is in 30th place.
The FedEx St Jude Championship and the BMW Championship could then be worth 1,500 points each for the winner, while the victor at the Tour Championship would earn 2,000 points.
That system would make the FedEx Cup a much better spectacle.
For instance, McIlroy is currently sitting in 11th place in the FedEx Cup points list.
If he remained there heading into the first playoff event, he would be 1,100 points adrift of whoever the leader is, say Scottie Scheffler for example.
He couldn’t really afford to skip the event in Memphis, because if he did, he would be putting far too much pressure on himself to win the BMW Championship in order to keep his FedEx Cup hopes alive.
The PGA Tour have got the format for the Tour Championship all wrong, and Rory McIlroy’s latest comments prove that.
Let’s see if Brian Rolapp is on the same page in that regard. It will be fascinating to see what changes he makes to the Tour Championship in 2028 when the new PGA Tour schedules come into play, if any at all.
