The USGA's recent rota shows a fascinating path forward for the Tour Championship, which is played annually at East Lake in Atlanta.
When PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said last year during a State of the PGA Tour press conference that everything’s on the table, the idea of moving the Tour Championship – and the FedEx Cup Playoffs sites in general – is one that caught the fancy of several Tour players.
“It’s been discussed,” Adam Scott, a player director on the PGA Tour policy board, said. “We’ve questioned everything at some point. I couldn’t tell you contractually how long we’re tied to there, but East Lake is where it's at.”
But that doesn’t mean it needs to stay there – though there apparently is the prickly issue of former PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem granting East Lake as the permanent site in perpetuity, according to someone in the know. East Lake ties for No. 4 on Golfweek's Best list of the top private courses in Georgia and ties for No. 85 among all classic courses in the U.S. It has been the permanent site of the Tour Championship since 2005.
The investors at SSG, who have poured $1.5 billion into the Tour, know that the Tour Championship has untapped potential. While the USGA has played amateur championships at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort and The Olympic Club and has Cypress Point Club on deck for the Walker Cup – where primetime TV, cool climes and nary a thunderstorm are concerns – the Tour's three legs of the playoffs have visited Memphis, Baltimore and Atlanta, all three first-team All-Swamp sites and at courses that lose at least 5 and 4 to the USGA's rota. The Tour can do better, and as part of its much-vaunted Fan Forward surveys, they have heard it from the people they say matter most.
Peter Malnati, another Tour policy board player director, has never qualified for the Tour Championship, but he understands the argument for moving the Tour Championship from a fan perspective.
“I don’t hear fans say it is an exciting golf course to watch golf. I know it does a lot for the community and that’s very important, but I think it would be cool for our biggest trophy to be given away at a course that really excites fans,” Malnati said. “But there is a lot of things that have to be done in the right way to make that happen. I think East Lake works really hard to be an amazing host. I’d love to see our fans be excited about where we play the Tour Championship in addition to the tournament itself.”
But moving the season finale is proving trickier than at first blush.
“It’s been a slog,” one Tour insider said.
The reason is quite simple: too many chefs in the kitchen, too many constituencies to please. Scott said the 16-member Player Advisory Council had multiple meetings over multiple months, and the only thing on which they could agree was to scrap the staggered-scoring start. That was rubber-stamped back in late May, so all 30 competitors will start at even par this week. But to pull up the anchors in Atlanta, broadcast partners will need to be on board and presenting sponsors who foot the bill — Coca Cola Co. and Southern Co., who enjoy entertaining their guests on the home front — must sign off.
Jordan Spieth, a former policy board member, agrees that where the Tour plays matters and can be important to enticing players to compete. East Lake has flipped nines, undergone a massive renovation, turned par 4s into par 5s and back to 4s again, and yet it still doesn’t capture the imagination of the sports fan. No one is tuning in to to see East Lake the way they would if the 30-man finale was held at Cypress Point or Pine Valley or Pinehurst (though a 30-man field may be a tough sell for a resort course). This doesn’t preclude East Lake being part of a rotation. Selfishly, Spieth said he’s good with the Tour Championship staying right where it is.
“Because I've played it so well. I think it's a great golf course,” he said. “I would have to see what other options were available in order to have a reason for it not to be there every year.”
Cypress Point surely would get Spieth's attention. Former Golfweek colleague Jeff Rude years ago suggested playing at Cypress Point, site of The Match between Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan against Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward, and starting the tournament on Wednesday with the winner of the Tour Championship crowned Saturday. Then, send out the top four in points for a trophy dash on Sunday for the FedEx Cup. Airing in primetime, it would be must-see TV and a ratings bonanza.
But let's not stop there. Jason Day would be in favor of seeing the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis, the first leg of the playoffs, rotate too, because he doesn't play well at TPC Southwind. “I'm like, when can we leave?” he said. “But I definitely think we should move around a bit, yeah, for sure.”
The Western Golf Association, which runs the BMW Championship, has been the trailblazer and has perfected the model. It broke with tradition of playing annually in Chicago and now rotates to golf-starved metropolitan cites – St. Louis is on tap for 2026 – and set records for its fundraising last year at Denver’s Castle Pines.
Scott joined the Tour's board of directors because he wanted to elevate the Tour Championship to a legacy event on par with the Lombardi and Stanley Cup trophies. The FedEx Cup is in its 19th year and it’s still very much a work in progress. As Scott put it, it was “impossible to change everything this year.” They ran out of time so this is a bridge to the end result, he said, and he promised, “Next year you’ll see the full picture.”
It may take even longer to move the Tour Championship because as Scott said, “we need everyone comfortable,” but discussions persist. One can only hope that new CEO Brian Rolapp can breathe some new life into the Tour Championship by simply taking it on the road to some of golf’s great American cathedrals.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: PGA Tour considers moving Tour Championship from East Lake
Category: General Sports
