ATLANTA (AP) — The PGA Tour is reshaping its postseason for 2028 by ending the year with a Tour Championship played over two weeks at different golf courses involving match play.
PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp announced the changes Tuesday before the Tour Championship, which has been 72 holes of stroke play for the top 30 players since it began in 1987. Under the current format, whoever wins the tournament is declared the FedEx Cup champion and earns $10 million in official money from the $40 million purse.
Starting in 2028, the BMW Championship — to be held that year at Olympia Fields near Chicago — will be for the leading 90 players on the points list. Points from the season continue, and the No. 1 player will be the season champion with bonus money paid out accordingly.
The top 32 after the BMW Championship will be broken into eight groups of four-player pools for the first week of the Tour Championship. The leading two players from each pool advance to the final week, which will be match play over four days. Even players eliminated early will play through Sunday to determine final positions.
“This sets the stage for a reimagined Tour Championship, a separate, stand-alone competition that will emerge as one of the most difficult tournaments to qualify for and win,” Rolapp said. “It's match play over two weeks, an opportunity to make this an extended moment that commands the attention of golf and sports fans.”
Key details, such as where the final two weeks will be played and how much money will be at stake, have not been announced. The Future Competition Committee is still working on those details, along with the rest of the 2028 schedule overhaul.
Two people with knowledge of the discussions said Sleepy Hollow in New York, Interlachen Golf Club outside Minneapolis and Los Angeles Country Club, which held the 2023 U.S. Open, are under consideration. They spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because nothing has been finalized.
“This new format creates an exciting opportunity to showcase some of the most renowned venues in our sport, including places the modern tour has never been before,” Rolapp said.
As for the money, Rolapp said he hoped to have that sorted out by November. Scottie Scheffler earned $23 million from about $100 million in a bonus pool for leading the points list. The $40 million for the Tour Championship is additional — and official money — for the top 30.
“I think there’s an open question how we will allocate that in a new competitive model,” Rolapp said.
The Tour Championship first came to East Lake in Atlanta in 1998 and has been there every year since 2024. Rolapp said it would still be part of the rotation, suggesting the venues would change annually. Currently, the BMW Championship is the only postseason event that moves around.
Under the new format, that means the BMW Championship will offer three trophies — one for the BMW Championship, one for the Western Golf Association that has run the tournament for 126 years and the PGA Tour Championship Series Finale.
The first week of the Tour Championship will have no trophy at all. That's all about being among the 16 players who advance to the final event.
Also undecided is whether a corporate title sponsor will be involved. FedEx took over in 2007 when the PGA Tour attempted a postseason for a clear finish to a golf season that for decades had been defined by the four majors.
The format has changed five times since 2007 in an attempt to define a season champion without taking away from whoever played the best golf that year.
This will be the first time match play, the most fickle format in golf, will be used in the postseason. Match play was last used on the PGA Tour in 2023, a separate World Golf Championship. One of the concerns was the television product having only two players the last day.
In the 2028 format, everyone plays all four days, with other matches deciding final positions. The winner will be the only player who didn't lose a match.
See AP’s full golf coverage here
FILE - PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp speaks before a practice round of the Tour Championship golf tournament, Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)
The top diplomats of Iran and Oman met Tuesday to discuss a phased approach to managing ship traffic through the the Strait of Hormuz, which remains largely shut down nearly six months after the Iran war began.
The talks came after an oil tanker was disabled in an attack off the coast of Oman, underscoring the ongoing dangers for shipping companies attempting to use the waterway while it's under Iranian control.
Here’s a look at the latest developments in the Iran war and the wider Middle East. Full coverage can be found here.
Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaid met Tuesday with his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, in Tehran to discuss a framework for managing ship traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.
A joint statement by the two countries, located on opposite sides of the narrow strait, said the proposed framework includes a “joint temporary navigational corridor” and both countries working to clear mines from the waterway.
The statement said Iran and Oman will continue technical negotiations toward establishing a permanent shipping corridor and an agreement on the future administration of the strait.
About a fifth of the world’s traded oil passed through the strait before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28.
It’s unknown whether the U.S. will accept the emerging deal. U.S. President Donald Trump last week threatened to bomb Oman if it “gets in the way” of American efforts to reopen the strait.
Iran’s president and other senior officials also discussed the strait with a delegation from Pakistan that left Tehran on Tuesday following talks on reviving negotiations to end the Iran-U.S. conflict, the Pakistani military said.
A strike on an oil tanker Monday night off Oman's coast disabled the ship's engine, the British military's United Kingdom Maritime Trade Organization reported. It said all crew were reported safe.
There were no immediate reports of any environmental impact.
Iran periodically fires at vessels attempting to transit the strait to enforce its control of the waterway, though there was no immediate claim for Monday's attack. The U.S. has also fired on vessels while imposing a blockade of Iranian ports.
Tuesday marked one year since Israeli soldiers killed 22 Palestinians, including journalists and rescue workers, in a double strike on a hospital in Gaza that provoked global outrage. No one has been held accountable.
Israeli officials said the target was a suspected Hamas camera on the roof of Nasser Hospital. Among those killed were Reuters cameraman Hussam al-Masri and Mariam Dagga, a visual journalist who worked for The Associated Press and other news organizations.
Despite repeated requests by the AP, the army has not provided details about the investigation or a timeline for when it could be completed. Rights groups say Israel rarely holds troops accountable for killing Palestinians, pointing to long investigations that rarely lead to prosecution.
China's Foreign Ministry says it is closely following plans announced by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to expand sanctions to entities and individuals linked to Iran, including some based in China.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said China-Iran cooperation “should not be disrupted or undermined,” noting that it has conformed with international law.
China is one of Iran's biggest trading partners and purchases the majority of its total oil exports.
The Treasury Department on Monday said it was imposing sanctions on nearly 60 Iran-linked entities, including several based in China. It stopped short of imposing secondary sanctions on countries that trade with Iran.
An Israeli airstrike on Tuesday killed at least one Palestinian and wounded four others in southern Gaza, hospital officials said.
The strike hit a group of people northwest of the city of Khan Younis, according to the city’s Nasser hospital. The Israeli military said it struck a suspected militant in the area.
The death was the latest among Palestinians in Gaza since an October ceasefire attempted to halt more than two years of war between Israel and Hamas.
Israel on Tuesday seized a U.N.-run facility housing a vocational school on the outskirts of Jerusalem, advancing its campaign against the U.N. agency that provides humanitarian services to millions of Palestinian refugees across the Mideast.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the agency, known as UNRWA, does not own the land. Israel cited similar reasoning when its forces demolished the agency’s former east Jerusalem headquarters in January.
The U.N. interim Mideast coordinator, Ramiz Alakbarov, called the seizure unlawful and said it deprived 340 Palestinian refugees of educational services.
Israel has accused UNRWA of anti-Israel bias and at times of employing Palestinian militants. The United Nations and UNRWA have denied the accusations and say they investigate credible allegations and act quickly to purge suspected militants among staff.
A far-right Israeli lawmaker smashed a Palestinian memorial in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday after entering the village of Madama with an Israeli military escort.
Video showed Tzvi Succot, a Knesset member from the Religious Zionism party, destroying the monument with a hammer while Israeli soldiers stood nearby. Succot said the monument glorified terrorism.
The Israeli military said it authorized and provided security for Succot’s trip, but did not grant him permission to demolish the monument.
Riyad Abu Dagga, 69, visits the grave of his daughter, Mariam Dagga, a freelance journalist who worked with The Associated Press and other news outlets during the Gaza war and was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Nasser Hospital building in Khan Younis on Aug. 25, 2025, at a cemetery in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Aug. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks at a news conference, Monday, Aug. 24, 2026, at the Treasury Department in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
In this photo released by Islamic Consultative Assembly News Agency, ICANA, Iran's Parliament Speaker and top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, right, speaks with Pakistan's Army Chief Field Marshal Gen. Asim Munir during their meeting in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Aug. 24, 2026. (Mahmoud Hosseini/ICANA via AP)
In this photo released by Islamic Consultative Assembly News Agency, ICANA, Iran's Parliament Speaker and top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, right, shakes hands with Pakistan's Army Chief Field Marshal Gen. Asim Munir during their meeting in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Aug. 24, 2026. (Mahmoud Hosseini/ICANA via AP)
In this photo released by the Iranian Presidency Office, President Masoud Pezeshkian, right, meets Pakistan's Army Chief Field Marshal Gen. Asim Munir in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Aug. 24, 2026. (Iranian Presidency Office via AP)
