Rory McIlroy spoke to the press ahead of the PGA Tour’s Tour Championship at East Lake, shortly after the Tour announced its 2026 schedule which sees the addition of a new Signature Event at Doral in late April/early May.
The Donald Trump-owned Florida resort last hosted a PGA Tour event in 2016, and its return as a PGA Tour Signature Event means that the Masters, the PGA Championship at Aronomink, and three Signature Events – the RBC Heritage at Harbour Town Links, the new Miami Championship at Doral, and the Truist Championship at Quail Hollow – will be played over a period spanning six weeks.
And McIlroy sees the upside in having so many big events in such a short window of time.
“I mean, geez, I think it’s all positive,” he said. “Golf builds through the January, February, March months, and obviously golf gets a huge popularity spike or whatever through Augusta; and then to try to keep that momentum going, keep that momentum going through the next few weeks, through the PGA, U.S. Open, I think it’s a good thing.
“It’s quite a bit of a workload for the players to play that much golf in that stretch, but I think it’s not as if we’re having to travel halfway around the world to do it. These are all pretty easy stops on the East Coast for the most part.
“But I think it’ll be good. It’ll be a good schedule, and I think if the Tour and the top players get off to a good start, I think that builds momentum for the Tour, and I think the Tour can just sort of ride that momentum through that stretch.”
McIlroy skipped the RBC Heritage and the Memorial Tournament – both Signature Events – in 2025, and though he thinks the scheduling and the addition of the new Signature Event is a positive move for the Tour at large, he hinted that there may be more Signature Events in the coming year where his name is not among the entry list.
“Yeah, look, I’ll always look at the schedule at the start of the year and see what best fits me and my life and everything else that I sort of do, whether it’s with family or other opportunities that I’m pursuing outside of golf. I’ll always look at that,” he explained.
“I’ll always choose the schedule that best fits me, and this year that meant skipping a few Signature Events. I might skip less next year. I might skip the same amount, I don’t know. It’s all just — the luxury of being a PGA Tour player is we are free to pick and choose our schedule for the most part, and I took advantage of that this year and I’ll continue to take advantage of that for as long as I can.”
McIlroy also admitted that he was one of the players who felt that the Tour Championship previous format which offered staggered starting strokes to the leading players in the FedEx Cup arriving at East Lake was a fairer reflection than this year where all 30 players start on the same number and the week’s winner is crowned champion.
“I’m maybe part of the minority,” he shrugged. “I didn’t hate the starting strokes. I thought that the player that played the best during the course of the season should have had an advantage coming in here. But the majority of people just didn’t like the starting strokes. Whether it were players or fans — I was on the PAC when we were trying to go through that, and really it was just a way to try to simplify the advantage that the top players were going to get over the course of the week instead of Steve Sands doing calculations on a white board.
“But you could also argue if it was starting strokes this week, Scottie [Scheffler] with a two-shot lead, it probably isn’t enough considering what he’s done this year and the lead that he has in the FedExCup going into this week.”
Many people have called for the Tour Championship to adopt a matchplay format, and though he admits that it was something that has been considered, it’s not his personal choice for a season-ending event when the near-entirety of the PGA Tour calendar is made up of 72-hole strokeplay tournaments.
“Look, there was a lot of other stuff on the table. Match play was on the table, and that got canned for this year. That might be brought back up in the conversation for next year or the year after,” he said.
“I think it’s just hard for the players to reconcile that we play stroke play for every week of the year but then the season-ending tournament is going to be decided by match play. I think it was just hard for the players to get their heads around that.
“I don’t know, maybe that will be on the table again, who knows. Yeah, look, it’s a 72-hole stroke-play event, and that’s what we play week in and week out. That’s what’s going to determine the winner.
“I don’t know if it’s the best format, but it’s the one that we have for this week.”
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