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Former major champion Geoff Ogilvy has thrown his support behind one of the controversial changes coming to the PGA Tour.

In November, the Tour approved proposals to significantly alter field sizes and the number of exempt members starting from the 2026 season.

As well as delivering a stronger and more competitive product to golf fans, the circuit reckons pace of play will be tackled. And that is hoped to be achieved, particularly, by streamlining fields.

With fewer exempt players, standard 156-man fields will be reduced to 144 or 132 players, with The Players, a flagship tournament held in March, cut from 144 to 120 players.

But it has been backed by Ogilvy, the 2006 US Open champion, who is also a former member of the PGA Tour’s Player Advisory Council.

“As for field sizes,” he said, in a wide-ranging column on golf Australia, “I like the idea that the number of players is getting smaller at PGA Tour events; 156 is way too many.

“I know people roll their eyes and argue that it can be done, but it is just too many cars on the road.

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“It is the same at amateur level. If you go to any public course and the groups go off at seven-and-a-half minute intervals, you just know it’s going to take five-and-a-half hours to get round. Which is no fun.”

A concern raised against the proposal has been that players will find it tougher to seal a spot in the field of a PGA Tour event.

And Ogilvy, 47, recognises that.

“One misgiving I do have in what I am proposing is that access to the tour could get harder and harder,” he said. “It will be more difficult to get off and more difficult to get on. I don’t like that.”

But that’s where the Australian claims the DP World Tour’s ten card initiative is successful.

Since its inception in 2023, the programme has seen the top ten finishers in the season-long Race to Dubai standings earn a PGA Tour card for the following season.

Robert MacIntyre and Matthieu Pavon have been among the recipients of a card and won on the American circuit since.

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“Which is why, even if it can be construed as a negative for the DP World Tour, I like to see ten players from Europe getting PGA Tour cards at the end of each season,” Ogilvy wrote.

“That is a massive positive for the PGA Tour. They get ten players whose body of work over the previous 12 months makes them more well-rounded than the average PGA Tour player.”

Meanwhile, Ogilvy penned that he would love to see World Golf Championships (WGC) return to the PGA Tour schedule.

“They were great events, even if they ultimately failed to live up to their names and didn’t travel enough outside the US,” he said.

“All featured the top 50 players in the world and maybe 20 others. To me, that’s a pretty good formula for any event outside of the majors. Twelve of them in any one year would have been a good number.”


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John Turnbull A graduate of the University of Stirling, John joined the bunkered team in 2023 as a Content Producer, with a responsibility for covering all breaking news, tour news, grassroots content and much more besides. A keen golfer, he plays the majority of his golf at Falkirk Golf Club. Top of his 'bucket list' is a round of Pebble Beach... ideally in the company of Gareth Bale.

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