Professional golf is dealing with its own Thanksgiving woes
If you’re like me, Thursday you’ll be struggling to find space on your plate, between the bird, mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole. Thanksgiving dinner (and the seconds or three that follow) are best when the meal becomes a mess that touches every corner of the plate.
But maybe you’re also having trouble finding space on your desk. Maybe you got pushed away by Uncle Pete. Or maybe there’s more room at the kids’ table, so you go there. Thanksgiving is a constant reminder that there are more hungry people than placemats. Some people can only sit on the TV tray in the living room. That’s exactly what’s happening in professional golf.
Low-key but no less significant news this week came from a non-Thanksgiving part of the world – London, where the DP World Tour made it clear it would be cutting back on the number of full memberships on offer in 2027, following a very similar line recently laid out by the PGA Tour. The European version of the Korn Ferry Tour, known as the Hotel Planners Tour, will also have fewer spots available for graduates to take the next step in professional golf.
The moves mirror those of the PGA Tour, which controversially reduced the number of full cards from 125 to 100 this season. You’ve probably heard all of this, so why should you care about this DP World Tour news? What does it tell us?
The move is another sign that just two or three years ago there were too many empty seats at the table. There are so many places on offer on the sport’s biggest tour that some of the placemats need to be removed in order to streamline tournament operations, to increase the stakes and to allow the best players to reap more benefits.
For many years, the DP World Tour has offered full membership to the 110 players who were on last year’s Dubai Race standings, equivalent to the FedEx Cup. But going forward, that number will be reduced to just 100 people. The feeder circuit under it will reduce the number of graduates from 20 to 15. All of these act as a link to entry to ensure that anyone who achieves full qualification can attend absolutely every game they want to compete in this upcoming season.
The biggest pro golf fans will remember that players graduating from the DP World Tour or Korn Ferry Tour were eligible to qualify for the PGA Tour in 2024, but they were mostly left on the sidelines for popular spring events like the WM Phoenix Open. The unintentional message being sent to these graduates is Congratulations on joining the PGA Tour, now it’s your turn to tee off. Guy Kinnings, CEO of DP World Tour, found that his tour was experiencing the same problem.
“We’ve had several working groups working on this all year,” Kinnings told Martin Dempster Scot“And if you can provide a higher level of scheduling certainty and a more balanced opportunity for those players who have earned the privilege of playing through any different avenues, that’s what we aspire to.”
When the PGA Tour drops from 125 to 100 and the DP World Tour drops from 110 to 100, pro golfers on the fringe are not going to like it, and tour executives know it. Kinnings himself spoke out about the move, noting that “nothing we do is going to please everyone.” But these moves have a hidden purpose that these executives don’t often discuss: It raises the stakes by further dividing the game’s rankings in a simple way. When there is a clear hierarchy between tours around the world, the edges of which are sharper than ever, the entertainment value of golf played by individuals on those edges increases.
PGA Tour players saw this just last week when the RSM Classic finalized its first 100 card-carrying members. Those outsiders won’t find it difficult to attend events, but they have given up complete autonomy in setting their schedules. They need to evaluate how many players ranked higher than them want to play in the Valspar Championship before they know they can add it to their schedule. Now, the same goes for the DP World Tour and its popular events such as the Irish Open.
What is a major problem for some is not a problem for everyone. With fewer guarantees for fringe players, some will consider other options. Victor Perez finished playing on the PGA Tour in 2025 and recently decided to play LIV Golf during the 2026 season. That’s not an issue for the DP World Tour, especially since Perez will retain his membership there, but Perez noted that he feels the goalposts are changing on the PGA Tour. In a way, he’s absolutely right. Professional golf courses as a whole have literally shrunk the size of tables, while the amount of food per table has continued to increase. All of which means you’d better play well enough to guarantee yourself a spot.
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