Seeking to lessen his total match count throughout the year, reigning Masters victor Rory McIlroy opted to sit out this week’s St. Jude Championship held at TPC Southwind in Memphis, Tennessee. Consequently, the initial stage of the FedEx Cup Playoffs will proceed with 69 of the world’s leading 70 golfers — McIlroy being the sole absence from the commencement of the three-week postseason.
McIlroy’s choice has sparked concern among PGA Tour officials, who are contemplating a modification to the regulations to ensure that even a player of his stature would not be guaranteed a spot in the subsequent phases of the playoffs, namely the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship. Despite each stage awarding four times the points of regular-season competitions, McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler possess such a significant lead that they are impervious to falling below the top-50 and top-30 benchmarks mandated for the concluding events.
Peter Malnati, a player representative on the PGA Tour Policy Board, expressed this week that he is “very uneasy” with McIlroy’s decision to forgo one of the three playoff tournaments. When questioned further on potential adjustments to the rules to prevent similar occurrences in the future, Malnati conveyed to GolfWeek, “I believe developments are underway, and I will refrain from elaborating further.”
McIlroy intimated to The Telegraph last year that forgoing the St. Jude Championship in 2025 was a distinct possibility.
“There are certain tournaments that I participated in this year that I don’t normally play and that I might not play next year,” McIlroy stated. “I participated in the Cognizant in Palm Beach Gardens, [the Valero Texas Open in] San Antonio, and [the RBC Heritage at] Hilton Head. And I will probably abstain from the initial playoff tournament in Memphis. I mean, I essentially finished at the very bottom there this year and only descended one position in the playoff standings.”
Having secured three victories thus far this year, McIlroy has accumulated $10 million in prize money, with the potential for even greater earnings during the BMW Championship and Tour Championship, both tournaments in which he intends to compete.
Numerous additional revenue-generating opportunities await McIlroy in 2025 beyond the PGA Tour, encompassing the Australian Open, the DP World Tour’s Irish Open, the BMW PGA Championship, the India Championship, and other competitions in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. McIlroy is also slated to play a pivotal role for Europe in the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black in New York.
Former PGA Tour policy player representative Jordan Spieth does not anticipate that Mcllroy’s determination to bypass the commencement of the FedEx Cup Playoffs will become commonplace.
“It’s possible that 1-2 individuals might do so for a given tournament, but I don’t foresee it evolving into a trend because these remain substantial events featuring the world’s finest players,” Spieth observed. “I believe they are exploring methods to preclude skipping both of them, and ideally, neither of them.”
