ATLANTA — The PGA Tour is returning to Miami, a place it left nine years ago over sponsorship issues, going back to the iconic Trump Doral Resort with a signature event that will undoubtedly cause some angst on the 2026 PGA Tour schedule.

The original tournament at Doral dated to 1962—Jack Nicklaus’s rookie year on the PGA Tour—and didn’t return after what was then a World Golf Championship event lost its title sponsor following the 2016 tournament.

Going back to Doral is a win for the PGA Tour in that the course has been a venue for LIV Golf each of the past four years.

But at what price?

The Tour is unnecessarily adding a ninth signature event that will cause scheduling concerns for some of the top players in the world and put undo stress on regular events that are already fighting for relevance and trying to attract good fields.

RELATED: View the 2026 PGA Tour schedule

According to the announcement Tuesday preceding this week’s Tour Championship at East Lake, the new Miami Championship—a title sponsor is said to be imminent and is all but necessary in the new for-profit PGA Tour world—will precede the Truist Championship and the PGA Championship.

So follow along with the schedule:

The Masters, RBC Heritage (signature event), Zurich Classic, Miami Championship (signature event), Truist Championship (signature event) and PGA Championship will all be played in a row.

That’s two major championships and three signature events in a six-week period. And just two opportunities (including an opposite event) during that period for the rank-and-file.

And that’s not good.

It’s terrible for Zurich, which is a team event and can’t expect to compete with all that.

It’s not great for the Truist Championship, which could very well see some players skip Quail Hollow as it is the week before a major championship.

And it’s horrible for the rest of the PGA Tour regular events, which at least had some hope of name players working those tournaments into their schedule. But now there is yet another $20 million tournament—without a 36-hole cut—as competition.

The PGA Tour has enjoyed a nice run in 2025, with television ratings rebounding to pre-LIV days, Rory McIlroy completing the career Grand Slam at the Masters and winning the Tour’s flagship event, the Players Championship, and Scottie Scheffler putting together another historic season.

Those are huge positives to carry into a new regime under PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp.

And while the Tour is obviously going to want to enhance money-making opportunities for its players, especially with no deal in sight with the Public Investment Fund and LIV Golf, this is an unfortunate self-own.

The Tour should be cutting back on signature events, not adding to them.

Scheffler skipped the Truist this year because he wanted to play his hometown Byron Nelson and Colonial events in Texas. McIlroy skipped three signature events, including controversially at Nicklaus’s Memorial Tournament, as well as Hilton Head the week after his Masters victory.

There are bound to be other defections from some of these big-money events, which defeats the purpose of having them.

Certainly, the money being offered is not going to be a lure to the best of the best. Scheffler made $23,962,883 in official prize money this season while missing a signature event. McIlroy banked $16,597,418 while skipping three. There are 16 players who have made more than $7 million and five over $10 million. The money is not the problem.

“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,” McIlroy said. “These are all pretty easy stops on the East Coast for the most part.”

But he acknowledged his own schedule will be dictated by various factors. And he’s not been afraid to skip signature events in the past.

“I’ll always choose the schedule that best fits me, and this year that meant skipping a few signature events,” he said. “I might skip less next year. I might skip the same amount, I don’t know. 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.”

Of course, having those choices and so many of them makes those tournaments easier to skip, which goes against the very idea of why they were put together in the first place.

Eliminating at least one and maybe two signature events is a far more reasonable approach. Hilton Head and the Travelers—both of which follow major championships—are prime candidates. They are popular events without the added incentives. And they’d return to full-field events which gives those on the outside looking in more of an opportunity to qualify for the signature events through the main avenues offered.

Instead, it’s one less chance, and it comes in the first year of the Tour having just decreased playing opportunities. In 2026, only the top 100 on the final FedEx Cup points list are fully exempt. Sure, there is going to be one more opportunity in the fall (the Mexico Open is moving from its date following the Genesis Invitational to the FedEx fall), but that doesn’t help players get into the signature events.

It's curious that the Tour felt this need to make Doral a signature event when it could have put the event back on the schedule and waited for a change with one of the others. It’s quite possible that President Trump inflicted his will in those discussions, the irony not lost since he’s been critical of the Tour since it left Doral following the 2016 tournament—because it lost a title sponsor—and went so far as to accuse Tour leadership in 2022 of stealing funds from the player pension fund in order fund increases purses to compete with LIV Golf.

Earlier this year, Tour representatives including commissioner Jay Monahan made two visits to the White House as part of negotiations with the PIF and spoke highly of the President and his efforts to bring to the two sides together. While that didn’t happen, clearly a relationship was forged that led toward getting back to Doral

Now Trump’s got the PGA Tour back.

But it will come with a cost to the Tour, much of it obvious.


This article was originally published on www.si.com as The PGA Tour May Be Ruining Its Momentum With New 2026 Schedule.