The PGA Tour wins again! They are having their cake and eating it too with Brooks Koepka's return
News of the day in the golf world is that Brooks Koepka has been accepted back as a member of the PGA Tour and will be making his season debut at the Farmer's Insurance Open at the end of the month. He has been reinstated through the new “Returning Member Program”.
This program may be more self-serving than the guys who left it for monster payouts from the PIF! The criteria for reinstatement goes as follows:
The first bullet point is the deadline. This program is ONLY available for the 2026 season and the player must have their application in by February 2nd. So your apps in boys!
The next part is comical. You can only “apply” if you have been gone at least 2 years and clocked a victory at The Player's, The Masters, PGA Championship, US Open or Open Championship between 2022-2025. That's an exclusive list of *checks notes* FOUR GOLFERS! Just come out and say we want Brooks, Bryson, Rahm and Cam.
If reinstated, you won't qualify for the FedEx Cup Bonus program in the 2026 season. I wouldn't expect Brooks to have a great year this season, so this may not be very detrimental. The others, time will tell if they jump back and we will see. Bryson and Rahm will pick up where they left off and who knows if Cam Smith is even alive. He might be on a boat in Australia and not have the slightest of clues that he can come back. Something tells me these guys aren’t hurting for dough.
Lastly, the tour wants a “donation” of $5M to charity and zero equity for 5 seasons (roughly $50m-80M). With the sealed lips of the tour, we'll probably never know. If all 4 players decide to come back, the tour will receive $20M in donations and save roughly $300M in equity payouts. What a deal!?!? With the reported payouts these 4 guys got, they're probably still in the green and the Tour is gonna come out a huge winner. There's still the guys who stayed loyal who will stay fucked.
It's pretty crazy that there is a possibility, when this is all said and done, there will be only 5 “winners”. Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith, Jon Rahm and the PGA Tour. Yes, Scottie Scheffler has emerged as the most dominant golfer we've seen since Tiger but he was never a large part of this “drama”. Rory was the fall guy and made out to be a jackass (maybe rightfully so). Other guys who were rumored to leave but didn't, had their names dragged through the mud without the cash to show. This is gonna be a footnote in the history books like the USFL. But, it was something that put my favorite sport regularly on the front pages for the first time since Elin Nordegren slapped Tiger around with a 9 iron.
Oh yeah, the fans are winners too….Jay Monahan (the king of Triple C's) is stepping down!