'Less Events, Less Cards, The Tour Gets Elevated' - Rickie Fowler Shares Surprising Thoughts On More Streamlined PGA Tour Future

As we still wait on how men's pro golf will look in the future, Rickie Fowler offered a glimpse of his vision of a more slimlined PGA Tour with no Signature Events.

Fowler is playing in the Rocket Classic in Detroit this week - always a popular event but one that this year is without the likes of Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele.

That's because it follows the US Open then a Signature Event in the Travelers Championship and comes just before players start to think about heading across the Atlantic for the Scottish Open and Open Championship.

Fowler's last victory came at the 2023 Rocket Classic so he has a strong affinity with the event, so was asked if it could possibly become a Signature Event in the future or have a kinder spot in the schedule.

The 34-year-old's response was more considered, and involved the future of the PGA Tour as a whole, which he believes should be smaller with fewer events and tour cards to make every event more important.

"It's tough," said Fowler. "It will be interesting to see how things shake out and, you know, do Signature Events - if you're looking long term - do just all events become big events and guys just play a pretty similar schedule and not take many weeks off?

"You know, it's hard, you can look at the Tour in so many different ways. I feel like there needs to be less events, less cards, the Tour gets elevated, the product is a little bit more - there's more continuity from what you would say a top event to a lower level or an opposite field event."

Fowler is not among the truly elite on the PGA Tour right now, needing sponsor invites to make the Signature Events, but even so he feels for the good of the game it should be streamlined.

And that means having the Majors and The Players as the standouts, with the rest of the PGA Tour tournaments all big ones and no alternate or elevated events muddying the waters.

"You know, sometimes it's tough, you have to remove yourself from your current situation, but I don't think the PGA Tour should necessarily have secondary or opposite field events," said Fowler.

"I think the PGA Tour product is the PGA Tour product. So there's a lot you could go into, but to me a PGA Tour event should be a PGA Tour event and it shouldn't be necessarily, well, this one's elevated or this is an opposite field.

"And then it goes into you're talking about scheduling and where you're at based on if it's elevated or not or Majors. The Majors and The Players are the core events or the big events that are on the schedule, and golf fans to non golf fans, those are the ones that they know about those, they know what those are.

"How we elevate PGA Tour events outside of that, and so then it may not become a thing where are you sandwiched or not, and maybe not as big of a scheduling difficulty if there's all those different kinds of events."