After multiple victories in 2025, including The Masters to complete the Career Grand Slam, Rory McIlroy has safely qualified for yet another FedEx Cup Playoffs.
However, prior to the first tournament, the FedEx St. Jude Championship, the 29-time PGA Tour winner has opted not to feature in the event, with the reasoning behind it rather clear.
McIlroy during the 2024 Fed St. Jude Championship, where he finished in T68 out of 70 players
Firstly, the 36-year-old sits second in the FedEx Cup standings, some 850 points ahead of Sepp Straka in third. This means that McIlroy is mathematically in the FedEx Cup's second Playoff event, the BMW Championship.
In fact, such is his points tally in the standings, he has all-but qualified for the season-ending Tour Championship at East Lake, an event that has seen a format change in the last few months.
Originally, the Tour Championship had a strokes-based starting system, whereby your position in the FedEx Cup determined your starting position and shot total for the Tour Championship.
In May, that was eliminated and replaced by a standard 72-hole stroke-play event, with all players starting the tournament at level-par. From there, the best performer over the course of four rounds at the Tour Championship will win the FedEx Cup.
Because of this, your final position in the FedEx Cup standings becomes irrelevant following the BMW Championship, which takes place the week before.
McIlroy claimed $4 million for finishing second in the FedEx Cup standings, as well as $6 million from the Comcast Business Top 10
One other key reason stems from an interview McIlroy gave to The Telegraph in November 2024, whereby he revealed that he would be cutting back his playing schedule in 2025.
Speaking at the time, the five-time Major winner stated: "I’ll probably not play the first play-off event in Memphis. I mean, I finished basically dead last there this year (tied for 68 in a 70-man field), and only moved down one spot in the play-off standings."
Adding on to his form at TPC Southwind, McIlroy finished second-last in 2024, third in 2023 and missed the cut in 2022, when the field contained 125 players.
What's more, McIlroy listed the Cognizant Classic, Valero Texas Open and RBC Heritage as tournaments he would not play in 2025, despite playing them in 2024.
The only new event he added to the schedule in 2025 was the Texas Children’s Houston Open, an event that took place two weeks before his Masters win.
McIlroy will make 16 starts on the PGA Tour in 2025, three fewer than 2024
Finally, there's also the thought of what's to come for McIlroy, who has a rather busy worldwide schedule from now until the end of the year.
Playing the BMW Championship and Tour Championship, McIlroy is then listed to play the Amgen Irish Open on the September 4-7th, before then making his way to Wentworth and the DP World Tour's flagship event, the BMW PGA Championship.
Two weeks after that, McIlroy will be in New York for the Ryder Cup. From there, it's unclear whether he'll play the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship the week after, but we do know he's in the field for the DP World India Championship on October 16-19th.
On November 6-9th he'll play the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, the penultimate event on the DP World Tour circuit, before the finale at the DP World Tour Championship the week after.
That doesn't even include the Australian Open in December, an event McIlroy will play in both 2025 and 2026.
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