Breaking: PGA Tour releases 2021-2022 schedule — WGC sliced, Euro partnership strengthens

The PGA Tour announced its slate of 48 tournaments that will make up the 2021-22 season, and it included a few new wrinkles.

The World Golf Championships will be sliced in half from four to two, with the WGC FedEx St. Jude Championship being promoted to the first of three FedEx Cup Playoff events and replacing the Northern Trust, which alternated between New York metropolitan area and Boston the last two years, and the Mexico Championship being demoted to a full-field regular season Tour event.

For the first time, the PGA Tour is co-sanctioning a European Tour event, the Scottish Open. The player field will be a split between members of both Tours and competitors will earn FedEx Cup points — a first for a European Tour event. Likewise, competitors in the PGA Tour’s Barbasol Championship and Barracuda Championship opposite-field events will earn points in the European Tour’s Race to Dubai for the first time.

“Adding an existing, strong title sponsor in Genesis to our Strategic Alliance in the form of the Genesis Scottish Open – to be sanctioned by both Tours – is a significant step for the global game,” said PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan.

As part of the “Strategic Alliance” and collaboration between the two Tours, the Irish Open will nearly double the purse to $6 million for its annual European Tour event starting in 2022.

Full 2021-22 PGA TOUR Schedule: pic.twitter.com/YYfoNEgDIW

— PGA TOUR Communications (@PGATOURComms) August 3, 2021

The 2022 portion of the schedule will kick off the PGA Tour’s new, nine-year domestic media rights agreements with ViacomCBS, Comcast/NBC and ESPN. There will be a one-week off season between the Tour Championship, September 2-5, and the kick off to the 2021-22 season in Napa, California at the Fortinet Championship.

The CJ Cup, which was held in Korea prior to COVID-19, will be held in the U.S. for a second straight year and be staged at The Summit Club in Las Vegas. The Zozo Championship, which was also held in the U.S. last year, is scheduled to return to Japan and the WGC HSBC Championship, which was canceled due to the global pandemic a year ago, is slated to be played in China.

The only remaining World Golf Championship events, which debuted in 1997, are the Dell Match Play Championship and the HSBC Championship in China.

Among the other notable changes to the schedule are:

The AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am (January 31-February 6) and the Waste Management Phoenix Open (February 7-13) trade spots in the schedule, as the Tour’s event at TPC Scottsdale remains in its traditional date of Super Bowl week.

The Puerto Rico Open (February 28-March 6) will be played as an opposite-field event alongside the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

With the biennial Presidents Cup being held at the Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte in 2022, the Wells Fargo Championship (May 2-8) will be contested for one year at TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm in Potomac, Maryland.

The John Deere Classic (June 27-July 3), traditionally played the week prior to The Open Championship, moves one week earlier.