The PGA Tour's time in the motor city is coming to an end.
On Tuesday morning, the Rocket Classic announced it would end its tenure as a PGA Tour stop, ending the tournament's eight-year run in Detroit.
“After nearly 13 years as the title sponsor of the PGA Tour, including eight years in Detroit, 2026 will mark the final Rocket Classic,” tournament director Mark Hollis said in a statement reported by the Rocket Classic. The Associated Press' Doug Ferguson. “We are proud of what this tournament means to this city, from creating unforgettable moments for fans to raising more than $10 million for local organizations.”
Rocket Classic – never The Rocket Mortgage Classic – will play for the last time at the end of July before drifting into the sponsorless sunset, when the tournament's title sponsor Rocket Mortgage declined its option to host the event in 2027, Detroit News' Tony Paul.
The decision follows years of weak fields at the event, which have been unpopular with stars returning from summer trips to the Open Championship and preparing for the final run of the PGA Tour season, the FedEx Cup Playoffs.
But perhaps most pressingly, the decision represents the first of what is expected to be a flurry of long-term PGA Tour event changes in 2027 and beyond. PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp is expected to speak publicly in the coming weeks about the status of the tour's new “two-track” plan – a plan to reorganize the tour into a single, easy-to-follow regular season tournament, divided into two distinct buckets, one with bigger purses and one with higher events for the better players. Rolapp's next update is expected to provide more clarity on the status of those tracks, which could bring even bigger windfalls to the Tour in its major events, but could leave smaller events, like the Rocket Classic, in limbo.
The landscape of the golf calendar represents a major change for Rolapp since he was announced as PGA Tour CEO last year. The PGA Tour schedule has existed in its normal form and size for the better part of three decades, and with little degree of financial success. At one time in the early days of LIV, its predictability and repeatability were mentioned as strengths of players in both courses.
But critics have suggested that the Tour model, while profitable, comes at the expense of a larger (and even more profitable) sense of relevance to the sport. Tour events take place twelve months out of the year, and many of the biggest moments in the Tour program come in the early months of the season, giving the Tour the kind of seasonal narrative arc with a dramatic ending that fills the calendars (and bank accounts) of most other professional sports leagues.
Under the initial guise of Rolapp's “two-song” idea, the Tour will pool a large share of financial support into a smaller, more prominent series of tournaments. Proponents of the idea suggest it amounts to little change compared to the professional golf calendar as a whole – a redrawing of an already existing, if not talked about, “major” PGA Tour and other “local” events.
Still, there's good reason to be skeptical: The FedEx Cup Playoffs were originally intended to serve as a bridge to the same result of the combined, season-long tour; they seem to be a way to reach tens of millions of dollars of sponsors and not much else. Rolapp's idea not only aims to pursue these same goals – it also threatens to undermine the “local” events that have served as the basis of travel for decades.
The Rocket Classic is the first of those events to be showcased by the department. But with change still in the air at PGA Tour HQ as the heart of the golf season takes center stage, it may not be the last.
