2026 PGA Tour Playoffs: time to bid farewell to the 'SweatEx Cup' and replace it with these temperate sites

You know what time of year it is, golf fans. Welcome to the SweatEx Cup Playoffs.

One of the most remarkable facts about professional golf's top tour is that over the last decade, its season's final stanza has often been a contest not just over who can make the most birdies and the fewest bogeys, but who can perspire more than anyone else without keeling over before reaching the 18th hole at East Lake on Tour Championship Sunday.

The 2026 edition of the SweatEx—okay, the FedEx Cup Playoffs might go down as one of the most punishing three-week stretches in pro golf history, not just for players but whatever fans dare brave searing heat and withering humidity in three of America's hottest cities this time of year.

Kudos to Scottie Scheffler for winning the FedEx St. Jude Championship in FedEx's hometown of Memphis at TPC Oven Fan, a.k.a. TPC Southwind. Sunday's high was an insane 99 degrees, blowing away the tournament's typical Sunday highs in the low- to mid-90s. The heat index reached a horrendous 109.

The world #1's reward? A brief 280-mile trek up the Mississippi River to St. Louis - not remotely long enough to escape the dog days of summer in the country's muggy midsection.

No rest for the worn-down. The forecast for the BMW Championship at Bellerive Country Club this week: slight relief but still plenty more sweat, with daily highs north of 85 degrees. Sunday currently looks relatively mild, with a forecast high of 81.

Then, as it has since 2004, the Tour Championship will unfold at East Lake Golf Club in the city literally nicknamed "Hotlanta." Yes, the winner is going to take home $10 million and the FedEx Cup, but he may be 10 pounds lighter than he began the Playoffs.

It's one thing to play a dozen rounds of competitive golf in the heat and end up with a paycheck at the end of the ordeal. The real heroes in this traveling sweat-lodge are the thousands of fans and tournament volunteers who will bake in the sun and be able to brag about their own perspiration to the wise ones who stayed at home. I live in Florida and play plenty of golf in the summer, but with all due respect to the game's greats, I don't think you could pay me to spend four-plus hours walking a golf course and watching the game be played in hundred-degree heat. This time of year, I'm either playing golf, I'm in the pool or I'm indoors.

Wrapping up the season in such brutal fashion is as clear a sign as any that the PGA Tour's impending revamp needs to be thoughtful and uncompromising when it comes to matching host venues with the right week. Yes, reported tournament sponsorship fees around $30 million carry the main weight, but if it really wants to try to credibly compete with other major sports, the tour needs to hold its tournaments at the peak times for venues. And when it comes to the Playoffs, the on-site atmosphere should be as important as the television product. If August is going to be the designated time for the sporting world to care about the culmination of the main golfing year - gotta clear the decks for football, after all - then every Playoff week needs to be a spectacle that optimizes both for compelling golf and frenzied fan atmosphere. NBA Finals attendees aren't getting heat stroke.

The FedEx Cup Playoffs format is more or less locked in through next year; FedEx's sponsorship status with the tour in 2028 and beyond is not yet clear. Memphis has been a stalwart supporter of the tour for decades; perhaps there's a future where it hosts an event at a better time of year. The same goes for East Lake. Here's hoping 2027 is the last sweaty year for the PGA Tour finale. East Lake is a fun golf course and worthy venue for the spring, and it would be great to see it host a field of more than 30 players for a change.

With the 2028 PGA Tour schedule starting to come into focus, here's a brainstorm of five markets and venues that, all else being equal, the PGA Tour would do well to incorporate into its future Playoffs structure.

Rumors have already started swirling that Seattle, the last metro area to lose an NBA team, could be one of the first to gain a PGA Tour Playoffs event. Past PGA Championship venue Sahalee Country Club has been bandied about as a potential host site, but would thousands of fans get lost in the fir trees that line the fairways? Now that its conditioning issues are a thing of the past, I would love to see big-time golf at firm, fast, quirky Chambers Bay on my television again, especially in primetime. Seattle's average August daytime high of 77 degrees is perfect for golf.

PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp's insistence on prioritizing major media markets is half-correct. A regular-old tour event - even one of the vaunted Championship Series events - would likely be the fourth or fifth most interesting happening around the Five Boroughs on any given weekend. The 2028 U.S. Open at Winged Foot and the 2029 PGA at Baltusrol should have plenty of juice, but in years when the metropolitan area isn't on the major championship schedule, a Playoffs event ought to be seen as the minimum viable option. Past Playoff hosts like Liberty National and Bethpage Black make sense as venues, but I'd love to see some of the older clubs get love, too. Just as long as the pros aren't going to get their feelings hurt by rowdy New York fans...

I'd like to acknowledge Chicago here as well, but I've got another idea for a PGA Tour return to the upper Midwest. Milwaukee is a smaller (but still big) city farther north and slightly less likely to be beset by an August heat wave. Whistling Straits remains one of the coolest-looking championship golf courses, and if the PGA Championship is going to remain locked in May, the Pete Dye gem along Lake Michigan is never going to be ready to host the year's second major. While the 2028 U.S. Am at the Straits will be a great one-off, a PGA Tour Playoffs event there would be wonderful, and would draw thousands of fans despite being an hour north of Cream City.

With so much recent history of miserable heat, why not swing the pendulum fully the other way, to the American city most likely to supply an August high below 60 degrees? Who would say no to primetime TV viewing and cashmere-clad pros at, say, TPC Harding Park or The Olympic Club? Olympic was a great 2025 U.S. Amateur host, and it's on tap for the 2028 PGA and the 2033 Ryder Cup. I wouldn't mind seeing one or two Playoff events in between those years.

By all accounts, the PGA Tour's return to Castle Pines Golf Club for the 2024 BMW Championship was a success, with the course surpassing 8,000 yards to compensate for the elevation. I would be all in favor of running it back in the new regime. Alternating between Castle Pines and Cherry Hills, an elite and historic Denver club with a compelling William Flynn course, would be fun. If the infrastructure could be worked out, a big-time pro event at the new Rodeo Dunes property in the chop hills an hour east of town could be enchanting, too.