McIlroy calls for golf majors to be spread out more

Rory McIlroy used the eve of the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale to press golf’s power brokers to rethink the sport’s most valuable calendar block. Speaking in Southport, England, he said the Masters, PGA Championship, U.S. Open and Open Championship are stacked too close together, leaving the majors without enough room to command attention on their own.

McIlroy’s point went beyond one player’s preference. He said the compressed run can help a golfer who catches fire, because strong form can carry quickly from one major to the next. But he argued that the game as a whole would benefit if its four biggest events were spread out farther, giving each championship more breathing room with fans, broadcasters and sponsors.

The current structure is relatively new. The PGA Championship was moved from August to May in a change announced in 2017 and carried out in 2019, and THE PLAYERS Championship shifted from May to March at the same time. ESPN noted that the PGA Championship returned to May for the first time since 1949, a shift that tightened an already crowded stretch of elite golf. In 2026, the men’s majors again fell into a compact sequence from April through July: the Masters in April, the PGA Championship in May, the U.S. Open in June and the Open Championship in July.

That is why McIlroy’s remarks land as a governance debate, not just a player’s complaint. A longer major season would give television partners a cleaner series of premium windows, rather than forcing golf’s four signature tournaments to compete with one another for sustained visibility. It would also give each event more time to build its own storylines, instead of arriving with less separation than many other global sports’ marquee events. For a sport trying to hold attention across a crowded international schedule, that calendar spacing has become a strategic issue.

McIlroy is not watching from a distance. He arrived at Royal Birkdale chasing a seventh major title, with the Open Championship closing the 2026 men’s major season. He also said he has always liked the course, describing it as fair for a links layout, with fairways that are not overly undulating and relatively few blind shots. That setting gave his call added weight: one of golf’s defining figures was asking whether the sport’s most important weeks have been packed too tightly for the game’s own long-term benefit.