Less than three months before its prized Tour Championship event, the PGA Tour upended the format for its season-ending tournament in a bid to assuage concerns from both players and fans.

Under the new format, the 30 top-ranked players will enter the season’s four-day finale in the same position, giving each the same chance to win the event and thus the FedEx Cup, the tour’s most lucrative prize. The previous format rewarded the top golfers in the field with “starting strokes” before play even began — a full 10-shot advantage for the top-ranked player — and was a constant source of grumbling from golfers who sought a more competitive championship and fans who craved more entertainment from what’s billed as the tour’s showcase event.

In overhauling its format, the PGA Tour tried to strike a balance, rewarding top players for their season-long accomplishments while still requiring them to put their best foot forward in the Tour Championship.

“You have to play well at the right time, and that’s just part of being in competitive sports,” Scottie Scheffler, the world’s top-ranked golfer, told reporters Wednesday ahead of the Memorial in Dublin, Ohio. “You look at the Patriots: They won 18 games one year and they lost the 19th, and it looks like a failure for a season. Now, they had a great year, and they didn’t win the Super Bowl. At the end of the day, you have to perform when it matters the most.”

Scheffler won last year’s FedEx Cup. As the top-ranked golfer, he began the event at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta at 10 under par. He won the title by four strokes, which means he would not have prevailed under the revised format.

The FedEx Cup is a season-long competition that relies on a point system to determine eligibility for the three-event playoffs. The field shrinks from 70 golfers at the St. Jude Championship to 50 at the BMW Championship to 30 at the Tour Championship.

The tour has grappled over the years with the best way to stage its season finale, seeking a format that was fair to players and engaging for fans. The new structure bears some resemblance to the format used from 1987 to 2006, when the top 30 golfers on the money list battled it out over four days of stroke play with no cut line.

In 2007, the tour turned to a points system to determine eligibility, and in 2019, the tour introduced its most recent format, eschewing 72-hole aggregate scores and giving the top-ranked players an advantage entering play.

For the past six years, the top-ranked player began the East Lake event at 10 under, with the second-place golfer starting at 8 under, the third at 7 under and so on. Golfers ranked Nos. 26-30 began the championship at even par, 10 shots behind the leader.

“It’s obviously something different and something new, which I think a lot of us players felt was needed,” said Justin Thomas, the 2017 FedEx Cup winner. “And all of us want to have the excitement. We want you guys to have the excitement and the fans and us players to have the opportunity to go to the Tour Championship and win the FedEx Cup.”

Last year, Collin Morikawa posted the lowest score at East Lake and played two shots better than Scheffler over four rounds there. But he still lost the championship by four strokes. Under the revised format, Morikawa would have won the season-ending championship — and the $25 million purse. Instead, he earned $12.5 million for finishing second.

“Coulda, shoulda, woulda, right? That was last year; this is this year,” Morikawa told reporters Wednesday. “I think it’s good. Golf’s so hard to put in a playoff aspect because people can go on runs. You could be the best player in January or February and not be the best player in July or August.”

Xander Schauffele has been stellar at East Lake. He posted the low score there in 2017 as a rookie, did so again in 2019 and was tied for the lowest 72-hole score in 2023. But because he started each event trailing, he has no FedEx Cup titles.

Speaking with reporters Wednesday, Schauffele joked that perhaps he should be retroactively awarded.

“No, it’s all good,” he said with a laugh. “It seems to be more aligned with sort of how other playoffs work. Golf is really the most merit-based sport, unless I’m off my rocker here. And now East Lake and winning the Tour Championship, I think it’s the same thing. Everyone is trying to hoist that trophy, and that part hasn’t changed at all. It’s just the way we’re going to go about it is a little bit different, and I think it will be easier to follow for fans now that everyone is starting at level.”

The revised format comes as part of the PGA Tour’s “Fan Forward” initiative, in which it surveyed fans on changes they would like to see. The tour also intends to adjust the course setup at East Lake, ramping up the degree of difficulty and encouraging more risk-reward decisions by players.

This year’s Tour Championship is scheduled for Aug. 21 to 24.