Patrick Reed is in Bahrain this week, where he spent Wednesday practising and offering up a few quotes about his recent win, competing in the Middle East and how he needs to hit more fairways in 2026.
Unmentioned, of course, was where those fairways will be located. There will be more of them in the Middle East and on the DP World Tour, surely. But there will be zero fairways hit on LIV Golf, as Reed made clear in a major reversal of his last four years.
The 2018 Masters champ is on the move — very literally — back to the PGA Tour, but he will not be able to compete in Tour events until September at the earliest. Twelve months from now, we’ll see him competing at Torrey Pines in San Diego — where the PGA Tour is playing this week — but it’s totally plausible Reed won’t be able to play 12 months and one week from now, at the 2027 Phoenix Open.
The reason rests in status, and no pro golfer’s status will be quite as fascinating to watch throughout 2026 as Reed sets out on a globe-trotting schedule to earn back some of the status he had lost when he went to LIV.
Patrick Reed’s PGA Tour status
To best understand Reed’s future, one must understand that the PGA Tour resembles the shape of a skyscraper to determine who gets to enter what tournaments. Based on previous performances, the best players hold the best status in a ranking that prioritises their entry into whichever events they desire. As independent contractors, players can only enter events when their spot in the ranking squeezes into that event’s 120-, 132- or 144-man fields. Recent winners, major champions and top 2025 performers on Tour are up top.
In short, Reed will schedule his 2026 calendar with the mission of improving his ranking, otherwise he’ll be stuck entering just the lowest-stature Tour events. If he doesn’t play well in 2026, he’ll be regretting it in 2027.
Adam Scott, who finished in the top 30 in the 2024 FedEx Cup, for example, has greater priority for entering events than, say, Beau Hossler, who finished just outside the top 100 in 2025. Hossler, then, has a higher ranking than Will Zalatoris, who is playing in the category of “major medical” after taking injury leave last year. Zalatoris, and many others, would currently have much better status than Reed if we were to fast-forward 12 months.
Reed is currently slated into the “Past Champion” category, which includes the likes of Jimmy Walker, Stewart Cink, Rory Sabbatini and many others. They tend to get into events when there isn’t high demand from higher-ranking players, or exclusively into the events they’ve won in the past. Where this all matters is further down any tournament’s entry list, when players are listed as IN or as ALTERNATES.
For instance, the first alternate for next week’s WM Phoenix Open is currently A.J. Ewart, who is a full-status member after finishing first in Q-School in December. Ewart is playing this week at Torrey Pines, but there are too many higher-priority players ranked above for Ewart to enter next week’s 120-man field.
To ensure he won’t find himself in any Ewart-like situations, Reed will be playing a lot of his golf away from America in 2026, looking to become (or stay) one of the top 10 DP World Tour performers without any PGA Tour membership status (who would then receive Tour membership for the next season).
What will Patrick Reed’s 2026 schedule look like?
Reed has long committed himself to the DP World Tour, playing 14 events across its slate in 2025, all while playing 14 LIV events, too. With a wide-open schedule, he will do whatever he can to stay in the top 10 non-exempt members in the European tour’s year-long Race to Dubai.
That’s why Reed is in Bahrain this week — where a second straight win would get him most of the way to projecting a year-end top 10 finish. Depending on how he plays this week, and in the major championships, Reed will likely hang in that top 10 for most of the year. He won so many points last week he’ll be elevated in that ranking for quite a while.
Considering he is automatically qualified for the Masters, and is now ranked 29th in the world, Reed will almost surely be qualified for invites to every major championship the rest of 2026, barring a missed-cut streak piling up. He will likely want to play a handful of DP World Tour events to reach the minimum for maintaining that membership — which he has done for years — but can wait until later in the year if he’d like. At the moment, the following schedule would be extremely plausible:
Dubai Invitational (26th)
Dubai Desert Classic (win)
Bahrain Championship (this week)
Masters (April)
PGA Championship (May)
U.S. Open (June)
Scottish Open (July)
Open Championship (July)
After the Open, one could see Reed commit to the September DP World Tour events — like the Irish Open or the BMW PGA Championship, where he tied for third last autumn — particularly if he is in the running for a captain’s pick for the Presidents Cup. That may be many months away, but the discourse around it will heat up during major championship season. Then it would be reasonable to expect him to show up for the DP World Tour Championship (and even the Abu Dhabi event that precedes it) with Race to Dubai bonus money on the line.
The most fascinating element will come in the downtime between the majors. If Reed is to get any serious, competitive prep work between, say, the Masters and the PGA Championship, he may have to fly to China, Turkey or Spain for DP World Tour events. Or, the following month, to Belgium, Austria or the Netherlands ahead of the U.S. Open. Otherwise, he may just be hanging out in Houston, where his family is based, grinding himself into form ahead of the biggest events of the year. The results of which will be made all the more compelling as it tells us something about life after LIV, and a bit more of what he will be bringing back to the PGA Tour in 2027.
This article originated on Golf.com
