Explaining the Wraparound Schedule in Golf
Sports fans refer to a "season" as their sport's period of activity, the time their sport's players or teams are actually competing. The PGA Tour season for most of the tour's history has usually been contained within a single calendar year. For example, the 1977 PGA Tour season was played entirely within the calendar year of 1977. Makes sense!
But what if a golf tour's season spanned two different years? That's what a wraparound schedule does. In 2013, the PGA Tour switched from a calendar-year schedule to a wraparound schedule. That meant the 2013-14 PGA Tour season started in October of 2013 and ended in September of 2014.
The wraparound schedule is what the PGA Tour used for about 10 years after the switching, until announcing in 2023 that the tour was returning to a calendar-year schedule in 2024. In the years the wraparound schedule was used on the PGA Tour, the tour season typically began in September or October of one year and finished in August of the next year.
Wraparound schedules are not uncommon in golf (or other sports). The European Tour has used a wraparound schedule many times in its history, as have other tours.
The United States-based tours, however, have almost always followed a calendar-year schedule format, beginning and ending in the same calendar year.
