Change could be in our balmy golf air for the Hyundai Tournament of Champions at Kapalua and Sony Open in Hawaii.

How much, nobody knows.

The PGA Tour presented a new direction for its season and card-carrying membership eligibility at a mandatory players meeting last week. The eight-member policy board could vote on it as early as next month.

The most basic changes are to move the start of the season to October, after the Tour Championship, and eliminate PGA Tour Q-school. The Fall Series and two “featured events” in Asia will become the start of the season and now come with FedEx points.

Tour membership would come down to a three-tournament series involving the top 75 from the Nationwide Tour and top 75 PGA Tour players who failed to keep their cards (top 125). The top 50 after the series would earn PGA Tour cards, with the rest eligible for a Nationwide Q-School.

Not coincidentally, the tour is looking for a title sponsor to replace Nationwide, beginning in 2013. Reports have surfaced it could be Hyundai, in a huge package that would include an extension at Kapalua, serving as the tour’s official car and Presidents Cup sponsor.

Players have problems with the new qualifying process. Hawaii’s Mark Rolfing, the primary force behind bringing the TOC here, hears FedEx also has problems with the new plan. He doesn’t expect the tour to move Hawaii’s events to a different time or site and PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem also said he expects change would have little impact here.

But it would be different. A TOC six events into the season has inherent problems. Some of the solutions could actually help Hawaii.

“Something is going to happen,” Rolfing said. “Our dates are firm, but they would be bad dates. … You can’t have a winners-only Tournament of Champions after the season has started. Then you are talking about expanding (TOC) eligibility. How long have I been talking about that?”

Long before last month’s TOC, when only 27 of the 39 eligible players actually teed off. Hyundai has said it is open to changes in eligibility rules and so has Finchem. Rolfing is pushing a change that would add the top 30 on the FedEx Cup list to the champions’ field, or a worldwide TOC that would bring back the foreign players who now focus on overseas events in December and January.

Brian Goin, who works for the PGA Tour and just finished his first stint as tournament director at Kapalua, thinks the change in season could naturally enhance Hyundai’s field and, by extension, Sony’s.

“The way it is now the field was bad,” Goin acknowledged. “Players finish off the year after the Tour Championship. This is the very first official money event of the year and players say if I don’t go to just one or two events I can make it up over the course of the year and do well in FedEx points. A lot of players have that attitude.

“From the side I’m looking at, if all the players that get to the Tour Championship only get a couple weeks off, then the official money starts …how many great players will play those early (fall) events? I don’t think very many. They will say we need a break. Then they’ll get into the holidays — there’s a natural break in the schedule — and then they will think I’m behind five tournaments now and we’d better get our butts over to Hawaii because they’ll know they’re walking away from FedEx points. Part of me is thinking it will be a positive from that standpoint.”

Hawaii has one other subtle fact on its side. The four players on the policy board who vote — Steve Stricker, Paul Goydos, Davis Love III and Jim Furyk — have all won here and have an affinity for Hawaii.

There is also a chance nothing will change.

“I’m not so sure the players will sign off on this,” said Ray Stosik, Sony’s tournament director. “The powers that be on the PGA Tour are the players with the most seniority and I don’t know that they are so concerned about how the tour sells a Nationwide (sponsor) replacement. So I would be surprised if there is a change. If there is, it would not affect Sony so much.”

Sony is committed to its first full-field event of the “year” through 2014. SBS initially signed a 10-year commitment with the TOC, which runs through 2018 whether Hyundai continues as title sponsor or not.

On the Champions Tour, the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai signed a three-year contract last fall that takes it through 2015. Goin said the tour is exploring the possibility of finishing that event Saturday to avoid TV conflict with NFL playoffs, just as Kapalua did this year with its Monday finish.

The LPGA has announced a new tournament starting this April on Oahu, probably at Ko Olina.