Pro golf is a big, unwieldy, inefficient business. The rules are set by amateurs based in New Jersey and Scotland. The mega events are operated by three organisations that are not the PGA Tour, plus an independent golf club in Georgia. The tournaments are owned by unconnected nonprofits and local charities, and the workforce is largely volunteer. None of the contestants are under contract to show up. The winner puts the lowest score on the board, not the highest. As Toots Shor used to say, if you swing left, the ball goes right; if you hit down, the ball goes up; the higher the number on the club, the shorter your distance, and the winner, not the loser, pays for drinks. No wonder the Saudis can’t figure it out.
Sergio Garcia fails to qualify for US Open, streak of appearances ends at 25
Pro golf works because of all these contradictions and complications—not despite them. If you start removing one or more, you risk toppling the delicate scales that hold the game together. Evidence is in the last couple of years of disruption, when the four majors have only gotten stronger, which is a good thing.
Thirty years ago, Frank Hannigan wrote in Golf Digest: “As sports—including golf—become more crass and greed-driven, the anomaly of the Masters grows more appealing and compelling.” A series badge for all four rounds is $450, and it’s arguably the toughest ticket in sports. An egg-salad sandwich is $1.50, an imported beer $6. You only get four minutes of commercials in an hour telecast. It’s the most valuable sporting event in the world because it forgoes money in exchange for control, which every other entity has the option to do, but none does. The other advantage of Augusta National is it’s run by one very sensible, benevolent dictator who can do whatever the hell he wants but does what’s best for golf first.
Nobody at LIV/PIF or SSG or on the PGA Tour policy board has a green coat. I’m not saying you must be an Augusta National member to understand golf—Lordy, plenty don’t—but the two who are members, Jimmy Dunne and Ed Herlihy, departed from the tour negotiations because the players think the system is the problem. The system is the solution.
This Adam Scott major streak has been going since before Tom Kim was born
The changing of the guard at golf’s other organisations over the last year—Guy Kinnings at the DP World Tour, Mark Darbon at the R&A, Derek Sprague at the PGA of America, Scott O’Neil at LIV Golf, Liz Moore (interim) at the LPGA—puts all new people in key industry positions.
The trouble with the current structure of the tour is that it’s governed by negative vetoes rather than positive momentum.
The PGA Tour has a history of strong commissioners dating back to Joseph C. Dey Jr., who possessed the moral fortitude of Sir Thomas More. I once read in Golf Digest that you could reach into the left breast pocket of his blue blazer and find two slim volumes—the Rules of Golf and the New Testament. “He helped write one of them,” they said. He was followed by two lions of institutional muscle, Deane Beman and Tim Finchem. Despite their diminutive size, you wouldn’t want to meet either in a dark alley. Beman won the US and British Amateurs with only a dropkick tee ball and a pair of beady eyes. Finchem masterfully manoeuvred the tour through recessions and scandals while growing pro golf year after year. I worked with all three, and they were impressive.
Jay Monahan was supposed to be the natural heir, except “better with people.” Then all hell broke loose as LIV Golf entered the picture on his watch, and there were no right answers. The intrinsic order of corporate life dictates that you throw out the CEO and a new guy starts fresh. Against the odds, Jay hung on and gallantly tried to sort the mess, but the players stripped him of his power in rejiggering the policy board and stacked the vote with their brethren, none of whom, shall we say, attended the Harvard Business School.
The trouble with the current power structure of the tour is that it’s governed by negative vetoes rather than positive momentum. We have the star players in one block (Tiger, Rory, Jordan); then the rank-and-file pros in another (fill in the names of three guys who haven’t shaved in three days); then SSG/Arthur Blank/Steve Cohen, the money boys who bought into the tour; and Joe Gorder and Joe Ogilvie, representing the policy board. Don’t forget Patrick Cantlay.
HEIR APPARENT: Is Tiger Woods the best candidate to follow Jay Monahan as commish? (Photograph courtesy of Getty Images)
Monahan’s contract is up next year, and there are already whispers of who might replace him. (He needs to smile more if he wants people to think he likes his job.) If Jay decides to retire, I have a candidate for commissioner—Tiger Woods. He could return a positive forcefulness and rise to the occasion of acting long-term and not out of self-interest. Then, a strong CEO would be named under him to run the business.
Tiger’s game is discipline despite a personal life that didn’t always show it. He’s not reluctant to make tough decisions or fire people, and the other players are afraid of him. He has a passion for golf and will to win that’s unmatched. His foundation shows an enduring commitment to give back. He has a fascination with military strategy this could satisfy. He’d be the morning commissioner, and the CEO would handle the p.m. Any business inexperience can be resolved by surrounding him with international talent—unleash the DP World Tour as a true world tour, and you’d be competing with LIV the way Rory kicked Bryson’s butt.
Tiger will be 50 in December. He’s had more than a dozen surgeries, including the recent one on a ruptured Achilles. He’s got nothing left to prove on the competitive field, his play in TGL has been a joke, and legacy-wise there’s little upside for him in joining the Champions Tour. His late mom and pops would have approved. He still loves the spotlight, although his hesitation might be having to face the media more often, but that’s what a CEO is for. He has all the fame and money he’d ever want—this would be for golf.
Commissioner Woods, your destiny awaits you.
