The PGA Tour Is Your Competitor, Not Collaborator

Seth Waugh put up a few warning flags early last year in an interview with Golfweek after he had just left his post leading the PGA of America. Waugh, an accomplished businessman, was reticent to critique any specific moves but simply outlined that things may be about to change.

“People underestimate what putting a for-profit entity into the game is going to mean over time,” he said, speaking of the recently formed PGA Tour Enterprises and Strategic Sports Group getting their hooks into the Tour. He’d later add, as a veteran of the “for-profit” world as well as a PGA Tour event sponsor, that “every entity in the game has to look at its situation now in a different light because it's no longer five families acting in the best interest of the game.” That sounds harsher than probably intended, but it was a notice.

This notice has been on my mind lately as the table gets crowded at the golf ecosystem summer BBQ. Everyone can have a seat, it’s just that some are getting filets while others scrap for hot dogs or crisped hockey pucks. There are men’s majors, senior majors, women’s majors, fake majors, amateur titles, international attractions, and all manner of championships from different organizations looking to eat.

This came to the fore last week when I pondered if the PGA Tour should have an interest in the success and promotion of the LPGA. The two jostled for TV time between the last signature event of the year (Travelers) and the last U.S.-based major (KPMG Women’s PGA). Weather threw some curveballs at both, but the women were planned to go off early in threes to finish on NBC and get out of the way for the Travelers finish, also on that network. The usual wails came about a major taking a backseat to a “regular” weekly PGA Tour event. The annual requests were made: Shouldn’t the PGA Tour be helping, getting out of the way, and promoting the women’s major stage?

I thought about Waugh’s quote and the new Tour leadership, which had just unveiled its big overhaul for the future, and posed that the opposite is probably closer to the truth. The PGA Tour might come for more, not acceding. They’re two different leagues with their own goals and motives — the fact that it’s the same sport does not necessarily mean their interest is shared, similar perhaps to conferences in college football. Aren’t the PGA Tour and LPGA more competitors than collaborators? The correct answer is somewhere in between, but shading more toward competitors. If the most popular golfer in the world played on the LPGA, and that became a powerhouse with rights negotiation leverage and a bigger seat next to the PGA Tour, that would be bad news at the Global Home, no? The fantasy of these organizations working together and relative stasis from the PGA Tour will likely change now that it has 1) leadership from outside the golf bubble that seems more aggressive and competent, and 2) a for-profit element.

So what is the incentive for the PGA Tour or its rights partners to get out of the way, for a signature event or otherwise? The SEC is not suggesting to ABC that they put the Sun Belt on Saturday nights when that conference has a big game. It’s notable that the PGA Tour powers, whether it’s Brian Rolapp or some of the SSG investors, come from the NFL. That’s the same NFL that has aggressively expanded its offerings, often at the expense of other leagues or sports, thanks to its might.

Thursday nights used to be the province of college football. They came for that. And Thanksgiving college football. And Black Friday college football. And Christmas, to the NBA’s detriment. And they were quite successful doing it. Is it their job to yield? The PGA Tour is not as dominant at the golf table, but it’s hard to envision some of these experts suddenly thinking they should hold hands all the time or get out of the way of other golf products. The opposite is likely true, and they probably want to come for more.

That may sound ruthless, especially because we should all be invested in the growth of the women’s game, whether that’s via the LPGA or other means. It’s good for the PGA Tour if the overall pie grows with more women’s success and interest, but they’re also probably keen to have more women watching their golf product. This is less an argument about what’s right than what’s realistic.

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The day after this latest round of TV coverage jostling, I played with Kipp Popert at the U.S. Adaptive Open media day at Woodmont. Popert, who was born with cerebral palsy and has had double-digit surgeries on his feet and legs, is extremely charismatic and a stud golfer, going for his fourth consecutive U.S. Adaptive title this week. He shot an 11-under 61 with a bogey last year and recently broke par in a DP World Tour event while playing on an exemption. He can play, and he has personality. It was powerful playing with him the day after we discussed these ecosystem questions about organizations going for their pieces of the pie. Unprompted and in candid moments as we made our way around, he was effusive in his praise of the USGA for its adaptive championship setting a gold standard for quality. This may have come at the expense of a few other organizations’ attempts, but he relished this week and the opportunity to play in what I now interpreted to be the grandaddy of them all for adaptive golf.

Its competition, however, is less crowded, as Popert lamented the shelving of the G4D Tour this year. An admirable DP World Tour effort, the announcement came in April that they would be stopping the adaptive tour. Popert, a leader in the adaptive golf world who raises money through his own events for other adaptive golfers, indicated the G4D — the entire tour — was costing the DPWT in the low six figures each year. But it is on the shelf as the DPWT looks to find its own place at the table. There are cuts and costs as organizations jostle for a seat at the table. There is no real circuit for adaptive golfers.

“I only got into (adaptive golf) because I saw it,” Popert said about watching Brendan Lawlor and others early on. “So if people don’t see it then you’re never going to get support. Disabled people deserve representation in golf, stars they can look up to. One in six people have a disability in the world. It’s a lot.”

It’s a fragile ecosystem that has worked decently well with a multi-party system, or “five families,” of checks and balances. The USGA should be commended for the many elite championships it puts on that aren’t revenue behemoths like the U.S. Open. Both the USGA and Augusta National this year have pushed back on the notion that the PGA Tour might be owed a cut of their championship properties, given its members fill those major fields. Their retort is that the USGA, ANGC, and other organizations create the many pathways and opportunities for players to aspire and eventually make up the PGA Tour workforce.

The PGA Tour is not a bogeyman here (not yet, anyway) and should also be commended for its recent efforts to innovate and evolve. To be actually aspirational! And not stuck in the mud because it’s the way things have always been done. There has been a noticeable lack of backlash or moaning since the new competitive model was announced, a departure from recent years of announced PGA Tour changes that often led to hollering. The leadership seems smart, well-intentioned, and could launch things into a new era. It’s their job to make it bigger and better. If they want to encroach on others in order to grow and can do so because of their position, well, it’s America — all 250 years of it, success, failure, pride, ignominy — baby! Needless to say, I think it would be bad if we lost an Adaptive Open because the PGA Tour needed its toll from the U.S. Open to fund a vacation home for the 45th player in the FedEx Cup standings (taking some liberties with that extrapolation, I know!).

Right now, we have a lot of organizations analyzing the chessboard. Disruption and expansion may come. The almighty metrics of TV ratings and purse sizes and revenue may be proof the changes work and more pie should be given away to the bigger fella at the BBQ table. I just hope we don’t lose something elemental about that ecosystem we have now, otherwise you wake up one day wondering why the hell BYU and UCF are playing a conference game.