[Ed. The fine folks at Global Golf Post saw fit to publish this column of mine re. the shifting Seats of Golf Power back in June of 2023, when the PGA Tour’s partnership/merger with the Saudi Public Investment Fund took everyone by surprise. You can find the full text here. Several complementary ideas re. golf’s historical migration can be found in a longer essay of mine, here.]
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (March 15, 2020) — Well, here we are again. Every few years it seems some American professional golfers blithely assert that the U.S. PGA Tour is without peer. Full stop. This invariably gets under the skin of Europeans who, to be fair, have dominated for 25 years the event created specifically to settle this argument: The Ryder Cup. They and their tour have also claimed roughly half the major championships since the turn of the century.
As golf spats go, it’s run of the mill. There are decidedly more important things to ponder these days. But here’s the problem: The Euros have a point while Paul Azinger, this year’s jingoist rock-thrower designate, doesn’t. And besides: With the Tour on hiatus and the Masters postponed, you’ve got something better to ponder?
All this came to a head, again, late in final round here at the Honda Classic. Azinger, himself a major winner and former Ryder Cup captain, assessed on NBC the mindset of Englishman Tommy Fleetwood, who had the chance to birdie the 72nd hole and force a playoff: “These guys know you can win all you like on that European Tour, the international game and all that, but you have to win on the PGA Tour,” Zinger intoned from on high, in his booth, adding that Lee Westwood was another Englishman on the leaderboard with lots of worldwide wins (44) but just two in the U.S. “They know that and I think Tommy knows that. It puts a bit of pressure on Tommy. But this is where they want to be. They want to come here, they want to prove they can win at this level.”
The Euro response was swift, pointed and, it must be said, pretty spot on. Ian Poulter tweeted: “Paul please do not condescend or disrespect the @EuropeanTour and our players like that. We have slapped your arse in the Ryder Cup for so long.” Westwood himself called the comments “disrespectful”. The winning Ryder Cup captain from 2018, Dane Thomas Bjorn, called them “at best ignorant; at worst, arrogant.” Rory McIlroy, who, like Poulter, now makes his home in Florida, had this to say: “His comments were a little nationalistic,” McIlroy said.
Poulter’s fellow Englishman, Tyrell Hatton, put a bow around all of them one week later by winning the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill.
Lookit: Azinger’s job, or part of it, is to ratchet up the stakes on a Sunday afternoon. It’s also his job to pimp the U.S. PGA Tour (more on that later). But Azinger, like many members and backers of the PGA Tour through the years, continues to confuse the wealth of a tour with the overall player-quality of a tour. Prize money is greater at U.S. PGA Tour events — this reality is what lures players like McIlroy, Martin Kaymer, Justin Rose, Poulter, Hatton and Fleetwood to play so many events here, to maintain homes here, to even join the U.S. PGA Tour in order to compete for all that money.
But bigger purses and better-heeled corporate sponsors do not make the preponderance of U.S. pros any better, as golfers, than those competing for smaller purses on the European Tour. That was mere theory in the 1990s, but it’s more or less an established fact today, one American golfers and commentators more or less refuse to acknowledge. For whatever reason, the European Union is turning out as many if not more, better competitive golfers today than the United States. The Ryder Cup proves it. The major championships prove it. For his part, young Tommy Fleetwood — with his 5 European Tour wins, his breakout performance at the 2018 Ryder Cup, his top 10 world ranking — fairly well embodies it.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (May 8, 2016) — The life of an elite professional golfer is one of great privilege, born of great skill. This spring, the International Olympic Committee has learned what organizers of PGA Tour events have known for some time: Getting elite players to schedule your event is like trying to lure multi-millionaires to time-share presentations. When it comes to PGA Tour incentives, piles of money aren’t what they used to be.
The news that Adam Scott won’t be competing in Rio broke just as the Tour’s traveling road show stops this week in Charlotte for the Wells Fargo Championship, a top-tier event not just on account of its huge purse and quality golf course (Quail Hollow GC), but for the way it has traditionally pampered competitors. This aspect of tour life is seldom discussed outside the most wonky, Tour-obsessed websites and cable channels. However, the last decade has witnessed a startling arms race of perks and incentives, all bestowed with an eye toward delivering “name” players to individual PGA Tour events.
It’s a hard trick to turn, making elite players show up. As the IOC is now learning, top-shelf professionals have no real incentive to show up anywhere outside the Majors and World Golf Championship events, as they set their own schedules and money no longer motivates them. Olympic glory? Representing your country? Cementing golf as an Olympic sport after a 112-year hiatus? A familiar 72-hole stroke-play format (as opposed to the team formats first advanced by Olympic organizers)? Today, all these prospects, conceived to excite and allure, are likely to be met with indifferent yawns.
And why wouldn’t they yawn? Top players are so well compensated, the incentive to play 25-30 events per year — thus spreading around to many events the Tour’s considerable star power — has largely been removed. The fallback position for event organizers: lavishing\ perks and niceties on players and their families.
At The Players Championship, conducted over Pete Dye’s TPC Sawgrass course each May, a purpose-built 77,000-square-foot clubhouse sports a cavernous locker room, a separate champions locker room, and a full-on spa that, during the tournament, dispenses free services — not just massage but manicures, pedicures and hot shaves — to players and their family members. The gourmet vittles served here are considered the best on Tour.
There was a time when tour events burnished reputations by serving really good milk shakes and providing courtesy cars. The latter are today de rigeuer for all players, at every tour stop, but Charlotte takes it up a notch. Each golfer there is provided a silver Mercedes-Benz S-300 or S-500 for the week. They are also entitled to police escorts if they happen to encounter something unseemly, like traffic congestion. Free valet parking at Quail Hollow? Of course — even the caddies get that!
Event organizers here have recognized that cosseting players (and caddies) is good, but indulging their wives and girlfriends is equally vital. During past Wells Fargo events, Tour WAGS have been flown by private jet to visit the Biltmore Estate, the enormous Vanderbilt mansion in Asheville, where the movie Being There was filmed. Players themselves have, in the past, been ferried by helicopter to the Loews Motor Speedway, where they get behind the wheels of NASCAR rigs.
This is just a sampling of what has, in the past, been done for players and their families. I’m not exactly sure what goodies and jet-set diversions were supplied to them in Charlotte this week. The Tour has wisely stopped publicizing this stuff, as it can appear out of touch or unseemly. But there remains the very real expectation that tour-event organizers must continually up the ante in this regard, or else “name” players simply won’t schedule you. The purse — $1,134,000 to the winner in Charlotte this year — is almost an afterthought.
This is what the IOC is up against in Brazil. Forget the romance of lodging alongside triple jumpers in the Olympic village. These guys are used to the availability of private homes. Throw in the Zika virus, plus the sheer distance, and I think we can all see what’s coming. Olympic rosters for the 60-player men’s and women’s fields will be finalized July 11. Between then and now, expect a parade of polite declinations, citing the need to spend more time with family, the safety of those families, and perhaps the quality of milk shakes in Rio.
