The estimable British author and critic Peter Ackroyd has written on an astonishing array of subject matter, though not (yet, at least) on golf’s global landscape. Yet one of his acidic observations ought to be posted by the entrance at the PGA Tour’s global home.
“To be insular is to be independent,” he wrote. “But it is also to be alone.”
The Tour has long been content with its own company, rigidly protectionist in outlook and operations. Even its strategic alliance with the DP World Tour was forged under duress to stave off a Saudi purchase of their penurious European pals. Its packed schedule, too, hints at more than just a robust book of business. Members must obtain releases to compete elsewhere when a PGA Tour event is taking place, and there have been just two weeks this entire year when the Tour had nothing on the docket (both were this month). By Thanksgiving, dark weeks will total only three, meaning the schedule effectively functions as a year-long device to control labor.
But Ponte Vedra’s provincialism has outlived its usefulness.
Right now, the U.S. has the only monetizable audience of scale for golf, but it remains a tough sell in the Fall. The eight scheduled PGA Tour stops may produce exciting finishes, worthy winners and engaging storylines, but they’re insufficiently impactful. Fans are otherwise distracted by football or despairing that the Republic might call forth the village idiot to lead, but they’re not consuming golf. The PGA Tour playoffs concluded a month ago and the 90-odd days remaining in ’24 don’t hold much promise. The DP World Tour delivered quality finishes at Royal County Down and Wentworth, but will otherwise stage mostly bargain-basement events until its November finale in the Middle East, while LIV wound down its season with a now-familiar whimper, its finale awarding Jon Rahm $18 million, or 200 bucks for every viewer watching.
In every direction we find diluted products, all impacted to varying degrees by political division and apathy among fans and players. This gloomy period on the calendar can be used by the PGA Tour to boost the game and its reach beyond the FedEx Cup season, which will (and should) be protected. A radical rethinking of the fourth quarter is required, and that demands a vision that is long-term and long-distance (preferably farther afield than holding an ‘international’ team event 30 miles from the New York border).
If the FedEx Cup and Race to Dubai conclude at the same time, it leaves September through December clear for the U.S. and European circuits to jointly reimagine a global product that grows business. The markets are obvious, even if events rotate between them: Europe, the Middle East, Korea, Japan, South Africa and Australia. A series of six to eight tournaments would do more for the long-term health of golf than the current depthless, Balkanized menu being served to fans this time of year.
That concept raises two obvious and troubling questions: who pays and who plays?
Lucrative media rights are virtually non-existent outside the U.S. market, and the DP World Tour’s best efforts have shown high-end sponsorship is tough to come by, even moreso with today’s purses. Short of someday attracting a streaming service willing to pay handsomely for a nascent experiment, is a global expansion underwritten by the Strategic Sports Group investors who just put a billion-five into the Tour? Or do they turn to Riyadh? The latter would inevitably mean a tournament in Saudi Arabia, where heaving throngs of fans would be noticeable by their absence.
And who plays? Top golfers have repeatedly expressed disinterest in traveling overseas late in the year, which must stupefy the SSG guys who are unaccustomed to talent hampering their ability to earn a return on an investment. It’s not like Red Sox pitcher Brayan Bello gets to tell John Henry that he’s sitting all Yankee games because he hates Bronx traffic. The reality is that not every star is necessary at every event. To wit: the presence of McIlroy, Rahm and Brooks Koepka significantly raises the profile of next week’s Dunhill Links in Scotland. A handful of stars is enough to elevate most events, as long as a dozen or so tournaments during the year have every top player. And eventually, greater international travel will be the norm, even for parochial players.
None of this will happen for 2025, the calendar for which is locked in. Perhaps it won’t happen at all. But it is achingly apparent that change is needed for the golf industry to extract some real value from this dismal period of the year. Protecting the strong U.S. market makes sense, but so does stepping into a breach in the calendar to expand the business and deliver for consumers ex-U.S.
“Sometimes the silences, the gaps, tell us more than anything else,” the critic Ackroyd wrote. The gap we are in right now, the silence in the schedule, ought to be telling those charged with running this sport everything they need to hear.
