First and foremost, if you spotted the play on words in the title? Congratulations. You, too, probably spent an inordinate amount of time playing ‘Tiger Woods PGA Tour’ in the mid-00s. As opposed to referencing a quasi cheat code when playing your brothers back in 2005, though, the particular vision in question here is that which Tiger was recently asked about during the presser for his Hero Challenge Tournament this past weekend.
In his role as the chair for the Future Competitions Committee, Woods has the unenviable job of heading up a team tasked with taking the current PGA Tour product and, essentially, reinventing it. In a nutshell – going by these recent snippets – it appears the main aim of this committee is to streamline the PGA Tour schedule in such a way that it encourages the game’s top stars to play in a more regular, concentrated fashion. Because, ultimately, the formula is very simple. The more of your top guys you can squeeze into a field, the bigger the interest. And the bigger the interest? The better the ticket sales and the bigger the ratings.
As we know, however, outside the realm of the Majors and those select few tournaments like the Players or Tour playoffs, getting the game’s top stars in the one field and competing head-to-head regularly can be a bit like herding cats. And, look, when you’re a part of that upper echelon of firmly-established talent, how you sit down at the end of every year and plan out your schedule for the following season is different to that of your average or up-and-coming player. It just is. Every tournament chosen as part of that roadmap of pitstops marking your journey through the season is carefully selected with an eye toward peaking for those four Major Championships – perhaps a Ryder Cup if it’s the year for it. But, in reality, that’s it. An entire season revolving around four solitary weeks that will determine whether or not your season has been a success, or if you need to go sloping back to that pesky drawing board in search of those ever-elusive answers.
Now, when I originally decided to write this particular piece, it was at this moment where I had planned to segue neatly into a deep dive on how my pitch for a revamped PGA Tour season might look if I were sitting around the table inside those FCC meetings. And, who knows, when those boardroom doors eventually open back up, and a few more substantial hints are tossed our way as to what exactly Tiger and Brian Rolapp, the new PGA Tour CEO, have been cooking up, I may, in fact, do just that.
But as I was re-reading the article that Joel Beall wrote for ‘Golf Digest’ wherein he covered this press conference and the exchange with Tiger, there was one particular quote from Woods that I couldn’t get out of my head. In the course of being asked about this new version of the tour, Tiger mentioned the term “financial windfall” on two separate occasions when discussing the benefits that these changes could have for the actual players themselves who tee it up every week – specifically, those players with “equity” in the tour.
See, with the launch of the Player Equity Program (PEP) back in 2024, the PGA Tour essentially turned players who fell within four certain bands into stakeholders in the tour itself. Done as a means to reward the loyalty of those players who resisted offers from LIV to jump ship, and to develop a sense of ownership amongst the players that would promote a sense of unity in making the tour as successful as possible, there’s no arguing that the PEP was revolutionary in its inception. And when you take into consideration that it offers a financial incentive outside of what money you physically earn when out between the ropes, you can see how it would encourage that much-coveted sense of loyalty amongst the membership.
But it’s that very idea, the positioning that money gets as being such a core, driving pillar of the modern game that I find so bizarre. Because somewhere along the line – I would posit 2007 with the introduction of the FedEx Cup and that headline grabbing $10million prize – be it those same people sitting around a boardroom table somewhere, the television networks, the media, the sponsors, or a combination of all four, someone came to the conclusion that how much money is at stake in any given tournament is something we, the audience, both care about, and use as a determining factor in deciding what we assign value to in terms of our watching experience.
Take LIV, for example. When they first announced themselves on the scene as a direct competitor with the PGA Tour, when they weren’t throwing around colossal contracts at the likes of Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau, what were they pushing as one of their main selling points? How huge the purses were going to be for their events. Well, if we’re to take the fact that the television ratings for LIV events have been consistently underwhelming since its noisy debut as a direct commentary on whether or not people have been drawn to the Saudi-backed product because of those much-touted purses, the only logical conclusion one can possibly come to is a resounding no.
But you and I already knew that. Because watching golf, like any sport, is only ever about one thing. The story. That’s why we watch. That’s why we tune in. Back in April, when Rory McIlroy collapsed to his knees on the 18th green at Augusta, tears filling his eyes as years of pressure and crippling expectation finally slipped free from his shoulders in a cathartic release of emotion, do you think one solitary person was thinking to themselves, “Wow. He just won four million dollars …”? Of course not. And why? Because the money didn’t matter.
Instead, it was simply what that putt meant. The creation of history. The cementing of a legacy. And the capping off of a story fourteen years in the making with the fairytale ending we all wanted, and that golf itself needed.
So, if the powers that be now feel as though what golf needs is this revamp? Then, so be it. And in the greatest to ever do it? The man who singlehandedly changed the trajectory of professional golf in the modern era? You couldn’t ask for a more insightful set of eyes to be falling across a project of this magnitude than Tiger Woods. But if this new vision is even partly down to the lingering presence of those same noisy neighbours? Then, Tiger and the rest of the FCC would do well to learn from LIV’s mistakes. And what that means, in practice, is that when it comes to an endeavour such as this, money should always be the afterthought, never the headline.
Because golf always has – and always will – be about the story.
First and foremost. Front and centre.
And if anyone should be able to understand that? It’s the guy we all fought to play as in that same video game twenty years ago.
Yeah. Twenty.
Yikes.
