4 genius ideas professional golf should steal from other sports

By: Sean Zak

January 10, 2024

Jordan Spieth and Stephen Curry play golf together during a pro-am at the Memorial Tournament.

Getty Images

For decades, pro golf has stood alone in its ways. It was just different, and that was mostly OK. The way its players made money, the way its tournaments were conducted, the flow of its schedule piquing interest once a month throughout the summer. The game was largely beloved for these reasons, too. See: meritocracy, billions of dollars to charities, etc.

But men’s pro golf will be changing soon. It was perhaps the last vestige of a sports league operating entirely as a non-profit, but the future PGA Tour will be largely for-profit. It has forever paid its stars mostly on their performance, and much less on their likability or popularity — but the Player Impact Program exists now to buoy the bank accounts of the select few who fans seem to really, really love, or at least engage with. Thanks chiefly to dissatisfied players and a system ripe for disruption, pro golf as we knew it in 2016 will look ancient compared to pro golf in 2026. Billions of dollars in investment is on the way, making 2024 the year when an era of change actually takes root.

On one hand, that’s quite a lot for golf fans to stomach, their fanhood being turned on its head amid upheaval. On the other, what an incredible opportunity for change. Tiger Woods, Patrick Cantlay, Jordan Spieth and a few others are the players on the all-important PGA Tour Policy Board helping shape what the future of their league looks like. They don’t have total say on the matter — their work is joined by the ongoing negotiations between PGA Tour executives, representatives of the Saudi PIF and other investors who will aim to manipulate the pro game toward a profitable, sustainable future — but now is the time to experiment. Lucky for them, we’ve done most of the brainstorming!

Here are 4 fan-engagement ideas in other sports from which the PGA Tour, or golf at large, can learn.

What golf should steal from college basketball

Sports fans may have learned something in the month of December as another college football bowl season played out. Many players — whose ultimate dream is playing professional football — sat out. Many others — due to the active transfer portal — left their teammates before bowl season even began. Why all this movement? There was more to play for…elsewhere. The bowl season has devolved into a bunch of games that don’t really seem to matter, where the golf equivalent of the Camellia Bowl is…

[drumroll]

Nick Hardy taking on Beau Hossler.

Unlike college football, college basketball has figured out an important aspect of sports: stratification. With its 68-team NCAA Tournament, its 32-team NIT and even the 16-team CBI, almost every relevant team still has something to play for when the regular season comes to an end. Stratification can be good!

The PGA Tour is already leaning into stratification with its top 70 advancing to the playoffs, its top 50 FedEx Cup earners entering the following season’s Signature Events, the top 125 earning full playing status for the next season. But rather than drag out the FedEx Cup Fall in seven tournaments across 10 weeks in September, October and November — where the non-elite performers play stressful golf on Sundays during the NFL season — how about a quasi-NIT golf tournament? Or quick series of events, where there are extra incentives, like, say, placement for 10 of the 55-man field in the following season’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am? Creating a consolation bracket of sorts — or rather consolation buckets — would expedite the playoff stratification of the entire Tour membership, opening up the fall season for something truly different: team golf.

What golf should steal from cricket

Rory McIlroy has pulled back from his outright dismissal of LIV Golf in recent months, now seeming to take up the belief that team golf of the right fashion could help buoy particular sections of the golf calendar, like the fall. If LIV Golf could be massaged in the right way, perhaps it could help bridge the gap from season to season in an intriguing way.

“I would love LIV to turn into the IPL of golf,” McIlroy said recently on a podcast, leaving American golf fans scratching their heads. What’s the IPL?

McIlroy was talking about the Indian Premier League, a cricket league created in the 2000s with a newer format that promised to engage fans like never before and also improve the pay structures for cricketers. It has skyrocketed in popularity.

Whether or not LIV could “turn into the IPL of golf,” one thing about the IPL is particularly tantalizing: its auction draft. Annually many of the best cricketers from India and the rest of the world are drafted via auction in December for the upcoming tournament season in the spring. The money spent on each player by the 10 IPL franchises in auction becomes those player salaries for the 14-match season.

What’s more, players set their own base price. Patrick Cantlay, in this scenario, declaring that his bidding begins at $10 million a year is just the start. The Cleeks going all in and declaring Cantlay worth $15 million would make him a happy man. And would set the standard on which Victor Hovland would be valued. Tell me you’re not tuning in for that.

What golf should steal from baseball

Much was made in 2023 about how pitch clocks ticking away in the background (as well as other various rules changes) helped increase the pace of baseball games. What was a 3-hour-and-10-minute affair in 2021 has become a 2-hour-and-40 minute-breeze. The slightest adjustments made baseball 15% faster, just like that. It’s an oft-cited success story, and one golf should pay attention to. But that doesn’t mean its as easy as putting a cart with a clock in every fairway.

Major League Baseball used its minor league system to its advantage, instituting those clocks for years in the lower ranks before bringing it to the big leagues. One would think that the PGA Tour, with similar levels of pro tours beneath it, could use its own farm system to test out pace-of-play improvers. The Tour certainly does much on its own to combat pace of play, but implementation only seems to be effective after experimentation. And the stakes of the PGA Tour might just be a little too high for initial experimentation. It may have to start elsewhere.

The Shot-Clock Masters was held on the DP World Tour in 2018 but never took hold. Instead, look to the world of gambling, which has the Tour working to establish fair practices in different arenas every week. The Tour has begun demoing technology that tracks players’ movements on course more efficiently than the human-operated ShotLink system, to better understand where and when shots are being played. The result of that is a massive dataset that will offer the best information to gambling partners. Before long, it should lead to a positive development in the pace-of-play department, too.

What golf should steal from…multiple sports!

Part of the reason we love this sport is how gamified it can be. Putting contests, closest to the pin, up-and-down competitions. There’s a reason why the World Long Drive competition exists as a television product. It’s fun to watch! But pro golf rarely, if ever, gets to show off in these derivative settings.

All we have to say is, LOOK AROUND!

The NFL has sustained a Pro Bowl weekend out of goofy, athletic competitions. The NBA All-Star weekend is an annual meeting of the minds for the entire industry. The NHL wanted its own version of this action so badly that it created a speed-skating contest that gets the best in the world starving to win something different. How do we not get to see Collin Morikawa show just how skilled he is with a 7-iron, hitting 5-straight laser-beams inside 10 feet? How do we not test out Jordan Spieth’s wedge game against Xander Schauffele in wicked lies dreamed up by Justin Thomas? Videos of these competitions fare well on YouTube. So bring them to the masses, Golf Channel!

This idea feels so obvious as an extra way to inject life into any of the Tour’s premier events, I’m concerned there’s something really important that I’m missing. Until someone proves me wrong, I’ll steadfastly believe that the season-ending trip to East Lake should include a Tuesday-evening all-star show under the lights. You’ve made it to the Tour Championship, now show us why you’re here.