The old ways are going to get plowed over here. On the PGA Tour, everything is on the examining table. The Tour has a CEO for the first time, Brian Rolapp, and he means business. Eyeballs over golf balls. He was Roger Goodell’s lieutenant at the NFL and under their watch the league expanded into Thursday and Friday and Europe and Brazil. In this new dawn, and in the name of ROI, the PGA Tour will be looking for new places to make money, and maybe even a true major it can call its own.
You could imagine the PGA Tour buying the PGA of America. Pulling off such a thing would require a small army of bankers and lawyers, but where there is will, etc. The PGA Championship (formerly an August event) and the Ryder Cup (played in the U.S. every four years in September) are U.S. dollar spigots, especially the Ryder Cup when it is played in the U.S. Both events are under the PGA of America’s domain. As the NFL owns Sunday, all through the fall and into winter, the PGA Tour wants to own summer, to use a phrase going around. The PGA Tour would surely like to own those two properties.
Please don’t call them tourneys. Are you trying to announce your obsolescence?
The PGA Championship has a May date and an announced venue for each of the next six years, and, come 2034, a second visit to the new PGA of America headquarters in Frisco, on the far outskirts of Dallas. Maybe those contracts are ironclad, though likely not. The PGA of America moved its 2022 PGA Championship from Trump Bedminster in New Jersey to Southern Hills in Tulsa in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riots. Ironclad is a word born in shipyards in the 19th-century. So says ChatGPT! There are 75 years left in the 21st century. They will go fast.
Today’s theme: In the name of must-watch TV (or the screen of your choice), there are two old-timey events that could benefit from a new-and-improved makeover. If Theo Epstein (aided and abetted by Mr. Tiger Woods) is the fast-twitch futurist I think he is, he likely is already going down this road.
One is the aforementioned PGA Championship, now sandwiched as a May event between the Masters (an April flower, like, and nodding here to R. Angell, the box score in your morning paper) and the U.S. Open, co-owner of Father’s Day, along with Barcalounger Inc. The other is a February staple, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, for decades an event hosted by Bing Crosby. In its heyday it was a truly glamorous event, with various stars of screen and field playing alongside all the top pros, trying valiantly to get a second round at Pebble, on Sunday. Jack Lemmon never made it there but took some wild swings trying.
Anyway, here’s an idea to combine the two events in a way that would give the PGA Championship what every major needs: iconic venues, and a distinctiveness it can call its own. This new PGA Championship would be a five-day event inspired by the format the Western Amateur has used forever: a 54-hole, stroke-play event, played on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at Pebble Beach. The medalist (low man) is the medalist, winner of the AT&T/PGA Championship Stroke Play title. You get a nice piece of hardware and a nice check.
Then comes the weekend, the actual dance, and the crowning of the PGA Championship champion:
The 16 low finishers, seeded by their 54-hole scores, qualify for weekend match play, to be held at . . . Cypress Point (where the Walker Cup will be played shortly after Labor Day). Eight two-man matches on Saturday morning, leaving eight players. Four matches Saturday afternoon, leaving four players. Two semifinal matches Sunday morning, leaving two players. A Sunday afternoon final. Even if you did not get Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler in the final, it would not matter, because the back nine at Cypress Point, designed by the same architect (Alister MacKenzie) who worked on Augusta National, is strikingly beautiful, interesting and timeless.
The size of the initial field would depend on what time of year the event is played. You would want club pros in it. You would want the best LIV Golf players in it. You might reserve one spot for an LPGA player and for a senior player. But the main goal would be to get the best 100+ players in the world in one place.
On Sunday afternoon, in the bounced light off the Pacific, your first major winner of the year will be crowned, if the event is played in February, the traditional month for the AT&T. Or the second major winner of the year, if you keep it in May. Or the fourth, if you return the PGA Championship to August. Regardless, it’s all good. It’s all good!
To those who say Cypress Point is way too short for the modern elite golfer, we counter with this: At match play, who cares? That will be the refrain at the Walker Cup, and it is indubitably correct. The 16th hole, the par-3 over a chasm of swirling Pacific, is a heroic 4-iron shot. On 15, a gorgeous shorty, the fellas will be looking to make a 2. On 17, they’ll be trying to keep their ball dry and out of an odd mid-fairway tree.
Not everything in this world has to make sense.
You can’t get a great big crowd at Cypress Point, but it can handle at least a few thousand fans. Let’s call it 4,000. Reserve half of the tickets for holy-roller big spenders looking to entertain clients and all the rest. The 2020 November Masters, for all the wrong reasons, was sort of like that. The other half can be sold at Pacific Grove Muni prices ($58 green fee) to ordinary golf fans who mow their own lawns. If you forget those people, you will kill golf as we know it. Arnold Palmer, once an owner of Pebble Beach, will rain fire on you from on high.
As for keeping the Pebble Beach Pro-Am part of it alive, that can be done on Monday and Tuesday. This is an important part of the whole thing because that Monterey Peninsula Foundation is a great charity with some heavy hitters behind it, and these people will not go away quietly. You can have the top 30 players play Pebble Beach in a Monday pro-am. They can bring their own am (for a hefty money-to-charity fee) or the privilege can go to a highest-bidder amateur. Another 30 can play on Tuesday. You could have other pro-am activities at other area courses.
The whole week could be seen as a celebration of what the PGA of America really is, where the pro game and the amateur game intersect. Also, a week of wining-and-dining. You can never underestimate how much of American golf is golf-watching and playing disguised as business development and vice-versa. But millions of us came to golf to play it and watch it. If the brain trust is really smart, they won’t forget that.
I could see Tiger coming out of retirement to play in this thing. I really could.
I’d watch. Would you?
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com
