The strange genius of a PGA Tour … commercial?

I was in college the last time the PGA Tour unearthed a headline-generating marketing campaign.

I know this because the marketing campaign was an unexpected birthday gift — a blue t-shirt that arrived in the mail in Syracuse without a return address. I opened the package expecting to find a clue about the sender. I was greeted by bright yellow lettering and a three-word phrase I didn’t really understand.

LIVE UNDER PAR.

By then, golf had wrapped its tendrils around me. I was a sicko, a diehard — the kind of guy who listened to the hosts of No Laying Up and The Fried Egg like they were the oracles of a sacred text. But as I stared down at the t-shirt, I was dumbfounded. What the hell was this?

I was greeted by no such surprise on Thursday morning, the same day the PGA Tour unearthed its latest marketing campaign via a 30-second promo video. The video began with a series of soundbites memorable to any golf fan: Rory McIlroy on cementing his legacy; Scottie Scheffler on chasing his boyhood dream; Tommy Fleetwood on the difficulty of winning against the best. As the video played on, highlights of some of the Tour’s biggest moments and stars were interwoven over the soundbites. Finally, the music swelled to reveal a new-old star, Brooks Koepka, smiling from the days of his youth, followed by the Tour’s snazzy new tagline.

WHERE THE BEST BELONG.

As I watched the promo, I felt something shift. The video was not lacking in self-reverence. It was proudly hyperbolic. It was, above all, an advertisement. But it felt like something more than that. For the first time in my adult life, the PGA Tour seemed to understand itself.

Now, some caveats: 1. I do not believe advertisements are meaningful in the grand scheme of things. 2. I am not defending THIS advertisement as uniquely meaningful in shaping the opinions of golf fans. 3. I can’t promise I won’t hate this advertisement after several months of watching it air 12 times per hour. 4. I can’t promise I won’t hate it after several hours. 5. I, like most fans, view commercials as a symptom of a significant institutional problem … not a solution.

But there are two parties in every advertisement: The people receiving the story (that’s us), and the people telling it (that’s the PGA Tour). And for the first time in my memory, the Tour seems to have its story straight. It is the most powerful tour in golf. It is the place that holds the greatest volume of meaningful events and crowns the greatest number of meaningful champions. It is where the best golfers in the world belong.

You can debate whether these ideas are actually true, but that’s not really the point. The point is that the Tour believes they are true, and believes in their virtuosity more sincerely than it believed in the morality of “living” “under” “par.” We need to use only the Tour’s posturing over the last several weeks (including its decision to welcome back selective LIV stars comparatively scot-free) to know the Tour is speaking from its chest.

It might sound silly to cast meaning to a slogan, but this slogan arrives on the heels of a prolonged existential journey for the Tour. In the years since LIV’s arrival in the sport, the Tour tore up and threw away key components of its competitive format on an annual basis. It has flip-flopped on war and peace. It has traded executive leadership and board structure and equity. It has changed the rules often enough to require a new rule-making structure — and it appears on the brink of doing so once again.

But those years of strife revealed something: For all its flaws, the Tour has figured out at least some of the requisite components of ascribing “meaning” and “significance” to golf tournaments. Winning the Players might never be the Masters, and winning the Memorial might never be the U.S. Open — but those events mean more than winning your local charity scramble. Money is part of it — it certainly helps your perception of “significance” to watch twentysomethings become wealthy beyond your wildest dreams — but money is not all of it. The Players matters (in part) because history tells us it is a litmus test for those on the path to greatness. The Genesis matters (in part) because it is held at a great golf course. The Memorial matters (in part) because Jack Nicklaus told us so.

History and legacy might never be strengths of the PGA Tour, especially if it continues to lack an ownership stake in any of the four majors or the Ryder Cup. The Tour is too small and young — and the rest of golf too enormous and ancient — to earn that high ground. But you do not have to own all of the history and legacy to be the best for at least 47 weeks out of the year. You just have to own enough of it, and the Tour certainly believes it does.

I’m not sure the Tour should start printing t-shirts with the new slogan plastered across the front, but I do think it can give the focus groups a rest. The new message means something. It understands something.

It is no longer living. It is belonging.