{{ubiquityData.prevArticle.description}}
{{ubiquityData.nextArticle.description}}
By John Hopkins
His voice boomed out from central Africa, loud as a lion’s roar. Johann Rupert, chairman of the Sunshine Tour of South Africa, originator of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship on the European Tour, is currently isolating with his family at a ranch north of Johannesburg. From there he had this to say about the current crisis caused by COVID-19.
“I recently heard a lady who owns one of the biggest fashion companies in the US moaning about the effect of the virus. She said: ‘We are not getting our four seasons of stock. We may not even get our winter fashions. This is a disaster. It’s a fiasco and a tragedy.’
“I said to her, ‘No. This is not a tragedy. A tragedy is a hungry child.’
“There is going to be a total reset in the world, believe me,” Rupert continued. “Every human being alive would comfortably fit into one cubic kilometre if squashed like sardines and yet we use two-thirds of the world’s natural resources. We are polluting the oceans. There is plastic everywhere. We are probably the least civilised of all living beings. We’ve got to reset our value system. We are going to have to revisit a lot of things and how we live.
“Golf is going to be one of those things that we revisit.”
One result of this revisiting could be a new world order in golf, a coming together of the mighty PGA Tour in the US and the European Tour, the second biggest body of its type in the world with tournaments throughout Europe and in the Middle East, South Africa, Asia and Australia.
Chubby Chandler, the most high-profile player manager in Europe, was asked recently how close to a merger (perhaps consolidation is a better word) the two tours were to one another.
“That came closer when the Premier Golf League issue arose early in the year and I think it came even closer with the arrival of this virus,” Chandler said. “It’s got to be a sensible move for everybody.”
Pascal Grizot is vice president of the French Federation and was chairman of the highly successful 2018 Ryder Cup in Paris. If there is much going on in European golf that he doesn’t know about, then it can’t be very important. “I cannot help but think that the most important thing to come out of this situation is a merger or partnership between the PGA Tour and the European Tour,” Grizot said last week. “I know Jay (Monahan) and Keith (Pelley) are speaking almost every day as they try to organize a new calendar of events that works well for them both. So, that relationship is there. And there is no doubt in my mind that a strong allegiance between the two organizations would be a fantastic opportunity for professional golf and also the development of the game around the world.”
Both the PGA Tour and the European Tour have faced challenges this year. The first was the siren approach of the Premier Golf League, a blatant attempt to attract the best golfers to join a league of 48 players competing in 18 events. It was backed by Middle Eastern money and though it attracted some interest from the older leading players – notably Phil Mickelson, who will be 50 next month and is clearly near the end of his time at the top of the game – first Rory McIlroy, 31, and then Brooks Koepka, 30, gave the idea short shrift.
A merger, a takeover, a subset, a division, a reverse takeover, a management buyout, a collaboration, a consolidation? You say merger, I say, takeover. You say subset, I say subsidiary. It might not be any one of these but rather a little of several of them.
Hardly had the PGL sortie been suppressed than along came COVID-19, a creeping virus, unseen and insidious, that is disrupting life throughout the world, perhaps on a greater scale than anything since the Second World War. It is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and creating an enormous economic recession. It is ripping apart the world of sport.
“After 9/11 everything changed and we had to get used to a new order,” one manager said. “We are going to have to get used to doing it all over again. Thing is, we don’t really know what is going to happen. As Warren Buffet said: ‘It’s only when the tide goes out that you see who is swimming naked.’ ”
How to describe the anticipated change in the world order involving the PGA Tour and the European Tour? A merger, a takeover, a subset, a division, a reverse takeover, a management buyout, a collaboration, a consolidation? You say merger, I say, takeover. You say subset, I say subsidiary. It might not be any one of these but rather a little of several of them.
“I don’t think describing ‘the European Tour as a part of the PGA Tour’ is the way it would be described,” one leading figure in golf said. “Would it be the European Tour working in close collaboration with the PGA Tour and essentially with the same function as a subset of the PGA Tour? The answer to that is, ‘yes.’ ”
So, let us not split hairs as to the best way to describe how the game’s two leading bodies for professional golfers begin to reset their modus operandi. Let us just accept that within two years, and perhaps much sooner, the PGA Tour and the European Tour will be operating more closely together than they are now. This can be seen as a closing of the ranks of the two bodies against the PGL, for example. It also should be borne in mind that the European Tour has already had and declined approaches from two other parties seeking to invest in it.
There is currently a spirit of cooperation among those in charge of golf as demonstrated by the timing of the revised schedule for major championships. When it was announced that the US Open would move from June to September, the PGA from May to August and the Masters from April to November, it was clear that considerable talking and negotiation had gone on between the relevant bodies. Weekly, perhaps daily, conversations. The only one of the game’s four major championships that was not included in this mass reorganisation was the Open. The R&A, though involved in the discussions, felt unable at that time to determine whether or not the game’s oldest major championship would go ahead in July. It confirmed a few weeks later that it would not.
It may have taken 11 years after the formation of the European Tour and after Bernhard Langer had won the Masters once (1985) and Severiano Ballesteros twice (1980 and 1983) before representatives of the European Tour were considered important enough to be invited to the Masters, but nowadays a new spirit of friendship and collaboration among those that run golf is abroad.
This was most evident at a World Golf Hall of Fame meeting in March at the Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., headquarters of the PGA Tour. At the head of the table sat Jay Monahan, commissioner of the PGA Tour, and gathered around him were Guy Kinnings, deputy chief executive of the European Tour; Mike Whan, commissioner of the LPGA Tour; Martin Slumbers, chief executive of the R&A; Pete Bevacqua, formerly chief executive of the PGA of America and now president of NBC Sports Group, which owns Golf Channel; Mike Davis, chief executive officer of the USGA; Annika Sörenstam and Beth Daniel, two stars of the women’s game; a representative from the PGA of America and media representatives. The atmosphere was relaxed, friendly, cooperative and businesslike.
In the next few days the European Tour is expected to announce its new, post COVID-19 schedule starting with the British Masters at the end of July. Pelley, the tour's chief executive, and Kinnings have both been described as working all hours to come up with a schedule that enables the tour’s golfers to play the 26 tournaments required to be shown on television in order that no penalties have to be paid. Pelley is reported to have had nine conference calls in succession on one recent workday. It is said to be a schedule that will have a lot of events with much smaller purses and some may indeed be played concurrently but there is no significant reduction in the number of tournaments.
In situations such as this, the questions you hear most are things like: What is in this for us? Will we be better off after this? What are the upsides? What are the downsides?
In a recent memo to members of the European Tour, Pelley said, “ … the reality is the pandemic is going to have a profound impact on the tour financially as well as many of our partners both in sponsorship and broadcast areas. We are doing everything we possibly can to come through this but be prepared that the 2021 schedule may look profoundly different to the 2018 or 2019 schedule.”
Chandler continued: “When you see the struggle the European Tour had to (put out this revised schedule) and you see the PGA Tour saying they are going to get a million testing kits which cost $100 each then you get an idea of the difference between the two bodies. This is what makes you realise the extent of the gulf between the two organisations. If Europe can be a nice alternative under the wings of the PGA Tour, I think that’s pretty good.”
It is no secret that the PGA Tour covets the Ryder Cup, the biggest event in golf and one of the biggest events in all sport. At times officials on the PGA Tour find it hard to accept that despite providing the players that make up the US team, the most powerful body in golf, with the most money and the best players has little to do financially with the biennial event, which is run by the PGA of America. And at times it hurts.
I realised this when I interviewed Tim Finchem, then the PGA Tour commissioner, a few years ago. Within moments of our conversation beginning Finchem pretended to be cross. “You come in here and the first thing you ask is about the Ryder Cup?” he said.
Were the PGA Tour to subsume the European Tour that would give it a strong hand in negotiating with the PGA of America for the future of the Ryder Cup. It is a scenario that is reminiscent of the one that existed in Britain until 20 years ago when the European Tour threatened the British PGA, the body that owned and controlled the event, with withholding its players unless it was given a much greater share of the Ryder Cup. The European Tour is now the managing partner of Ryder Cup Europe, which administers the biennial team event on the east side of the Atlantic.
It is hard to imagine the PGA of America loosening its grip on this event, a cash cow for the home organising body, but money talks and the one thing the PGA Tour has is money.
“The PGA Tour has billions,” Alastair Johnston, a near 50-year veteran of IMG who has worked closely with the PGA Tour for many years, said. “The PGA Tour’s leadership has been prudent over the years in building reserves. Moreover, within the past couple of months, the PGA Tour has successfully negotiated an escalated multi-year commitment from its current media partners that will go a long way to ensuring that the tour will not only survive but thrive subject to the variables of the global economy.”
Given that the PGA Tour puts on many tournaments annually with considerable skill, it is fair to speculate it would bring great expertise and marketing to organising the Ryder Cup. This in turn would benefit the European Tour.
“Certainly the Ryder Cup is very important to the financial health of the European Tour,” Grizot said. “It is so difficult to compare the PGA Tour, which is so concentrated in the States, and the European Tour, which is all over the world. They are not the same, and neither are their markets.
“And while the PGA Tour is much stronger financially, it needs the European Tour and has an obligation to put on big tournaments in some of the countries that the European Tour visits. Even, and perhaps especially, countries in continental Europe, which don’t have a WGC event. After all, what is the PGA Tour without Rory, Tommy Fleetwood and Jon Rahm, for example? All of those players came from the European Tour.”
The PGA Tour needs the European Tour, and whether the two merge or form some other kind of allegiance, well, it does not really matter. The key is getting together in ways to put on tournaments that attract the best players in the world because they have the biggest purses. A €10 million ($11 million) purse will do that. A €1.5 million ($1.65 million) purse will not.”
A natural divvying up of each tour’s assets might see the PGA Tour taking over some of the European Tour’s events in China and Australasia, a move that would seem to benefit both parties. The European Tour has a massive footprint around the world where, before COVID-19, it staged 48 tournaments annually in 31 countries. There are plenty of advantages, not least in cost savings, in a smaller European Tour, one that is limited to Europe, the Middle East, where there seems to be plenty of money, and Africa. It would be the European Tour returning to its roots. In return it would benefit from the huge financial reserves of the PGA Tour.
The practicalities of such a joining together could be immense. And while the spirit is willing, the flesh may be weak. No matter how well the governing bodies are getting on at the top of the game, the PGA Tour in the US and the European Tour are both members’ bodies. Changes have to be approved by the members and therein lies the detail where the devil lurks.
“How do you think such a move would get through the members when some of the players who have to give their approval will lose playing privileges?” asked one manager. “The top 30 or 40 players might not care. Indeed, they might quite like it. But what about the 60-120 that suddenly find there are 60 non-European Tour players who have higher world rankings?”
Or to put it another way:
“Would a top-50 European Tour player vote for something like a merger?” said another manager. “It would give him the ability to compete against the very best on a more frequent basis without needing to get releases or to feel bad that he is not supporting his home tour. They probably would. But would a lower ranked European Tour player vote for something like this? Probably not, because it would take away his ability to play in something like the Rolex Series with its huge prize money.
“Equally, would a lower-ranked PGA Tour player vote for something like this knowing that playing opportunities may be reduced in some of the top PGA Tour events? He may get pushed out because whatever deal is done it would open up more opportunities for a relatively small number of players.”
Giles Morgan was global head of sponsorship at HSBC for 13 years and gave away more than $100 million in that time. He has an exceptional global view of golf. At one memorable event in China in 2015 he signed new agreements with “ … the LPGA, the PGA Tour, the R&A, the whole lot.
“There is a photo of us ... together,” Morgan said, adding: “Guy (Kinnings) was there. He said, ‘This has never happened before in golf. You should remember this moment.’
“Given that in the past three years the mood music has been that there should be a coming together of the tours, I think that COVID-19 is an accelerant to that happening. Sport exists because fans want it. There is an appetite for it. It is probably being said in many sports, whether football, rugby, golf or tennis, that there has been too much of it and that has been driven by commercial growth, which means more people think they can make money from something. COVID-19 is going to wipe out quite a lot of the weak and financially unstable.
“Golf has to adapt. It was very interesting listening to Roger Federer saying recently that the men’s and women’s tennis tours should come together because that is the zeitgeist of the modern world. It makes a lot of economic sense.
“You have seen the PGA Tour and the LPGA making great strides working together. Likewise, I think the European Tour under Pelley and Kinnings alongside Monahan and (Ty) Votaw (of the PGA Tour), there seems to be much more of a coming together. I think it made sense before the virus. It makes sense after the virus because there is going to be a reckoning in every sport.
“Golf’s biggest threat doesn’t come from inside; it comes from outside. All sports need to make sure they are relevant and attractive to future audiences. The combined expertise of these talented people in all these organisations working together for the good of the game to ensure it remains one of the global sports and attracts the millennials. Rather than fighting among themselves, better to come together as a unified force to ensure that golf retains its position as one of the great games in the world.”
At the time those words were spoken late last month, Morgan’s view seemed iconoclastic. His words sounded like anathema to many who grew up on the European Tour and retain a fondness for it – and they might still do. Yet so much is happening so fast that now, little more than 10 days later, they seem to be spot on.
A coming together; a greater cooperation; a consolidation, call it what you will. It has to happen and it’s going to – soon.
John Steinbreder contributed to this story.
E-Mail John