This week, 15 of the top 20 ranked golfers in the world are in the Bahamas for the Hero World Challenge, the very definition of a big-money, limited-field event.
There is no cut and relatively no pressure. Just a guaranteed paycheck that more than covers expenses.
More importantly, tournament host Tiger Woods may be there, a happy-holidays moment for everyone given where he was nine months ago when he was pulled from a wreck-ravaged SUV near Los Angeles.
Woods’ presence would be worthy of a celebration – of life, of recovery, of emerging on the other side, again.
It is Woods, more than anyone since Arnold Palmer or, before him, Bobby Jones, who has taken golf and particularly the PGA Tour to where they are today.
It was coincidental that Woods posted a teasing three-second video of himself hitting balls again, his damaged right leg wrapped in a therapeutic sleeve, less than two days before the PGA Tour revealed the money figures that could turn the head of the wolf of Wall Street.
Even if Woods is physically unable to play on the level he did before, he has an outsized role in the riches that are flooding onto the PGA Tour and the subsequent attempts of other groups to shoulder their way into the professional game.
Now there are hints that Woods will join his son, Charlie, to play in the PNC Father-Son Challenge next month, a potential tissue-grabbing moment.
For more than two decades, Woods has shown what professional golf can be on the world stage, how it can be more than a niche sport even if it will never be what the NFL or NBA have become.
Like Palmer and Jack Nicklaus before him, Woods won’t fully capitalize on the future purses that will make what he won seem small but he helped put this growth spurt in motion.
The revelation last week that PGA Tour purses will balloon in 2022, particularly in the FedEx Cup playoffs, was both a proud moment for the organization and a direct response to the groups intent on encroaching into the tour’s unchallenged territory.
It was the tour’s version of a power play, a response to players and challengers who are playing their own brand of “show me the money.”
The numbers are impressive. The PGA Tour projects total revenue in 2022 of $1.52 billion with 55 percent of it going to the players. That’s $838 million in what is called comprehensive earnings to the players, slightly more than half of it going directly into tournament purses. The rest goes to bonus funds, insurance, pension plans and other related things.
And the numbers are only going to go up year after year with future limited-field, big-money events in the planning stage.
As a matter of perspective, the LPGA is justifiably proud of what will be a record collective purse in 2022 – of $85 million.
The FedEx Cup playoff pot will be $75 million next year and the winner will take home $18 million of that. That doesn’t make the $15 million Patrick Cantlay won in August seem paltry but it’s a nice growth pattern.
The numbers are raining down like confetti. The Players Championship will have a $20 million purse. The first two playoff events – the FedEx Invitational and the BMW Championship – will have $15 million purses. The Player Impact Program will be worth $50 million to 10 players.
There’s more but you get the point.
That’s why commissioner Jay Monahan said the tour is “stronger than at any time in our history” when he sent the details of the upgrades to players last week.
The PGA Tour isn’t on the level of other major sports nor is it likely to be but it’s growing like a 12-year old. It’s why Monahan wanted to show the players – and others – where the tour’s finances stand.
The NFL, by comparison, made $12.2 billion in revenue last year, down by $4 billion due to empty stadiums during the pandemic. NFL players receive 48 percent of total revenues.
The NBA had $8.3 billion in revenue in 2019-20, its last full season, and players receive 50 percent of the revenue.
Is this enough to fend off the Greg Norman-led, Saudi-backed group intent on starting a new league next year?
Maybe not.
LIV Golf Investments has a war chest large enough to make something happen and a determination to be part of the professional game. The question is: Who will join them?
One player who talked with the Norman group came away impressed by the presentation and the vision and said the PGA Tour should be concerned. That player also decided to continue playing the PGA Tour and wonders who will take the big step of breaking ranks.
The (PGA) tour has a very good sense of the various proposals being put in front of players and believes it has positioned itself now and going forward to remain what it is – the dominant force in professional golf.
How will the major championships react to players who might leave the PGA and/or European (now DP World) tours for these potential new leagues?
So far, there have been no ground-shifting announcements from either of the new groups.
Both the Norman group and the Premier Golf League project themselves as allies with the PGA Tour, but to this point Monahan has refused to talk with either group. He also told players in the spring that anyone who signs with a rival league will be suspended or banned from the PGA Tour.
The tour believes it can do that. The outsiders believe otherwise.
Should Monahan at least hear what they’re trying to do?
If knowledge is power, then the more the tour knows the better positioned it will be to react.
The tour has a very good sense of the various proposals being put in front of players and believes it has positioned itself now and going forward to remain what it is – the dominant force in professional golf.
Will the landscape of professional golf look dramatically different six months from now?
It already does, at least from a monetary perspective.
Will that money buy the PGA Tour players’ happiness?
The tour is counting on it.
Top: Tiger and Charlie Woods at the 2020 PNC Championship
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