From the first tee at the Plantation Course at Kapalua where the 2022 PGA Tour schedule began last week, the view is mesmerizing.
A par-4 hole with a fairway as wide as a pineapple field tumbles down the hillside but it’s everything else that tugs at your senses, giving a top-of-the-world feeling.
The island of Molokai looks like the Emerald City in the distance, the Pacific Ocean is bluer than blue and the vastness of the view is almost overwhelming.
It’s a good place to be and a fitting stage for the PGA Tour’s renewal.
Even as the challenge of the rumored but not yet reality of a money-stuffed Saudi-backed league floats in the new year’s air, the PGA Tour should feel emboldened by where it is and where it is going.
Revenue is up. Purses are up. Viewing opportunities are way up.
Phil Mickelson, 51, and Tiger Woods, 46, just dominated the not-so-secret Player Impact Program rankings, a nod to their enduring popularity as the game embraces another generation of new stars.
Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka are still at or near the top of their games. Rory McIlroy sounds like a player who has rediscovered his passion for the game.
Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas are generational talents and stars. Jon Rahm is a force of nature. So is Bryson DeChambeau.
And Collin Morikawa, with two major championships by age 24, is just getting started.
The PGA Tour hasn’t reinvented itself but it has adjusted to the times, largely through opportunities it has created and partly out of necessity. The tour has played to its strengths – it offers more of everything including history and relevance. It remains and will remain the place to play for the best of the best.
Now that the holidays and football’s bowl games are behind us and winter wraps its chilly arms around many of us, last week at Kapalua offered a return to the familiar.
Spieth’s incessant chatter. Viktor Hovland’s perpetual smile. Patrick Cantlay’s stoicism.
It’s all coming our way again. Images of the hang gliders alongside the South Course at Torrey Pines. The noisy uniqueness of the Waste Management Phoenix Open. The driveable par-4 10th hole at Riviera.
Whether it says more about us or the games we watch, it has become easy to feel almost numb to the numbers where salaries and prize money are concerned. ... But the money speaks to the market and the PGA Tour is playing for more than ever before with $427 million in total purses, an increase of more than $100 million compared to last season.
Then it’s on to Florida with the Bear Trap and Arnie’s place. The Players Championship is nine weeks away which means the Masters is 13 weeks away.
The PGA Championship goes to Southern Hills in May, the classic Country Club at Brookline hosts the U.S. Open and the 150th Open Championship will be played at the Old Course, a built-in memory at a place like no other.
Whether it says more about us or the games we watch, it has become easy to feel almost numb to the numbers where salaries and prize money are concerned. Five baseball players have contracts worth more than $300 million. Six NBA players have contracts worth more than $200 million (and somehow Steph Curry seems underpaid at $40 million annually).
But the money speaks to the market and the PGA Tour is playing for more than ever before with $427 million in total purses, an increase of more than $100 million compared to last season.
The three-event FedEx Cup playoffs are worth $75 million with the overall champion pocketing a bonus of $18 million (and it will likely be double that in a few years). The Players Championship has a purse of $20 million. The average tournament purse is $9.1 million.
A total of 124 players earned $1 million or more last year and Mr. 125, Francesco Molinari, missed it by $3,023.
The increases are the result of massive new media-rights deals that have kicked in but also a response to what is reportedly being offered by the Greg Norman-led Saudi effort and the Premier Golf League, both of which have promised millions upon millions to players who join their initiatives.
The Norman group, which has so far named multiple executives but no players nor tournaments beyond the 10-event Asian Tour series, has to be delighted at the number of top players who will tee it up in the Saudi International in early February.
Is it an indication of support for the new league that has been rumored or are players willingly taking hefty appearance fees with the PGA Tour’s grudging approval? Probably some of both.
“Certainly it’s a threat to the PGA Tour,” said Jordan Spieth, one of four players on the tour’s Policy Board.
Commissioner Jay Monahan was wise to grant releases to players who want to play in Saudi Arabia but he extracted a good return, getting each tour member to agree to play the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am (which is scheduled opposite the Saudi event this year) at least once in 2023 or 2024.
By giving players, particularly the top guys, more of what they want (more freedom particularly with their own marketing opportunities), the more the tour helps itself.
“I think the tour would say they probably feel that they're in a better position going forward by having to sit back and kind of take a look at things and make some changes,” Spieth said.
The lure of seven- and eight-figure signing bonuses will entice some players to accept the Saudi offer. It will come with a serious shadow that money can’t blow away. Some players won’t care or will attempt to validate the Saudis’ egregious human-rights record.
It’s a tough case to make, which is why Rory McIlroy and others have wisely offered a firm no.
It was all there in the island air at Kapalua last week, where the views seem endless and the possibilities seem just as big.
Top: Cam Smith aims toward Molokai in the distance from the seventh tee during the third round of the Sentry Tournament of Champions at the Plantation Course at Kapalua.
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