It was the late great George Carlin who said, “People who see life as anything more than pure entertainment are missing the point.”
Words to live by, especially these days.
Which brings us to professional golf, specifically the PGA Tour, where the realities of today’s world demand we be entertained or most of us will swipe to the next screen or streaming service to keep our short attention span minds occupied or, here’s that word again, entertained.
There was a time when it was enough to watch the best golfers in the world stoically ply their trade but that was back in the day of 2-irons and whitewall tires. In the same way equipment companies feed our demand for something better and, if not that, at least something fresh, the consumption of professional golf, whether in person or on the screen of our choice, is forced to evolve.
The Masters can continue to do what it does because of what it is and where it is but, especially in recent years, it has never been afraid to push the boundaries of what is possible to the point of leading parts of the revolution, even if it keeps access to the players sacrosanct.
Just when it seemed watching the Masters could not get better, drone shots made Augusta National even more spectacular. It is a small thing that became a big thing.
Professional golf as entertainment has always been a thing – Arnold Palmer cemented that – but there is a renewed focus on playing to the crowd for several reasons.
Television ratings are down and, even if there are metrics to suggest streaming numbers offset the decline, the perception is golf viewership is in a stall, if not a decline. Aside from the NFL, that’s true of almost every sport in our oversaturated world.
It’s part of what prompted Justin Thomas to write a letter to his PGA Tour brethren last week urging them to do more than stick to their precious routines.
Step outside their comfort zone. Take a moment to do a pre-round interview. How hard is that, especially when you probably know the question that’s coming.
“At the end of the day, we’re all owners in this tour. So, the bigger and better we make it not only benefits us financially, it benefits our fans and creates the ability for us to do bigger things down the road,” Thomas wrote to his colleagues, citing himself as someone who has come to appreciate different teams and athletes by watching what they’ve done with media.
As great as the golf may be on the PGA Tour or any other tour, it’s the personalities that elevate the product and pro golf is an entertainment product. The new TGL is banking on it, promising immediate access to players during the competition, which admittedly lacks any real relevance. But it’s about letting the audience mingle with the participants.
Those 20-second interviews with football coaches before and after halftime don’t usually offer a lot but they open a door for a moment, pulling us inside or at least feeling like it.
That’s why the walk-and-talk interviews on the PGA Tour have been so popular. Not everyone has Max Homa’s sense of humor or Kevin Kisner’s sarcasm but imagine how it might help Patrick Cantlay’s image if he talked about how much he likes pre-1980 music while walking between shots on a Saturday afternoon.
The players can tell their own stories. Yes, they are playing for more money than ever before and, starting this year, there will be only 100 full PGA Tour cards available each year, but as we have been told before, to whom much is given much is also asked.
When the Strategic Sports Group agreed to invest $3 billion into PGA Tour Enterprises, it did so with the intention of changing how some things are done. Thomas sees it and believes in it, changing his own mind about what he’s willing to do during tournament days.
Joel Dahmen became a star because of what the “Full Swing” series has shown us. We’re so accustomed to seeing players in one way – logos just right, game faces on – it’s refreshing to see another side.
Imagine doing something like that on a weekly or biweekly schedule, a more immediate version of “Full Swing” like “Hard Knocks” did with the AFC North this NFL season.
Bryson DeChambeau has mastered putting himself out there. Find a young person into golf who isn’t watching DeChambeau’s YouTube content and you’ve found an outlier. Learn from what he’s doing.
While we’re at it, it’s past time to seriously attack the slow-play issue. It took the final threesome in the American Express five and a half hours to play the final round in ideal conditions. The final-round times were similar at the Farmers Insurance Open, where Torrey Pines South is admittedly a long, difficult course and the conditions made it tougher.
Nevertheless, that’s a killer, especially if you happen to be on site where you have endure the pain of slow play without the benefit of cutting over to watch someone else play the way TV can do.
It reached the point that CBS Sports’ on-course reporter Dottie Pepper spoke out during the Farmers broadcast, saying, “I think we’re starting to need a new word to talk about this pace-of-play issue and it’s respect. For your fellow competitors, for the fans, for broadcasts, for all of it. It’s just gotta get better.”
She’s not wrong.
Here’s a start: Outlaw AimPoint on the greens. It’s a time suck, not to mention maddening to watch both a player and his caddie play footsie with the green over every 6-footer. Do with AimPoint what they did with detailed greens books. Get rid of it.
Forget fines for slow play. Add strokes to their score. When you’re on the clock, you’re on the clock. No warnings. Hurry up or add a shot.
The draconian idea is to put a shot clock with every group but it might work. No one fears the punishment if violators never get punished. TGL thumps the sound of a heartbeat as the shot clock winds down. Galleries might do it in real life.
Imagine having someone in the fairway holding a countdown clock the way they do at college football games during television timeouts.
It’s not as if the door is closing on professional golf. It’s about opening new doors.
It’s time to walk through some of those doors.
E-MAIL RON
Top: Justin Thomas with fans during the final round of the 2024 Tour Championship
Tracy Wilcox, PGA TOUR via Getty Images