DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES | Keith Pelley may have secured his “dream job” back home in Toronto, but the Canadian believes his finest moment as the chief executive of the European Tour Group is yet to come.
Pelley’s tenure at Wentworth comes to an end on April 2 when he hands over the reins to deputy CEO Guy Kinnings at a tumultuous time for global golf. However, the man who turned 60 on Thursday – the day the news about him joining Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, the parent company of the Toronto Maple Leafs (NHL), Toronto Raptors (NBA), Toronto Argonauts (Canadian Football League) and Toronto FC (MLS) – is not expecting a leisurely walk out of the office.
“I’m here for the next three months, and we hope to come to a conclusion with the framework agreement,” he said, noting the June 6 announcement by Jay Monahan, commissioner of the PGA Tour, and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who heads Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. “Moving that forward is something that is going to be my primary focus over the next three months.
“I’ve told the PGA Tour and I’ve told representatives from Public Investment Fund that that’s my priority. I still believe in it, and we need to move forward. I said things would heat up after the Ryder Cup, and they have. So, yeah, I’m optimistic over the next couple of months. I’m definitely not leaving for three months, and that’s the primary reason.”
Pelley joined the European Tour Group in August 2015. He came in with a mandate to make the tour the strongest possible competitor to the PGA Tour, inculcate a culture of innovation and increase the earning opportunity for its members.
He may not have been able to achieve his primary target, but in classic warfare tactics, Pelley joined hands with the enemy when he found it difficult to beat them. The strategic alliance with the PGA Tour, which guarantees increased prize purses and playing opportunities for DP World Tour players, probably will go down as the greatest accomplishment of his tenure.
“I think the deal they did with the PGA Tour, guaranteeing purses, guaranteeing the longevity of this tour in difficult times and COVID and recessions and all that kind of stuff, I think Keith’s done a pretty good job."
Luke Donald
There is always a flip side to every story. Critics have accused Pelley of diluting the DP World Tour by giving away his 10 best players every year to the PGA Tour, apart from agreeing to the new Official World Golf Ranking calculations, which has made it virtually impossible for regular members to crack the top 50.
Many believe that the strategic alliance has reduced the status of the DP World Tour to that of a feeder for the PGA Tour, but European Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald disagrees.
“I think the deal they did with the PGA Tour, guaranteeing purses, guaranteeing the longevity of this tour in difficult times and COVID and recessions and all that kind of stuff, I think Keith’s done a pretty good job,” Donald said.
Legacy is not the favourite word in Pelley’s lexicon (“legacy is for Winston Churchill and Sir John A. Macdonald,” he said, noting the former prime ministers of the United Kingdom and Canada, respectively), but some of the leading members were all praise for the work done by the outgoing chief executive.
“The way the European Tour found itself in this whole chess game that is world golf, I think he navigated things really, really well,” Rory McIlroy said. “He’s put the DP World Tour in a position where they can really benefit from everything that’s going on here.
“He’s done a great job with Rolex Series events,” McIlroy added, noting the big-money series within the DP World Tour, “and everything that he’s tried to do with the game, tried some different formats and sort of tried to modernise it in some way. He’s tried to think out of the box, and he should be commended for that.”
Thomas Bjørn has been a close friend of Pelley’s over the years and said the CEO’s handling of tour affairs during the COVID pandemic was remarkable.
“There would not have been a DP World Tour today,” said Bjørn, who captained the European Ryder Cup team to glory in France in 2018 with Pelley as the CEO. “I think Keith’s greatest period was probably COVID. I saw him at his absolute best during that time – how he managed the Tour, the finances of the Tour, the staff. I thought he was amazing in that period, a real leader.
“At a time when there was unbelievable uncertainty for everyone, and we were all feeling for our jobs, they [Pelley and David Williams, the former European Tour Group chairman] managed to put on events as soon as possible. They were well-run and well-executed events that just kept everything ticking over and made it work for our broadcasters and for the players.
“The tour is not just the players or our executive staff. It’s all our staff, our production company, the media that comes and covers our events, our caddies. ... A lot of people live on the back of what we do as a tour, and I think the way he managed that was unbelievable. Not to say nobody else could have done it, but I don’t think I could find somebody within the game today who would have done a much better job than Pelley did.”
The complete “U-turn” Pelley made on former allies, such as the Asian Tour and Saudi Golf, also did not go well in territories that have supported the DP World Tour for many years.
Pelley agreed that handling the pandemic was the biggest challenge of his tenure – even bigger than the threat posed by the emergence of LIV Golf.
“COVID was very difficult because nobody had ever been through that before,” Pelley said. “Entering a competitive marketplace is something that is expected in any job as a CEO. So, I think COVID was a bigger challenge.”
Another criticism of Pelley is that most of his big ideas did not stick. The tour dabbled in new formats under his leadership, such as the GolfSixes and the Shot Clock Masters, but both events are defunct. At the time of introducing Rolex Series events, he wanted to grow the number to 10-12 of them in a season. There are still only five Rolex Series events on the schedule, with three of them in the United Arab Emirates, including this week’s $9 million Hero Dubai Desert Classic. Other markets haven’t really warmed up to the idea.
The complete “U-turn” Pelley made on former allies, such as the Asian Tour and Saudi Golf, also did not go well in territories that have supported the DP World Tour for many years. There used to be a strategic alliance with the Asian Tour as well, with several co-sanctioned events in a year. However, once LIV Golf signed up with the Asian Tour, Pelley went to the extent of calling the tour “enemies.”
What cannot be argued though, is the fact that Pelley is leaving the DP World Tour for his dream job, and nobody is grudging him that move.
When he resigned from his previous position at the Toronto-based Rogers Media to come to the European Tour, he told owner Edward Rogers: “There’s only one job I would come back for, and that’s CEO of MLSE.”
He is doing exactly that.
E-MAIL JOY
Top: Keith Pelley (right), shown Wednesday in Dubai, will return to work in his native Canada.
WARREN LITTLE, GETTY IMAGES