In this moment of American reckoning when the political landscape lurches forward (or backward, depending on your view), the inevitability of change hangs in the air like lightning bolts and thunderclaps.
It is a time fraught with trepidation and doubt on one side, excitement and fever dreams on the other. If the reality can somehow settle in the middle, we would all be better off, it seems.
Golf finds itself dealing with its own change, though on a decidedly less important and far-reaching level. Maybe that’s the way of our new world, one that struggles to settle on anything, instead bouncing back and forth between ideas, initiatives and heavy-handed tactics, driven largely by the politics of money, the one thing that hasn’t changed over time.
While our country and the rest of the world adjust to whatever political changes are coming (as someone who has been out of the country twice recently, be assured that the rest of the world is invested in what is happening in America), golf’s continuing dissonance has become as familiar a sound as that of another tee shot being struck.
It’s difficult at the moment not to wonder how golf will look a year from now or five years from now. It feels as if the professional game is barrel rolling into a new frontier, both captivating and concerning.
Finding the balance between what’s new and what’s next with what has made the game what it is remains the challenge.
Like almost everything else, golf can’t afford to be stagnant. Standing still in business gets companies run over. Golf, for all of its romantic attachment to its traditions, has probably been slow to adjust until recently.
Finding the balance between what’s new and what’s next with what has made the game what it is remains the challenge. In the same way that Thanksgiving dinner doesn’t have to include turkey so long as it includes the thanks, golf needs to move forward without losing its soul to greed and overreaching.
While maintaining its core values across the decades, golf has always been about change.
From hickory shafts to steel to graphite.
From gutta percha to balata to urethane.
From plus fours to Sansabelts to today’s ill-fitting stretchy pants.
Change is a part of the game.
Jack Nicklaus has often said there were events in which he changed his golf swing during a round, looking for whatever worked that day. Tiger Woods completely rebuilt his swing – twice – when he was at the top of the world. Therefore, it’s no surprise that Rory McIlroy has been grooving a new move into his motion by hitting ball after ball into a screen rather than the blue Florida sky.
The golf population is changing, skewing more toward younger players and females. Hopefully, it isn’t just a trend but a new baseline.
NIL money – name, image and likeness – has come to golf but hasn’t yet disrupted it the way it has perhaps permanently damaged college athletics.
On the administrative front, the R&A and the PGA of America will be welcoming new leaders shortly, with both organizations replacing men of distinction in Martin Slumbers and Seth Waugh, respectively.
Another brushfire of rumors has sparked surrounding the PGA Tour’s ongoing negotiations with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, suggesting the main points have been resolved. If true, it means another round of change, though hopefully without the rancor and animosity that has bruised the game since LIV Golf’s arrival.
Strange as it seems, it feels as if the golf world has accepted the new status quo, not that the division is in the best interest of anyone. But, as Sam Cooke sang, a change is gonna come.
The PGA Tour will officially tighten its eligibility requirements with a Policy Board vote later this month, making one of the best jobs in the world a little harder to land. From the outside looking in, it won’t make a big difference, but to those whose livelihoods are based on how many putts they make and pars they save, it’s a significant change.
“Change is the law of life. And those who only look to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”
John F. Kennedy
Early next year, Woods, McIlroy and others are betting big on the TGL, a made-for-prime-time-TV competition on winter evenings that may or may not find a new sweet spot for golf fans. It’s teched out, star driven and contrived to speed the game along while hopefully finding new fans who have run through the Netflix catalog and who don’t find the Creighton-DePaul college hoops game compelling enough to invest a full Tuesday evening.
If the TGL happens to entice wagering, all the better to drive viewer numbers.
It wasn’t that long ago that golf gambling was limited to friendly Nassaus and the member-guest Calcutta. Now, betting is a part of the landscape, even if it means the guy who used to yell “mashed potatoes” now barks at whatever player is killing his bank account that day.
Some change we could do without. Too many classic golf courses have been forced to “modernize” to account for the distances players can hit the ball, but if you care to look it up, the same complaints were being made a century ago and the game endured.
Since political change is in the air, let’s conclude with something John F. Kennedy said years ago.
“Change is the law of life,” he said. “And those who only look to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”
Whatever it brings.
E-MAIL RON
Top: Like autumn rolling in with a different palette, change is inexorable.
Zou Zheng, Xinhua via Getty Images