Darrell Survey, PGA Tour at odds
By Jim Nugent • April 20, 2026
The company that generates the data that enables golf equipment companies to make claims about professional tour equipment usage is in a serious dispute with the PGA Tour, one that could bring an end to a decades-long business arrangement.
The Darrell Survey conducts weekly equipment counts on the PGA Tour and other circuits and sells the data it collects from players to golf equipment companies. This helps ensure that tour pros are abiding by contractual equipment-usage agreements, and it also enables equipment manufacturers to make marketing claims about usage of their implements among the best players in the world.
The Los Angeles-based company, owned since 1980 by Susan Naylor, employs people to stand on the first and 10th tees at professional and amateur tournaments to collect usage information. On the PGA Tour, it has done so under what is essentially a handshake agreement.
In February 2025, the PGA Tour approached Naylor to inform her that the tour would require a more formal relationship with a written agreement affirming that the tour owns the equipment data collected at its tournaments, according to PGA Tour and equipment industry sources. The tour sought to maintain the existing arrangement and offered Naylor a multiyear agreement under which the tour would receive a nominal fee.
Naylor and her legal team have delayed responding to the tour, and the parties have yet to sign an agreement; at one point, Naylor brought in a new legal team and the conversation went from a typical business negotiation to one marked by hostility, according to the sources. In response, the tour has informed the Darrell Survey that it would accept bids from other providers starting April 27 and will consider its proposal for services on equal footing with other providers after that date.
The Darrell Survey does not agree with the sources’ presented timeline, nor with the characterization of the tone of the conversations, which is not accurate, a company spokesperson said.