It's Not an Entertainment Product, Either

Note: Occasionally I will pitch a story or article idea to someone. If they like it, then I will undertake actually writing out the thing and seeing if it can fulfill its potential as something actually enjoyable to read. I’m guessing I should probably take it as a sign that I’m not that great of writer when the previous discussion of the idea turns to radio silence once I submit a first draft?

Anyways, writing about the PGA TOUR is something that I don’t have much interest in, and probably won’t do often, if ever again. But here’s a first draft of a little thing I put together. If it gets edited and run somewhere else, I will post a link. Otherwise, you can let me know that it stinks by just not commenting on it at all.

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Well, we've finally made it through golf's long offseason, and here we are once again at the return of golf (not to be confused, of course, with 2020's Return to Golf). It's been awhile, but let me refresh your memory by returning to the penultimate event of the 2019-2021 Mega Season, the BMW Championship at Caves Valley. If you recall, it was here that Bryson DeChambeau shot 28-under par and still did not win the tournament. Earlier in the week, Rory McIlroy was asked after shooting an opening round 64 (8-under) if he felt like a FedEx Cup Playoff event should be more difficult, and his response was, "This is going to sound a little — not bad, but I think [the Tour] is more of an entertainment product rather than the majors."

That comment, and other observations that Rory made about the uniformity of setups throughout the PGA TOUR (all caps) season, caused only a tiny ripple through golf media. Not because his statements weren't insightful, which they almost always are, but because when assessing the veracity of Rory's take, the general conclusion of most onlookers seemed to be, "yeah, that checks out."

Personally, though, Rory's comment set off alarm bells for me. How could no one be challenging this viewpoint?! After thinking on it all offseason, I've decided to go with Plan B and write down all of my thoughts on the topic and share them with you here. Plan A was to tweet out the Meryl Streep meme, the one where she's yelling up to the stage at the SAG Awards, with a caption reading:

"IT'S NOT AN ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT, EITHER! IT'S AN 11-MONTHS-OF-THE-YEAR ADVERTISING PLATFORM!"

Inherent in Rory's stance about the nature of PGA TOUR competition is the idea that identifying the most skilled all-around golfer in the professional ranks isn't as high of a priority as, say, making sure that the members of the tour are as comfortable as possible. "A lot of the golf courses we play are uniform," he expounded,  "and you get the same conditions each and every week, and players like that. I like that." Once again, hearing one of the faces of the PGA TOUR, perhaps even PGA TOUR royalty, defend the comfy practices of a member-run organization is not entirely worthy of headlines. Consider that we just witnessed Will Zalatoris maintain a top-30 OWGR ranking for most of 2021 and win the tour's Rookie of the Year award while simultaneously being shut out of tour membership, unable to accrue any of the golden FedEx Cup points or compete in the FedEx Cup playoffs. Meanwhile, the list of exemptions available to current tour members to keep their cards (ahem, 300 career cuts made) is longer than the Season of Championships. From a competition perspective, it feels like belaboring the point to even talk about things like the massive advantage that bomb-and-gouge golfers have in today's game, or the lack of variety in formats and tournaments throughout the season, or the utter disregard for ensuring that golfers are on a level playing field when it comes to equipment and testing.

If these were all instances that we, fans of the PGA TOUR and professional golf, were being asked to overlook for the sake of delivering a more compelling and entertaining product, then the entire thing would be a lot more palatable. But you don't need to know the difference between an "elevated status" event, a WGC, and the Gold Standard to be able to identify that the PGA TOUR product is not catered towards the fan. In a sport where enduring a gluttony of commercials has always been a part of the deal when watching coverage (with USGA events being the exception), the tour doubled down with a massive new rights deal, all but forcing the networks to recoup that money through more ads. The networks, bless their hearts, have tried hard to push the Playing Through ads as a way to continue showing golf shots, but we've already seen enough pivotal moments occur in that tiny audio-free window to know that it's absolutely no substitute for full-screen golf.

Even when the golf is actually being shown, we still suffer through the problem of golf not being shown. Putts are still favored over full shots, CEO interviews still must be conducted, and FedEx Cup points must be discussed at any and all opportunities, and then discussed again as the Comcast Business Tour Top 10. The calendar is crammed with events that all look the same, with match play only occurring once (pretty shoddily, at that), team play only occurring once (in a week that many top players take off), and even something as benign as stableford scoring being relegated to opposite field status against the Open Championship. The offseason is exactly one week long, with the first event picking back up and looking not much different, outside of a bigger field and no shadow leaderboard, than the crowning event of the playoffs that aren't really playoffs. Following the progress of young players who might become potential stars of the future is made needlessly difficult due to a lack of visibility of the Korn Ferry Tour, whose coverage is often bumped due to Champions Tour coverage (sorry, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit) or confusingly placed up against major events like the US Open, forcing qualifiers to choose between accruing Korn Ferry points or playing against the top players in the world at their own detriment.

Bear with me as I make a quick tangent here. For the past year or so I've vehemently resisted the call of No Laying Up and other golf twitter members to join their fandom of Formula 1 and the Drive to Survive Netflix series. I did the Formula 1 thing back in the 2000's. It was cool, infinitely better than NASCAR, and a tidy little weekend morning watch. Then I pursued a career, started a family, those kinds of things. I didn't need another sporting event in my life, I'm more in the business of addition by subtraction right now. I don't know why, but I eventually watched the first two episodes of Drive to Survive. Then I watched the Italian Grand Prix. Dammit, I'm all the way back in now!

Drive to Survive is compelling because of the access. Eight of the ten Formula 1 teams participated in Season 1, and following the critical success of that season all ten teams have participated since. It also tells authentic stories, fully capturing the personalities of the drivers and teams, and it's not afraid to show all sides. One quote that caught my eye was from former F1 driver and current commentator, Tim Hauraney, discussing what the show captures so well. "I've never seen it like this, and I've been involved in the sport, in racing, since I was 9 years old," he said. "I  wanted people to see what I saw, see the sport for how I see it, which is the personalities, the stories. When I watched Season 1 I  said, 'Yep there it is.'"

This feels relevant, because the PGA TOUR recently announced its own Drive to Survive style show upcoming on Netflix, covering the 2021-2022 season. In order for the series to work, the show, and therefore the tour and the players featured, will have to be fully open and authentic. Can you think of any descriptors that are less PGA TOUR-ish than open and authentic? This is a tour that tries it's hardest not to mention the Masters during tournament coverage, discounts non-PGA TOUR victories in the career win totals of players, and bombards first-time winners in post-round interviews with questions of "what does it feel like to get your first win, and the 500 FedEx Cup points that come with it?!" This is a tour where Patrick Reed is a perfect gentleman, and the best way to deal with a feud between two players is to never, ever acknowledge it.

If the PGA TOUR fully embraced being an entertainment product, even if it continued to prioritize the comfort of its members at the expense of actually challenging them, that would still be an improvement over its current situation. Even if I know that I'm watching a (literally) watered down version of the sport, if you make it compelling enough to watch and show me an authentic view of what tour life is like, rather than trying to polish everything up and sell me on stakes that aren't real, then I'll buy it.

But, hear me out, what if the tour embraced being a competitive organization, and ditched the member-run protection program that is currently in place? What could be more entertaining than showing authentic golf, with all of its bumps and challenges and heartbreaks? What would possibly be more compelling than capturing a group of athletes in an individual sport interacting with each other behind the scenes, with all of its glorious awkwardness? It certainly wouldn't hurt the PGA TOUR, in my opinion, and would possibly be a windfall for everyone involved. Frankly, I think the world is starving for authenticity right now, and the success of shows like Drive to Survive is evidence of that.

As an insignificant little side benefit, too, perhaps a typical PGA TOUR stop, rather than identifying which driving range golfer was the best putter of the week, might actually show us a thing or two about which players are truly the best in the world at the game of golf.