"The real conversations are happening among a select few"
This article previously appeared in The Undercover Pro newsletter, a Golf Digest+ exclusive where we grant anonymity to people in golf who’ve got something to say. Here a current PGA Tour player is interviewed by Senior Writer Joel Beall.
These days I’m glued to golf coverage more than ever, and I know a lot of players who would say the same. It’s not because we’re suddenly more interested in watching ourselves on TV. We’re doing it because the media has literally become our best shot at figuring out what’s going on with our own tour. It’s infuriating.
Mostly, it’s all this business with the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. When reporters ask us what we know about these ongoing talks and we don’t have any answers, it’s not that we’re not playing dumb—most of us genuinely have no idea. The real conversations are happening among a select few, and they’re keeping everything close to the vest. It makes me laugh when people call us a “player-run organization” because, honestly, most of us players seem to have about as much say in what’s happening as the average golf fan. Internal communication has never been the tour’s strong suit, and I get why. We’re a traveling circus—setting up shop at a different course every week. Each tournament has its own army of employees and volunteers running the show. Our “office” is basically a locker room we barely use and a driving range where we’re focused on, you know, practicing.
With only a handful of player meetings a year, there’s no real system for keeping us in the loop. Before the LIV Golf saga, we mostly relied on locker room gossip, and it was hard enough then to separate fact from fiction. Now? I feel like I can believe everything and trust nothing. There’s one prominent player, someone I call a friend, who set up a separate social-media account to follow several “insider” accounts. I’ve tried to tell him those accounts are mostly just crazy conspiracy theorists, but it’s no use.
Let me be clear—I’m not a big name in golf. I don’t expect Jay Monahan to have me on speed dial. But here’s what drives me crazy: Unless you’re one of the top stars, tour leadership isn’t going to talk to you. Even the guys who sit on our player boards often seem just as in the dark as the rest of us. Instead, all the communication seems to flow toward tournament sponsors and the agencies running events. Now, a lot of these agencies also manage players, which you’d think would help. But by the time information filters down to a player like me, it’s been through so many people it’s like that old game of telephone we played as kids.
It gets complicated with golf media, too. You’ve got some writers who are basically just repeating whatever tour officials tell them without doing their own digging. Others seem to toe the tour line because their company has some kind of partnership deal. Still, even that imperfect information is better than what we typically get through official channels—which is basically radio silence.
The first time I heard about the tour planning to shrink field sizes and cut back on tour cards was last summer after reading Adam Schupak in Golfweek. I tried reaching out to several tour folks to get the real story—crickets. I asked a player representative who said, “Yeah, they’re talking about it, but nothing’s set in stone.” Then I called a media person I trust who flat-out told me it was already a done deal. People outside our organization knew more about major changes affecting our careers than we did.
June 6 is a date that comes up in every player conversation about this stuff. And look, I understand why the initial talks with PIF had to be kept quiet. You can’t negotiate effectively with 150 people in the room. But what I can’t wrap my head around is why we’re still so removed. How are we supposed to feel confident about the future of our tour when we don’t even know what it’s going to look like?
I’ve talked about this with other athletes at my club—baseball players, basketball players, football players. Their situations are a bit different since their leagues usually communicate through teams. They haven’t faced anything quite like our rival league situation with LIV Golf, but they deal with plenty of other headaches, like trade rumors. It’s become this whole industry of speculation that can really mess with players’ heads. One NBA player told me about a GM who deliberately spreads fake trade rumors to his staff just to see if they leak to the press. Maybe that GM thinks it’s clever, but imagine being a player whose kids are asking if they need to switch schools because of a made-up rumor.
What’s the fix? Regular emails would be a start, even if half of us never open them. A monthly conference call would go a long way. I’m hopeful about this new business leader position the tour is creating—maybe they’ll understand that our frustration could be solved just by keeping us in the loop.
The tour could also set up some regional meetings where we could talk face-to-face about what’s happening. Maybe create some kind of secure platform where we could get updates and share feedback. Mostly, they just need to start treating us like actual stakeholders in our own organization, rather than outsiders looking in.
Until then, we’ll keep doing what we’ve been doing—piecing together the future of our tour from media reports and whispered conversations on the range. It’s not ideal, but at least it’s something. And maybe, just maybe, someone in tour leadership will eventually realize that keeping your own players in the dark isn’t exactly a winning strategy.