Something is wrong with professional golf.
As I rode the bumpy Bahamas Shuttle back to my hotel from the golf course at the Hero World Challenge late last week, I couldn’t shake the feeling. As the bus plowed into another hole, I thought about the fact that in the middle of golf’s off-season, in the same week, Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, and Viktor Hovland are headlining three completely different golf tournaments in three different time zones and three different regions of the world. Scottie Scheffler was at a Tiger Woods event in the Caribbean, Hovland was at a DP World Tour headline event in South Africa, and McIlroy was at a DP World Tour headline event in Australia — while Jon Rahm was chasing some sort of Krispy Kreme challenge.
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Visualizing the physical distance between these three superstars actually meant confronting the latest iteration of golf’s most elusive question. Which tournaments actually matter? And it didn’t take much remorse to arrive at some angry follow-ups. Surely these tournaments should each shine in their own right? Was this an inefficient allocation of golf’s finest resources? Will someone smarter and more powerful realize this?
These are champagne questions to ponder from a golf tournament in the Bahamas, so I swallowed a feeling of foreboding as I entered the resort and rode the elevator up a dozen floors. I entered my hotel room, staring out at the Atlantic Ocean and watching the lights twinkling in the resort’s denim-blue pool in the foreground below. Then I turned on the TV and found an even more beautiful image. Rory McIlroy and Adam Scott hit a high-risk downwind pitch shot at Royal Melbourne. As I researched the margarita options downstairs, I felt my anxiety ease. At this moment, the world was in perfect balance.
But now, a week later, I’m back in the real world (Seattle, WA, 42 years old, drizzling) and debating what’s next. new I’m also thinking about the duality facing me – cleaning my shoes or drying them – in professional golf. I also think about how the day-to-day dreaminess hides ongoing underlying tensions.
That tension was at the heart of what I saw, heard, and felt at the Hero World Challenge. There’s a lot more going on beneath the surface. Tiger Woods presser. At Tuesday’s secret player meeting. On this continent and on other continents as well. Here are 10 specific and general impressions from a few days spent at one of pro golf’s offseason outposts.
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1. Tiger is coming back.
I don’t know when or in what capacity. Woods himself claimed he had no idea. He was just cleared to chip and putt after a recent back procedure, and he did some chip and putts in Albany. But it turns out that even without a body language expert, that desire still exists. Even though he ruled out starting at the PNC Championship with his son Charlie (“It wouldn’t be fair to my son, it wouldn’t be fair to the other teams he could play for”) and starting in the TGL earlier in the season (“But I’m going to be in every game the Jupiter Lynx plays”), he left a trail of breadcrumbs for us to make another comeback.
“I hope I can play here and there at the end of the season, but I don’t know,” he said.
It’s impressive to cram “hopefully,” “maybe,” “here and there,” and “I don’t know” into such a short sentence, but Tiger’s optimist should be used to it. He seems to have indicated that he is considering a return before the end of the TGL season (mid-to-late March), which interestingly would coincide with the Masters (early April).
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Still, when Woods was asked specifically about coming back, he offered this reality:
“At what point are you coming back? I want to go back to just playing golf again. I haven’t played golf in a long time. It’s been a tough year. A lot has happened on and off the golf course and it’s been tough.”
“So my passion to just play, I hadn’t done that in a long time. Just play. So I had to sit on the sidelines for months and most of this year and frankly the end of last year.”
Woods wants to play golf with his son Charlie. He wants to feel good enough to do so. But I think he also wants to play in the Masters. It may be a nostalgic story for both me and him. But any real comeback requires a lot of optimism.
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2. Tiger quietly guides the future of golf.
I’ve written about this at length here , but one thing is becoming increasingly clear about the future shape of professional golf. That means Tiger Woods has a hammer and chisel.
In some ways, that seems counterintuitive. When you think of “revolution,” “disruption,” and “significant change” in basketball, you don’t think of Michael Jordan on a Zoom call. Does he consider important factors like playoff schedules and NBA Cup seeding? I hope not.
But that’s Woods’ current role as chairman of the Future Competition Commission, meaning he now regularly uses words like “stakeholder” and says things like:
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“That’s one of the reasons why we’ve talked to all of our partners, we’ve talked to the CMO, the CEO, everyone involved in the game and asked for their input on what they want. It’s up to us at the committee level to figure that out.”
3. Tigers have a North Star. Everyone else should be careful too.
The rest of the professional golf community should take note of Woods’ answer to the question of why he cares about the future of the PGA Tour.
“Well, the PGA Tour gave me the opportunity to pursue my childhood dream,” Woods said. “When I was 16 years old, I had the opportunity to hit the first ball in my first PGA Tour event. That was 33 years ago, but I’ve been involved with the PGA Tour ever since. A little kid from Cypress, California, who grew up on par-3 courses, had the opportunity to play against the best players in the world and be No. 1 in the world. I’ve had the opportunity to be involved in a lot of different things on tour.”
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If you were a cynic, you probably felt that these words were rehearsed or scripted, but sitting in the room with Woods, the lines especially felt real: PGA Tour It’s a dream. I am not ignorant of the realities of the PGA Tour business. And it’s big business. – However, tours should be held accountable to a slightly higher standard than cash. It is the pinnacle of the sport, an ambitious and meaningful place to compete, and all its tournaments should be conducted accordingly. The more they care, the more we care. Here are the words that motivated Woods to pay it forward:
“This is another opportunity to impact the tour,” he said. “I did it with my golf club. I made a few putts here and there. Now I can influence generations to come in a different way. Not just the generation I played against, but future generations like 16-year-olds looking for a place to play, maybe hoping to play on the PGA Tour.”
4. These guys like Brian Rolup.
I was away when Jay Monahan arrived as PGA Tour commissioner. We don’t know what will happen when other sports leagues hire new leadership. And there are exceptions to what I’m about to say, especially in the middle of the Tour. However, I can say that I was struck by the level of optimism expressed about new CEO Brian Rolup by the tour pros I spoke with.
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I think part of that has to do with his NFL pedigree. We all know the NFL is king. This is especially true for touring pros who love football. However, lorap makes a very unique impression on people. He seems like the type who gets what he wants, keeps everything on track, and is always in control. directly and impressive – These are two words I kept hearing about Lorap. Of course, things may change for the better. Does it apply to all commissioners sooner or later? But so far, so good.
5. This “secret player meeting” went well.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that Tuesday’s meeting of the PGA Tour’s top players (Tiger and Lorup included) to talk about the future of the PGA Tour went well. (of course the future is bright these Top ranked people! It’s better that way! ) But I was more impressed by the audience than the content. There’s something to be said for the fact that every player in this star-studded field of heroes attended the meeting.
The PGA Tour has felt like it has been on the back foot in recent years, but in this meeting, Rolup and company are playing aggressively. The players clearly believe change is coming and want to be ready before it arrives.
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Lolup is the opposite, which makes Woods a good choice as an establishment figure. Two other phrases that Rolup and those around him love are “blank slate” or “blank slate.”
6. We don’t have a new schedule in place, but we’re getting some hints.
A few weeks ago, Harris English thought out loud on the microphone at the RSM Classic, suggesting that a future PGA Tour could have 20 to 22 tournaments between the Super Bowl and the end of August. There is no need to take what the British say as gospel. He emphasized that his words were just personal predictions. However, considering the general reaction to the British comments, the impact was as follows. yes, that may be about rightit’s safe to assume he’s on to something, including statements from Lorup.
Details may not be clear yet, but the general outline is as follows. Shorten the PGA Tour season, double the remaining tournaments, put some of those tournaments into a bigger market, and de-emphasize everything else. So which tournaments do you throw away? Which one would you like to move? How do you arrange the playoffs?
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Can I start at the WM Phoenix Open? Can I move California’s famous event to summer? Can I leave Hawaii completely? Can we reclassify lower-level PGA Tour events in a way that makes sense for both players and viewers, and actually reduce the number of PGA Tour events we offer people and use scarcity to draw in more viewers?
These are the questions that Woods’ “FCC” was assembled to answer.
7. Still, no one is trying to save “professional golf.”
Where does the Australian Open fit into all of this? What does it mean for the DP World Tour, LIV and the unified theory of global golf?
On the other hand, the theoretical schedule leaves plenty of room for interested players to participate in tournaments during football season. Rory McIlroy has become the poster child for international barnstorming this fall. He has visited Ireland, England, India, Dubai and Australia in the more than three months since the Tour Championship. If given complete freedom, perhaps more players would join him.
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McIlroy told Evin Priest that he feels there is a real opportunity in Vision.
“Yeah, I think I understand what they (PGA Tour) are doing,” McIlroy said. “They’re trying to establish a domestic model before they focus on international activities, and obviously they don’t want to go head-to-head with soccer… So if the (PGA) Tour is really looking to run from February to August, then September to January will really be the beacon of golf for those five months here (in Australia) and in Europe and everywhere around the world. So I think people can get behind that.”
However, golf still requires a certain amount of determination. In Hero, I saw the continuation of a new golf tradition. There’s chatter about which pros might be heading to LIV and speculation about the future of LIV golfers competing on the DP World Tour. Brian Rolup can do a lot of things as the CEO of the PGA Tour, but he is not the CEO of professional golf.
8. Keegan Bradley is in pain.
It’s easy to go to a tournament like Hero and assume that everyone in the golf world is okay. it’s not. Keegan Bradley is still sore after the U.S. Ryder Cup loss at Bethpage, but this was an incredibly vulnerable self-assessment for the losing U.S. Ryder Cup captain heading into 2025.
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“Well, that’s a complicated question, because I’m really proud of the way I played. In many ways, I think this is the best year of my career. I won two majors in my rookie year, so it’s going to be hard to beat that. But considering everything that was going on, I’m really proud of the way I played.”
“But considering we lost in the Ryder Cup, it’s an F. We’ve got to go win, and this grade is different. It’s really hard to give a grade.”
“I was talking to my coach and he said, ‘Remember, you won this year.’ I was like, ‘No, I don’t remember at all.’ ”
Bradley called the past few weeks “probably the darkest time of my life. I mean, I don’t know how else to describe it. Certainly, definitely the darkest time of my career.” And this part was especially troublesome.
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“There’s a gaping hole in my career right now, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fill it. This isn’t about losing the Masters or losing a tournament. I’m going to try harder to get back and win.”
One thing we can say for sure going forward is that no one will be tougher on Keegan Bradley than himself.
9. Akshay Bhatia has an attractive new caddy.
While there are big changes on the PGA Tour, Hero Week is a reminder that day-to-day change in golf is gradual. Like Jordan Spieth researching a new swing feel and testing it out in competition for the first time, or Akshay Bhatia debuting his new caddy, veteran looper Joe Greiner.
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Greiner’s appearance on Batia’s bag was a fitting way to end a tumultuous year on the Caddy Carousel. He parted ways with long-time manager Max Homa at the beginning of the season, and then had a short stint as Justin Thomas’ replacement. After landing on Collin Morikawa’s bag midseason, he bounced to Jake Knapp and ultimately finished the year with Batia. Since then, like Morikawa, Homa has had multiple caddies. Some, like Webb Simpson and Paul Tesori, are experimenting with long-standing partnerships. But Greiner is now a rising star. And I found the details of their partnership particularly interesting. That means they are both left-handed.
“I think we have certain golf courses, certain shots, certain cues. He really understands that. And again, from the opinion of the majority of left-handed people I’ve met, Phil, Bubba and myself are very creative, and I think being left-handed has something to do with that. It’s exciting for me to see someone else see shots the way I do.”
Bhatia said he had been following Greiner for some time. They grew up in the same California town and have a good vibe so far. What about Greiner? He believes there is room for improvement after finishing 14th out of 20 players. But when his new boss hit an outrageous flop shot onto the ninth green on Friday, I saw him roll his eyes. There is no shortage of possibilities for new partnerships.
10. Yes one A place where you try to make sense of it all.
This week ended with three champions crowned in three golf tournaments in three regions of the world. Two of them, Australian Open winner Rasmus Niergaard-Petersen and Nedbank Golf Challenge winner Christopher Reitan, will be guaranteed spots at the 2026 Masters if they win. (Hero winner Hideki Matsuyama has an invitation because he is a past Masters champion.) In an ongoing quest to answer golf’s most elusive questions – Which tournaments are important? – Augusta National has taken a stand. Last summer, the club announced that the Australian Open winner, as well as the Scottish Open, Spanish Open, Japan Open, Hong Kong Open and South African Open, would qualify for the Masters.
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The R&A is working with Augusta National to offer Open Championship spots to the top finishers in the Open Qualifying Series. The series consists of 15 tournaments in 13 countries around the world, including the Australian Open, where three players have punched their ticket to next year’s tournament.
The lowest score wins. That’s still true today.
The rest feels like it’s up in the air.
Dylan Dethier welcomes your feedback at dylan_dethier@golf.com.
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