ATLANTA – Brian Rolapp’s first announcement as CEO of the PGA Tour was predictably bold, with the former NFL executive announcing Wednesday at the Tour Championship the creation of a Future Competition Committee.
Rolapp said the committee’s goal is a “holistic relook of how we compete on the Tour,” and will focus on both the regular season, playoffs and off-season.
The nine-member committee will include six players and will be chaired by Tiger Woods, who also serves on the policy board and the PGA Tour Enterprises board. He will be joined by Joe Gorder, the chairman of both boards; John Henry, the manager of Strategic Sports Group; and Theo Epstein, the former MLB executive who is an advisor for Fenway Sports Group.
“We’re going to focus on the evolution of our competitive model and the corresponding media products and sponsorship elements and model of the entire sport,” Rolapp said. “The goal is not incremental change. The goal is significant change.”
The committee will focus on three areas of the Tour’s competition model including parity, scarcity and simplicity, which is noteworthy given the circuit’s ongoing struggle to create a compelling postseason model despite nearly two decades of trial and error.
In May, the Tour announced it was eliminating the starting-strokes format at the Tour Championship, which essentially handicapped the field heading into the finale based on the post-season points list. Last year, for example, the points leader, Scottie Scheffler, started the week at 10 under followed by No. 2 on the points list at 8 under.
This year’s Tour Championship is using the traditional 72 holes of stroke play with each player starting at even par, including points front-runner Scheffler.
“I guess no more sandbagging for me at the end of the year,” Scheffler laughed. “I was not a fan of it. I didn’t think it was a good way to end the year, for a variety of reasons. I’m much more happy with this format. Having a good golf tournament on a really good golf course to finish off our season is extremely important, and I think when you look at it this week, we’re going to have a difficult test, a good test to golf to finish off the year the right way.”
Rolapp wants PGA Tour to be aggressive meritocracy
PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp joins Eamon Lynch to discuss the introduction of the Future Competition Committee, the schedule priorities moving forward, negotiations with PIF and more.
The move to create an all-encompassing committee for a possible overhaul of the competitive model is on-brand for Rolapp, who pointed out that in his former job at the NFL, innovation and change were part of the culture.
“[At the NFL] we did not sit still, changed rules every March. We changed the kickoff rule. That’s what I mean by honoring tradition but not being bound by it. That level of innovation is what we’re going to do here, and I think that’s one lesson I’ve learned,” Rolapp said. “I will say in talking with all the stakeholders, everyone seems excited about that, and I think realizes that given the strong foundation we have, if we apply some of that, we think we can make it better.”
In his first Tour Championship address as CEO of the PGA Tour, Brian Rolapp discussed a handful of topics, among them the continued fracture of the professional game and what plans, if any, Rolapp had of reuniting the best players in the world.
Patrick Cantlay, Adam Scott and Camilo Villegas – who are all policy board members – along with Maverick McNealy and Keith Mitchell – who are co-chairs of the Player Advisory Council and will ascend to the policy board next year – will join Woods on the new committee.
