Tiger Woods’ new PGA circuit member is surprising
Tiger Woods is the headlines because he has been his entire career. As chairman of the PGA Tour’s new future game committee, Woods will have a lot of negotiations, conversations and hand-twist to make changes to the tour.
But sitting on the Woods Commission is a more curious guy, at least when it comes to Golf: Theo Epstein. Yes, the guy who helped not only lead the Red Sox and Cubs into the World Series ring, but also helped the game head of baseball. It wasn’t easy to distort America’s most traditional pastime to fit the modern day, but he did. His mission is to do some of the same things on the PGA Tour.
Epstein’s role as an advisor (and partial owner) at Fenway Sports Group in early 2024 slightly rotated the consultant (and partial owner) of the consultant. The move was announced on February 2, 2024, with $1.5 billion invested in PGA Tour Enterprises only in FSG and many other sports owners.
In other words, Epstein’s arrival at FSG was the moment FSG toured deeply. This connection was primarily accidental, but his presence in the new committee was not. Epstein is a 10.4 obstacle who loves golf and plays golf in the northeast. Rickie Fowler and Justin Thomas were there a few years ago when he played Pine Valley in Pine Valley. (The world discovered it because Fowler made a trump card that quickly spread across social media.)
Epstein joins six players (Woods, Patrick Canterley, Adam Scott, Camillo Villagas, Maverick McNeley and Keith Mitchell) and two other hitters in the new ecosystem of the PGA Tour: Joe Gorder, chairman of the PGA Tour board, and John Henry, founder and chief owner of FSG. In many ways, Henry is the most important of the aforementioned investors, collectively known as the Strategic Sports Group (SSG). It was one of the only non-sponsors on the committee who was one of Henry’s business partners and the one who helped the Henry baseball team end the ’86 championship drought.
Not long after Epstein joined the FSG Fold, he was taken to RBC Legacy (a week after the Masters) to introduce changes within the structure of traditionally rigid sports to the PGA Tour’s Player Advisory Committee. As Adam Schupak reported golf.
The message is simple: create a fan-centric change that the sport will win. When the sport wins, the player wins. This is clearly happening to MLB, which saw a surge in popularity after various structural changes, literally, PGA Tour players, many of whom received fair grants for their loyalty and tours.
“Not only that [SSG’s investment] I think the necessary funding is provided as we work through this competitive model and improve the business model. “I also think that this brings teaching from other sports, and I think it’s beneficial in terms of expertise, and I think it’s going to help develop the PGA Tour,” Brian Rolapp, the new tour CEO said Wednesday.
“That’s one of the reasons I asked Theo Epstein to take part in this job. He obviously has a track record in other sports and fights these same competitive issues, and I think we can learn from his experience. I’ll definitely get experience from the work of the NFL on things like that. I think it’s always a good thing from the outside perspective, like it’s a good thing.
So, what will be the change in the future that Epstein and Henry recommend to help Tour decision makers? Don’t expect to see the shooting clock on the back of the T-shirt box, just like you’ll see embedded in the backstage of the baseball stadium.
Instead, consider the format of the event, the structure of the schedule, and even how many players can call themselves a fully exempted PGA Tour member. These topics are about the changes the tour has been involved in the past few years, often in response to the rise of Liv Golf. However, as evidenced by Rollap’s words, this change is not necessarily a slow and stable proof:
“What I generally say is that, as I said before, it has nothing to do with gradual change, which is as big and positive change as the benefits we can get. So we will be as aggressive as possible.”
