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New York Times
3 minutes ago
- New York Times
Tiger Woods will head new PGA Tour competition committee, new CEO announces
ATLANTA — Brian Rolapp's first message as PGA Tour CEO: He's not afraid to change everything. Rolapp's first public move was to announce a Future Competition Committee, chaired by Tiger Woods, with the aim of a 'holistic relook at how we compete on the tour.' The committee, announced Wednesday before the Tour Championship, plans to find the 'optimal competitive model' for professional golf after several years of change and turmoil. Advertisement 'The goal is not incremental change,' Rolapp said. 'The goal is significant change.' Woods went as far on social media as to call it a 'new era' for the PGA Tour. This committee is a mixture of top player voices and business advisors, including Fenway Sports Group principal John Henry from the private equity consortium Strategic Sports Group, which invested $1.5 billion into PGA Tour Enterprises last year. It also includes former Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs executive Theo Epstein. Rolapp said he wants to ensure golf is the best version of a meritocracy, where top players compete together more often, and the regular season and postseason should be easy for fans to understand. The new CEO joined the tour this summer after spending the last two decades at the NFL, most recently serving as the league's chief media and business officer. For this news conference, he was introduced by his predecessor in all things but title, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, who will stay on through his contract's 2026 end despite Rolapp taking control. 'Time will demonstrate that (Rolapp) is exactly the right leader for the PGA Tour at this moment in time and this moment in its evolution,' Monahan said, 'and that's why he already enjoys such broad support from our players, partners and team members who have had the opportunity to spend time with him.' Honored to serve as Chairman of the Future Competition Committee. This is about shaping the next era of the PGA TOUR — for our fans, players and partners. Thanks to @BrianRolapp for his vision and leadership, and grateful to the committee members for their willingness to… — Tiger Woods (@TigerWoods) August 20, 2025 Only on the job for three weeks, Rolapp said he has not spoken with anyone from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia — talks between the two sides have stalled since multiple White House meetings in February — and did not offer any specifics on plans for the SSG investment. Much of his focus Wednesday was on the Future Competition Committee and setting a strong mandate. Advertisement 'I don't think fans should expect anything we're doing now to exist in perpetuity,' he said. For example, the PGA Tour announced in May that it decided to change the Tour Championship midway through the season, removing the staggered starting-strokes format it's used since 2019. That provided proof of the tour's willingness to make improvements quickly, and that there's no correct timeline for any further changes in the format. It will make changes when leadership agrees it's necessary. 'I think the right answer to that is we will take as much time as is needed to get it right, at least the initial time out, but we're going to aggressively move,' Rolapp said. 'So I would like to put in the right competitive model as soon as we can.' Regarding his core principle of parity, Rolapp said one of the best things golf has going for it is that the difference between the fifth and 35th best player in the world is razor thin. That's something he wants to lean into, although it's unclear how. As for simplicity, he alluded to a need for improvement in fans' understanding of the stakes of any tournament. 'If this person wins, if this person loses, if this person finishes here on the leaderboard, what does that mean and how does that tie to the postseason?' Rolapp said. The players on the committee are Woods, Patrick Cantlay, Adam Scott, Camilo Villegas, Maverick McNealy and Keith Mitchel, who are all either members of the PGA Tour policy board or the player advisory council. From the business side, it includes PGA Tour policy board chairman Joe Gorder, the former Valero Energy CEO, alongside Henry and Epstein. Rolapp said he wanted to announce this committee before its first meeting because he wants there to be immediate feedback from fans, media partners and players to help improve the discussions. 'If we had done a bunch of work and then announced it and gave the committee a baked cake, you're not getting a great result,' Rolapp said. 'I wanted the opposite.' Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle
Yahoo
30 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Tiger Woods to lead group that could reshape the PGA Tour's competitive model
ATLANTA (AP) — Tiger Woods is a major player in golf again, this time without clubs. He was appointed Wednesday to chair a new committee charged with taking a fresh look at the competitive model for how the PGA Tour runs its tournaments. Brian Rolapp, three weeks into his role as the tour's first CEO, announced the nine-member 'Future Competition Committee' and said it would have a clean sheet to consider changes that uphold traditions without being tied to them. 'This is about shaping the next era of the PGA Tour,' Woods said in a social media post. Rolapp didn't have details on several issues he faces as he takes over for Commissioner Jay Monahan, including the future of a sport that has been splintered by Saudi money that created the rival LIV Golf League and lured away a number of top players. The PGA Tour's negotiations with the Public Investment Fund have stalled, and Rolapp did not make that sound as if it were a top priority when asked about the fans' desire to see all the best players together more often. 'I'm going to focus on what I can control,' Rolapp said. "I would offer to you that the best collection of golfers in the world are on the PGA Tour. I think there's a bunch of metrics that demonstrate that, from rankings to viewership to whatever you want to pick. I'm going to lean into that and strengthen that. 'I will also say that to the extent we can do anything that's going to further strengthen the PGA Tour, we'll do that,' he said. 'And I'm interested in exploring whatever strengthens the PGA Tour.' Woods, who has played only 10 times on the PGA Tour since his February 2021 car crash and has been out all of this year with a ruptured Achilles tendon, already serves on the PGA Tour board without a term limit. Now he will lead five players from the board — Patrick Cantlay, Adam Scott, Camilo Villegas, Maverick McNealy and Keith Mitchell — along with three from the business side. That includes baseball executive Theo Epstein. Rolapp is not trying to reinvent a sport that held its first championship in 1860. He said among his early observations, after two decades at the NFL, was the strength and momentum of the PGA Tour. 'My key takeaway when you boil all this down is that the strength of the PGA Tour is strong, but there's much more we need to do, much more we need to change for the benefit of fans, players and our partners,' he said. He said the committee would be guided by parity (he conceded golf already has that), scarcity and simplicity. The tour released a 2026 schedule on Tuesday that adds another $20 million signature event, this one to Trump National Doral, as part of a 35-event schedule from January through August. Rolapp said the simplicity was mostly about connecting the regular season to the postseason. He referred to the committee's work as a 'holistic relook of how we compete on the tour' during the regular season, postseason and offseason. 'The goal is not incremental change,' he said. 'The goal is significant change.' He did not set a timetable for any of it. The Tour Championship ends this week at East Lake for the top 30 players. The tour has eliminated the built-in advantage for top seeds so that everyone starts from scratch. The committee is a smaller version of the PGA Tour Enterprises board and policy board. Joining Epstein from the business side are board chairman Joe Gorder and John Henry of Fenway Sports Group, who leads the Strategic Sports Group that invested $1.5 billion — with the potential to double that — into the tour in a minority investment announced 18 months ago. Rolapp said he had a lot of ideas how to the use the money but none he was ready to share. But he said the involvement of SSG was a big reason he took the job. "Not only does it provide necessary capital as we work through this competitive model and improved commercial model, I also think it also brings learnings from other sports, which I think is beneficial ... to grow the PGA Tour. 'I think outside perspective is always a very good thing, as long as it's applied in the right way. I think SSG has brought that and has been helpful." ___ AP golf:
Yahoo
30 minutes ago
- Yahoo
New PGA Tour CEO looks to a future of 'significant change' that may not include LIV Golf
ATLANTA — Brian Rolapp, newly minted PGA Tour CEO, comes to the golf world after more than two decades in the NFL, and to borrow a term from his old gig, he's throwing downfield on first down. 'You just have to constantly innovate,' Rolapp said Wednesday morning in his introductory press conference at the Tour Championship. 'I think if there's anything I learned at the NFL, it's that … honoring tradition but not being bound by it. I think that level of innovation is what we're going to do here.' Rolapp has only been on the job for 18 days, but still touched on a range of topics: competitive balance, golf's postseason, the PGA Tour-LIV divide, the golf ball rollback and more. He didn't go into particular detail on any one aspect, but he's clearly focused on a philosophy that change is necessary, and change is coming. [Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2025 NFL season] 'I said when I took the job that I would take it with a clean sheet of paper, and that is still true,' he said. 'My fan letter on day one, I said, we're going to honor tradition, but we will not be overly bound by it. Now we're going to start turning that blank sheet of paper into action with an idea to aggressively build on the foundation that we have.' That aggressive plan of action does not appear, in the near future, to include LIV Golf, which claims many of the world's best and best-known players, including Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm. The breakaway tour split off from the PGA Tour in 2022, but a year later, in June 2023, the Saudi Public Investment Fund and the Tour, then led by Jay Monahan, announced a 'framework agreement' that would provide a pathway for the two tours to reunite. Since then, however, all momentum for a reunification has stalled, with nothing in the way of updates or progress coming from either camp. Rolapp and new LIV Golf CEO Scott O'Neil are longtime friends, but Rolapp's public statements on Wednesday seemed to suggest that the Tour has far higher priorities than a reunion, regardless of who's in charge at LIV. 'My primary focus is going to be on strengthening the Tour, and 'blank sheet of paper' means blank sheet of paper,' he said. 'Whatever [strengthens the Tour], I'll pursue aggressively. That's how I view it.' Later, he delved slightly deeper: 'I'm going to focus on what I can control. I would offer to you that the best collection of golfers in the world are on the PGA Tour. I think there's a bunch of metrics that demonstrate that, from rankings to viewership to whatever you want to pick. I'm going to lean into that and strengthen that.' The Tour, frankly, has more pressing issues than LIV Golf, like maintaining momentum and capturing eyeballs in a highly competitive media (and social) environment. 'Anybody who's in the sports business, their general competition is for the mind share of sports fans and for their time and to do that in a complicated world that is increasingly disrupted by technology, where you have a million things to do with your time, a million alternatives,' Rolapp said, in response to a question from Yahoo Sports. 'That is one reason why sports continues to be so valuable. There's very few things left in this country that can aggregate millions and millions of people doing one thing in a communal experience.' On a broader scale, Rolapp announced as one of his first acts as CEO the creation of a Future Competition Committee, designed to create, in his words, 'the best professional golf competitive model in the world for the benefit of PGA Tour fans, players and their partners.' No small feat, that, but he's managed to lock in Tiger Woods as chairman, plus players including Patrick Cantlay and Adam Scott, and outside voices including Theo Epstein. The Tour's future in Rolapp's eyes will be based on three key principles: parity, scarcity and simplicity. In other words, level the competitive field, bring the best players together more often, and have them play in a format that's easy to understand and logical from the beginning of the season to the finale. It's a tall order, a significant challenge, and Rolapp has obstacles ahead both externally and internally. But he's made his priorities clear: if he has his way, the PGA Tour as it exists today will not be the same PGA Tour in a year, two years or five years. 'The goal is not incremental change,' Rolapp said. 'The goal is significant change.'
