PGA TOUR CEO Brian Rolapp Announces a New Committee Headed by Tiger Woods

Brian Rolapp has been on the job as the PGA TOUR’s new CEO for just over three weeks, but he isn’t shying away from his goal of making substantial change to the TOUR and its product.

Rolapp met with the media ahead of this week’s TOUR Championship at East Lake and announced the formation of the future competition committee. According to Rolapp, the goal of this new group is simple.

“We're going to design the best professional golf competitive model in the world for the benefit of PGA TOUR fans, players and their partners,” Rolapp said. “It is aimed at a holistic relook of how we compete on the TOUR. That is inclusive of regular season, postseason and off-season. 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. The goal is not incremental change. The goal is significant change.”

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The chairman of the committee will be Tiger Woods, and he’ll be joined by five other players: Patrick Cantlay, Adam Scott, Camilo Villegas, Maverick McNealy, and Keith Mitchell. As for the three business advisors, those seats will be filled by the TOUR’s Joe Gorder, John Henry, principal of Fenway Sports Group and enterprise board member, and Theo Epstein, a senior advisor to Fenway Sports Group.

“There will be a few guiding principles of this committee that I will ask them to do, and these principles are key characteristics of what I think will be a successful competitive model going forward,” Rolapp added. “The first one of those characteristics is competitive parity. All sports, all sports chase competitive parity. The PGA TOUR has incredible competitive parity and balance among its players today. We're going to lean into this while also maintaining another key characteristic of the PGA TOUR, meritocracy. Anyone on TOUR who's a good enough golfer should have a shot at winning, and we're going to lean into that and preserve that."

“The second key characteristic is scarcity. A focus on the TOUR's top players to compete together more often in events that feel special for fans and feel special for the players. Finally, the third principle will be simplicity. Competition should be easy to follow. The regular season and postseason should be connected in a way that builds towards a TOUR Championship in a way that all sports fans can understand. Those are the three principles.”

Rolapp is off to a great start as the TOUR’s new CEO, and clearly has the game’s best interests at heart. And getting Tiger involved is a huge win. As a fan, I’m excited to see what this committee can do for the game going forward.