Musings on Seth Waugh, Team Golf, and Non-Signature PGA Tour Events

One of the game’s governing bodies will have a new leader, the PGA Tour might have a blueprint for non-signature events going forward, and other thoughts from a busy summer weekend in the world of golf.

1. I think pro golf’s loss of Seth Waugh in a leadership position is a significant one, especially as the sport tries to wander and hack its way out of the woods and into an unknown future. That future seems as murky as ever, despite some insubstantial public claims of progress among various dealmakers. Outside of those public statements, the future seems far more unsettled and the process bordering more on dysfunctional than progress.

Waugh (pictured above, image courtesy the PGA of America) was not a direct party to any future tour mergers, but he was a strong leader with a proper golf brain and a voice to go with it. Pro golf has generally enjoyed the benefits of a split system, with five ruling “families” operating various tours and majors. But it still needed strong and stable leadership from those families, and Waugh was a steady leader during a tumultuous time. That split ruling system had many benefits thanks to its various inherent checks and balances stemming from power being split fairly evenly across the game. But the structure also made it ripe for disruption from a new, well-financed actor. A similar thing has happened to college football. Once the province of regional conferences, it seems to be headed toward a total consolidation of power that will benefit the chosen ones in the form of a massive rights deal between one singular body and the TV networks. Golf seems farther away from that kind of consolidation, but the age of a variety of strong voices and viewpoints working to shape the game seems to be over.

2. I think the 2024 Rocket Mortgage Classic provided a blueprint for what PG-B Tour events could look like in the future. Create a rising stars challenge with a mix of elite amateurs and recent college players (Shipley, Clanton, Miles Russell, Koivun etc), all the KFT grads and q-schoolers who need their points, the up-and-comers with a year or two under their belt, and some international flavor. Drop it in a major market like Detroit, or at a historical stop on the PGA Tour. Hope for some juice come Sunday afternoon.

3. I think we like the idea of team events more than we like the actual team events. Do we ever actually care more when these are put on? But the tours don’t exactly pick the primo stops and times to experiment with this format, like the sleepy-stretch slot for the Zurich Classic, a silly-season Grant Thornton, and this week’s LPGA Dow Championship, jammed in between majors, before the big trip to Europe, and held on a middling golf course.

4. I think Akshay Bhatia should probably be on the Presidents Cup team. For the Americans, this competition has always been the little brother to the Ryder Cup, and as such should serve as a sort of laboratory of experimentation. We saw that work well with Max Homa, who was allowed a chance to break in at the Quail Hollow Pres Cup. He did so in a big way there, then went on to come up huge at an away Ryder Cup in Rome. Bhatia may make the team on points, but if he doesn’t this is a great time to bring in some new, younger blood to fill two or even three roster spots. If it blows up, that’s obviously unfortunate. But what’s worse: a loss in Montreal or a loss at Bethpage?

This piece originally appeared in the Fried Egg Golf newsletter. Subscribe for free and receive golf news and insight every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.