Brian Rolapp’s biggest change for the PGA Tour is here
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Officially, new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp’s Players Championship press conference changed the future of pro golf as we know it.
Speaking from the podium at his first press conference as Tour leader at the Tour’s premier event, Rolapp revealed his shiny new six-pronged vision for the future. That vision is predicated on 120-player fields, 21- to 26-event seasons starting with a “marquee, first-time” event out west (likely the Pebble Beach Pro-Am), and a new playoff format that could include match play.
But if you watched Wednesday’s press conference with bright eyes, you may have overlooked the minutiae of the new schedule (which still needs to be approved by the Tour’s governing bodies) or the possibility of a world without sponsor exemptions. You probably weren’t even looking at Rolapp at all.
No, if you wanted to see the biggest change in Rolapp’s PGA Tour leadership, you actually had to look the other way, where nearly 1,100 people crammed into every corner of the shiny new building to see Rolapp speak.
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Public relations – good public relations – it’s about seeing things as dealing with things, and this week’s press conference view revealed an exciting new perspective for the Tour. Gone were the overhead lights of the press room at TPC Sawgrass; ingrained and over-repeated axioms from former Tour leader, Jay Monahan; and the overall feel of the Tour as something that can be fixed with a punchy catchphrase and a few hundred million in additional sponsorship dollars.
Instead, Rolapp seemed to be doing his best to imbue the Tour with a sense of power and influence, portraying upcoming innovations as a necessary phenomenon for a viable business rather than a brutal takeover of an otherwise thriving business model.
To deliver this message, he accepted the full weight of the Tour’s management class and many of his most influential colleagues. Representatives of Strategic Sports Group, DP World Tour CEO Guy Kinnings, and CBS Sports Sellers executive producer Shy were among the many golf dignitaries who arrived Wednesday to hear Rolapp speak in private for 47 minutes about what sounded like a very simple theory.
“The sports business is not that hard,” Rolapp said. “Just think like a fan, and nine and a half times out of ten, that’s probably the right answer.”
Of course, nothing about Rolapp’s vision will be as easy as Wednesday made it seem. He’ll need more than just good ideas to win the balance of tour players needed to make big changes – he’ll also need a shrewd hand, a strong sense of political instincts, and the kind of strong flexibility needed to bring together many different groups with vastly different priorities.
“You pull one string here and it touches another string,” Rolapp said. “It’s always kind of a balance.”
But anywhere A new vision for the future of Travel requires a change in the current era of Travel — a course correction of more than a few degrees on the business boom. It takes time and passion to change a company’s culture, but on Wednesday he showed that Rolapp has already done more than his fair share of pulling the wheel.
Time will tell if he is the leader to guide the Journey into a new, incredibly rich future. But more than any change announced at Wednesday’s press conference from The Players Championship, Rolapp showed he’s not afraid of the road ahead.
Or how to get there.
