Charlie Rymer’s Got a Bone or Two to Pick with the PGA TOUR

For Charlie Rymer, Festivus is a January thing – at least the “airing of grievances” part, which he’s doing now with his latest column. What’s his beef with the PGA TOUR? Read on to find out!

By Charlie Rymer

The PGA TOUR can yell at me until they’re blue in the face. The execs can send out interweb pirates from their fancy new Global Home in Ponte Vedra to hijack my anemic bank accounts …

They can expunge my record of consecutive missed cuts or make it look like I never finished in the top 125 on the money list back in 1995. It was so long ago that I can’t find where I actually finished. Wikipedia only lists the top 10 that far back …

(By the way, Greg Norman was number one and I played with him Saturday and Sunday at Hilton Head. He didn’t beat me! But I didn’t beat him, either. Figure that one out for yourself.)

But here’s the deal. I don’t cover the PGA TOUR anymore, so I can tell the truth and still keep my job. I don’t have to sit in meetings where I’m told what I can and can’t say on broadcasts. By the way, most of it wasn’t a big deal and I didn’t have issues with it. But the fact that golf coverage now has zero editorial independence is a pretty big deal. For the fans, it makes the product more dull than it would be otherwise. And for the PGA TOUR, it allows them to control the messaging. And the argument is that it’s good for business. And maybe it is, up to a point. 

I remember the days when the PGA TOUR began in Hawaii the first full week of every year. I was with ESPN and the Tournament of Champions was where the season started. We would interrupt programming to cover the opening shot at Kapalua and celebrate that golf has begun. Golfers were snowed in across most of the mainland and tuning in to see the PGA TOUR start its season on Maui at a balmy 82 degrees was an annual tradition.

It was special, and there was a sense that everyone was watching. Now, it’s just a mid-season event.

If you don’t know, this past year the 2021-2022 PGA TOUR season started in September, the week before the Ryder Cup. Yeah, that’s right. And I’m pretty sure ESPN didn’t interrupt programming to cover the first shot of opening day on the PGA TOUR live from Silverado in Napa (a very nice place, by the way).

So what’s the answer? Fall events on the PGA TOUR are very important … to the players. If I was still playing I’d bust my hump to get off to a great start. It can set up the whole season. But the numbers show that these events aren’t important at all to the fans. More folks watch mushy love stories on the Hallmark Channel or Emeril’s chicken air fryer commercials than fall events on the PGA TOUR.

So why force it? Let golf rest. Have the events and put them on pay-per-view or a streaming service for the friends, family, and hardcore fans who want to watch. Give the sponsors a break. Let announcers give real opinions like this that can lead to larger discussions, and maybe a creative solution will present itself. But in the meantime, the PGA TOUR (at least for me) starts in January in Hawaii.

While I’m at it …

FedEx. It’s a great company that has a wonderful relationship with the PGA TOUR. They obviously don’t have the relationship with the TOUR just because they think the executives are their friends. Hell, they might very well be great friends.

FedEx has the relationship with the PGA TOUR because it’s a good business decision for them. Somewhere in Memphis, a bean counter does all the fancy math counting up “impressions” and distributing the beans across silos and gives the deal a thumbs up. Because of that (and if you haven’t noticed), there’s a season-long bonus pool where PGA TOUR players get astronomical bonuses for their finish on the final list. They have this thing called the FedEx Cup Playoffs that end the season, and somebody gets $15 million and a really cool trophy. I’m pretty sure the winner doesn’t care about the trophy.

Players finishing all the way to 125 on the list get nice bonuses, too. Great for the players. Great for FedEx. Great for the PGA TOUR execs who put the deal together.

Problem is, the event has an awkward format that has evolved over the years and every few years has to get reinvented. When it was first announced by former commissioner Tim Finchem at a press conference in Atlanta, he indicated that the PGA TOUR has the deal and will now get to work figuring out the format. Fifteen years later, they’re still figuring.

The latest version involves a staggered start to the Playoffs’ final event, where the leader begins TOUR Championship Week at 10-under and the chasers start farther back based on their standing entering the finals. For the most part, it’s actually worked and has certainly produced drama.

But imagine the challenge if you’re in charge of selling the latest iteration to golf fans, and the manner in which you tell that story is dictated to you. For example, the race is based totally on FedEx Cup points. Most PGA TOUR events award the winner 500 FedEx Cup points. Bigger events get more points. Other points are awarded based on your finish in the event. Therefore, the better you play and the more events you win during the season, the more points you earn.

At the end of the year, you exchange those points for dollars. It’s sorta like playing Skee-Ball at the arcade. Win enough tickets and you go home with the giant stuffed heffalump.

Here’s the problem. FedEx Cup points mean nothing to golf fans. Dollars mean everything to golf fans. Dollars are relatable. What’s more dramatic: “This putt is worth 1.2 million dollars!!!”  or “This putt is worth 219 FedEx Cup points”?

Let’s put this another way. I’m a big fan of Jersey Mike’s Subs. They make an awesome Italian sub. I have no idea how many subs I can buy with a single FedEx Cup point. I know exactly how many dollars I need to buy the #13 with chips and a drink.

Announcers want to cover the game in ways that are relatable to the fans. These days, in so many ways, that’s just not possible – and at some point, there will be a price to pay.

If you never hear from me again, you’ll know what happened. I hope there isn’t a dungeon under the new Global Home. But if there is, I’ll be playing cards and telling stories with Peter Kostis and Gary McCord.