Better PGA Tour broadcasts are here but it didn’t need to happen like this

Fifteen years ago, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman interviewed Barnabas Suebu, the governor of an Indonesian province that was facing a dire climate crisis. A Suebu axiom became a rallying cry for effecting change even when the prevailing mindset is ossified: “Think big, start small, act now—before everything becomes too late.”

As mantras go, Jay Monahan could do worse than hang it above the door at the PGA Tour’s Global Home in hopes that what has taken root during his organization’s current crisis will continue to flourish when the threat passes.

One of the Tour’s fledgling efforts to start small and act now was seen during Friday’s third round of the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, when Max Homa wore a microphone for a ‘walk and talk’ with CBS Sports. The only players that viewers are accustomed to hearing during tournament action are those who washed-up in the booth or hobbled into a headset, so the shock of access to someone actually competing – heck, contending – might have been enough to topple every groaning barcalounger in The Villages.

Engaging, honest and wry, Homa is a perfect guinea pig for this experiment. Regardless of how compelling the content was in the moment, it’s mere occurrence stands as evidence of two things: how little it really takes to elevate the golf viewing experience, and how long that enhancement was forestalled by the Tour’s corporate killjoy attitude.

This moment with Max didn’t happen now because those in charge of broadcasting golf have never considered how to better do their jobs, or couldn’t be bothered pitching fresh approaches to Ponte Vedra. Every executive involved in televising the Tour has a tale about how their effort to enliven telecasts was stonewalled. Chalk it up to a combination of factors —corporate complacency, a culture of arrogance, a milquetoast reluctance to inconvenience the very players they’re rewarding with millions of dollars annually.

Monahan has lately taken to framing the battle with LIV Golf as one of product versus product, a stance he can only adopt with confidence after the Tour belatedly grasped the extent to which it was shortchanging fans, never mind players. Even the commissioner’s loyalists know that it took a rival product – fortuitously for them, a lousy and amoral one – to force an upgrade of the Tour’s offering, both to members and consumers. Because change came at gunpoint – or, more accurately, at the point of…