Brian Rolapp has been confirmed as the new CEO of the PGA Tour, with the former NFL man coming in to replace Jay Monahan who will be stepping away at the end of 2026.
Rolapp joins the tour at a critical point, with the US-based circuit currently in talks with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, which backs the rival LIV Golf League, over how to end the fractured landscape of men’s professional golf.
He also has a lot of money to spend thanks to $1.5bn of investment from the Sports Strategic Group as well as plenty of other issues to solve like keeping his star players happy, creating the best schedule, improving the product for fans, the PGA Tour’s ongoing issue with slow play and many others.
So what would we like to see from Rolapp? Our writers have their say…
Jay Monahan wasn’t exactly universally popular, but you have to say that he’s left the tour in a very good way for Rolapp all things considered with the pandemic and LIV Golf’s emergence over the past five years.
The tour is, however, lacking some of the game’s biggest stars like Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka so that will be issue number one for him to solve. Can he sort out a deal with the PIF? If not, can he somehow coax these top players back from LIV Golf or at least allow them to play on both tours? I want to see DeChambeau, Rahm, Koepka, Niemann, DJ, Garcia and a handful of others back on the PGA Tour. So do fans and so do, I would think, SSG.
I am not massively worried about slow play but that is certainly a problem for many fans, while I think the Signature Event model is fundamentally flawed and needs to be sorted – as I have previously written. The fields need to be larger as the tour is full of world class players who can win in any given week, and every event needs a cut in my view.
I would also like to see him offer more cards to college stars via the PGA Tour University. Would Josele Ballester, who finished 3rd in PGA Tour U, have still gone to LIV Golf had he secured a PGA Tour card? Probably, based on his close ties with Sergio Garcia, but maybe not. He had to choose between the Korn Ferry Tour and LIV Golf, which isn’t the hardest of decisions. Had a full PGA Tour card been on offer, as it was to Ludvig Aberg, Luke Clanton, Jackson Koivun and Gordon Sargent,…
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