The PGA Tour says big changes are coming. Here’s what they mean

On Wednesday at Pebble Beach, several PGA Tour executives met with a group of reporters — including our James Colgan and Dylan Dethier — to answer questions about changes coming to the PGA Tour. For months the Tour has been surveying golf fans for its “Fan Forward” initiative and now, they said, they’re ready to act. So what are they doing in what they called an “inflection year”? The Tour broke it into four categories. Dethier and Colgan run through their biggest takeaways below.

1. “Broadcast enhancements”

Dylan Dethier, GOLF senior writer: James, my biggest takeaway here was that the Tour at least knows your complaints about the broadcast. They know you hate how many commercials there are. They know you’re bored by tap-in putts. They know you like mic’d up conversations between players and caddies. (That one led to a laugh when Jordan Spieth was asked about it a few minutes after our meeting ended. “That was not directed at me. I think we have enough of that,” he said.) They know, in short, that you want to see more golf shots and more action. They also mentioned risk-reward shots and “consequential” golf shots — plus cut-line watch.

So now what? Now it sounds like they’ll try to change things for the better. Already they said they’ve practiced re-cutting broadcasts from 2024 using this research. It looks different. But I think it’s fair that we believe it when we see it — especially when it comes to the commercial load. What was your biggest learning here?

James Colgan, GOLF news and features editor: Well Dylan, I’ll say first that I’m impressed by the Tour’s thoroughness here. After an offseason dominated by headlines about drooping TV ratings and existential angst, the Tour enters 2025 with its largest-ever self-scouting report. More than 50,000 people responded to the “Fan Forward” survey, and (as a survey respondent I can confirm) no shortage of those answers involved potential fixes for TV.

Here’s the good news: The PGA Tour is proactively trying to fix golf on television in ways that will feel noticeable to fans at home. PGA Tour CMO Andy Weitz said the Tour is leaving no stone unturned in finding possible solutions, including literally focus-group testing various edits of pro golf tournament broadcasts to see which shot cadences resonate with fans. Based on what we heard, I think we’ll see leaner and faster PGA Tour telecasts in 2025 and beyond, with the possibility that sponsors could look to subtler forms of advertisement, marginally cutting down on the commercial load.

“I talked about sponsors being open to opportunities to be more additive to the broadcast,” Weitz said. “We’ve seen in recent years examples of that, where our partners have said, ‘We don’t want to interrupt.’ We understand that consumer behavior is changing, and that’s another place where we think we can test in ways that bring more live golf to our fans.”

The problem is that the big issues with the PGA Tour on TV might not be fixable with a survey or a shift on the margins. The PGA Tour’s TV rights make more than $700 million per year because networks get 18 minutes of ads per hour. The Tour is betting that a better 42 minutes of golf per hour will make the fans at home happier. And maybe they’re right – CBS’s transition into new leadership 4 years ago revolutionized their telecast and the public perception of it. But we haven’t seen enough proof (yet) that these fixes amount to more than a new coat of paint on a condemned building.

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2. “Competition adjustments”

Dethier: Okay, here we’re mostly talking about slow play — and honestly this is where this Q&A session directed most of its time and energy. A few highlights:

— Rulings really clog things up. The Tour intends to make more “virtual rulings” or at least get officials on the scene faster using its video review center back at Tour HQ in Florida.

— They’re going to test out rangefinders (distance-measuring devices, to get technical) beginning this year. Whether that’ll speed things up remains something of an open question, but Tour officials said they’re going to collect data at some upcoming events. The Zurich Classic was suggested as one example, but they didn’t get specific.

— There are just too many people on the golf course for things to flow. One quote that stood out: “slower players have been allowed to hide.” Next year’s reduced field sizes should help, as should their increased data collection.

— The Tour is finally considering naming and shaming. They know how long it takes every player on Tour to hit each type of shot. They’ve been handing out fines behind closed doors. And they’ve met with slow-play offenders to try to help them speed things up. But one tweak they’re considering is sharing that data publicly in the interest of greater transparency (and, theoretically, peer pressure).

James, what am I missing?

Colgan: You’re missing the biggest buzzword of our whole Wednesday: Average Stroke Time! The Tour said it has been secretly keeping this data for more than a decade now, but is considering opening up the books for the world to see the sport’s fastest and slowest players. Tour exec Tyler Dennis pointed out a few times that such transparency would bring the Tour “into line” with its sports league siblings. 

Distance Measuring Devices (or, as literally everyone else in the world calls them, rangefinders) are an interesting pace of play solution, but as our pal Max Greyserman pointed out on the range, your golf is only faster with them “if you know how to subtract.” A worthy exercise, but I’m dubious of a silver bullet fix here.

As for the issue of enforcement, Dennis also said that fines and other punishments have been handed out “behind the scenes” over the last several years. I’m not sure I’d expect that to change under the new world order. I think the Tour hopes that between a more frenetic TV product and marginally faster/slimmer tournaments, golf fans will get what they need without needing to further offend the Tour’s players.

(An aside: I’m obsessed with the Video Review Center — and yes I’m giving it the title-case treatment. It’s actually sort of insane that it took a $95 million production studio for the Tour to have a virtual command center for rulings, but I’m glad it exists.)

3. “Player content”

Dethier: I’m not really sure what we learned about this but they did reference Justin Thomas’ letter to fellow players about guys raising their hands to help out when it comes to the broadcast. They also mentioned that for young viewers, someone’s “on-course persona” is incredibly important in forming a connection with fans. I know, I know — you could have told them that. But while the idea of walk-and-talks might connect a viewer to a player, having a player wear his heart on his sleeve is probably a simpler way to get to the same spot.

What else, James?

Colgan: Dylan, I was actually kinda shocked by this information. According to the Tour, in the all-important 18-34 demo, golf fans listed their three most important factors in assessing fandom as 1. On-course personality 2. Off-course personality and 3. Competitive success. In other words, young sports fans care more about entertainment than they do about winning. 

The Tour is investing heavily in outlets that incentivize player personality (the TGL), but it’s a walking paradox for a corporate monolith like the Tour to own the means of player distribution. Young sports fans are almost universally allergic to the kind of image-conscious, overly sanitized content likely to be well-received within Tour HQ. 

Rawness and realness would go a long way in reaching this audience, but there’s only so much the Tour’s (excellent) player content team can do. This strikes me as one area where the Tour should be open to outside help.

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4. “On-site experience”

Dethier: Did we hear anything about on-site experience upgrades? I’m not being snarky here, James. I’m just not sure we really tackled this one.

Colgan: Yeah, only briefly touched on, but the universal agreement among the PGA Tour brass was that the competition is best with great players at great venues. As for whether the Tour would be willing to adopt the USGA and R&A’s forthcoming golf ball rollback that could allow it to attend new, great venues? The Tour’s higher-ups sidestepped the question.

“We’ve been closely collaborating with the USGA to understand it,” Dennis said. “That’s something that our board is keenly focused on, and we’re in the process of finalizing that analysis.”

5. “Format changes”

Dethier: I’m adding a fifth category because even though they didn’t specifically lay things out this way, this one seemed significant. James, the Tour Championship format could change very literally this year. It sounds like it could change dramatically, too. We’re talking match-play, bracket-style, big money. The data (I am now sick of that phrase) was clear that viewers want “consequential play” and that the competition “needs meaning” but that getting there still has to be an entertaining process. In other words, the idea of crowning the most deserving year-end champion may give way to a more entertaining finale.

Andy Weitz reiterated commissioner Jay Monahan’s statement from last month that “everything is on the table” and it does sound like they’ll continue to evaluate other formats and compositions. But for now the Tour Championship seems like the big one. James, is this a good thing? Are there other changes coming?

Colgan: Man, I think it’s a great thing. And I think the best piece of it is what Weitz said at the very end, which is that if there is universal agreement between the board and the players, a change to the Tour Championship could arrive as soon as this year. Expediency! Alignment! This is the kind of PGA Tour we’ve been looking for the last half-decade.

I like the idea of seeing Ryder Cup-style team golf at least once on the Tour calendar before the Ryder and Presidents Cups each year. I like the idea of match play-style competition to crown a season-ending champ. Golf is so much more than 72 holes of strokeplay, and the Tour finally seems to be recognizing that.

As for Weitz’s point about the Tour Championship needing “consequential play,” I’m with him! The Eagles might be about to win the Super Bowl with the third-easiest SoS and a cupcake walk through the NFC — does that make them unworthy champions? How about the Florida Panthers of 2023, who were NHL runners-up despite getting into the playoffs on a Wild Card spot?

The answer is no. Sometimes fluky stuff happens and the best competitors don’t win, but that doesn’t make a sport bad, or a playoff system flawed.