Kapalua Event Saved; Joint PGA Tour-LPGA Tournament Of Champions Has "Not Materialized"

In reporting on the PGA Tour landing new sponsor Sentry for the Tournament of Champions, Doug Ferguson noted this about the efforts to turn this into a joint PGA Tour-LPGA Tour winners-only kick off event.

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan had said last year that the tour was contemplating a scenario where the LPGA Tour and the PGA Tour play a winners-only format at the same venue. “That has not materialized here,” Monahan said.

Meanwhile, the Sony Open in Honolulu is the week after the Tournament of Championship. Its title sponsorship ends in 2018. For years there was concern that if one of the tournaments had left, it would be more difficult to stage the other as a single event in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

“We have been playing golf in Hawaii for over 50 years,” Monahan said. “And the two tournaments present a strong start to the calendar year that we looking forward to continuing.”

It would have been a fun idea and may still happen, though the release notes the event's playing in January 2018 but it sounds like it may have to be nimble beyond that year.

For Immediate Release:

Sentry Becomes New Title Sponsor of Tournament of Champions
Leading insurance company signs 5-year deal to sponsor winners-only event at Kapalua

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Florida, and STEVENS POINT, Wisconsin (August 16, 2017) – The PGA TOUR and Sentry, one of the largest business-focused mutual insurance companies in the United States, today announced a five-year agreement making Sentry the new title sponsor of the exclusive winners-only Tournament of Champions at Kapalua Resort in Hawaii.

The newly named Sentry Tournament of Champions will maintain its traditional spot as the first tournament in January 2018 when the 2017-18 PGA TOUR schedule resumes following the holiday break. The agreement extends through the 2021-22 season.

“Sentry Insurance is proud to partner with the PGA TOUR to sponsor the Tournament of Champions, held on beautiful Maui,” said Pete McPartland, Sentry chairman of the board, president, and CEO. “This tournament and its champions format is the ideal way to more broadly introduce Sentry to the business insurance audience.”

While this represents Sentry’s first major sports sponsorship, it has been involved with golf since 1984 when the company built SentryWorld, Wisconsin’s first destination golf course. Sponsoring the Sentry Tournament of Champions is considered a natural next step for Sentry, providing an opportunity to reach a wide business audience.

“We are thrilled to welcome Sentry to the PGA TOUR and become its first major venture into sports sponsorship,” said Brian Oliver, PGA TOUR Senior Vice President of Sponsorship & Partnership. “Sentry is highly respected as a company that is dedicated to its employees, its customers and embraces the spirit of giving back. So, we view this as a relationship between two organizations that hold common values.”

Sentry assumes sponsorship of a tournament that dates to 1953, when it was introduced at Las Vegas’ Desert Inn Country Club as an event for winners from the previous season. The Tournament of Champions remained at Desert Inn CC until 1967, when it moved to Stardust Country Club. The tournament moved from Las Vegas in 1969 to La Costa Country Club in Carlsbad, California, where it remained for 30 years before relocating to its current home at Kapalua Resort on the island of Maui.

As might be expected with a winners-only format, the Sentry Tournament of Champions has a rich history of champions, from World Golf Hall of Fame members to modern-day stars, as represented by just the past five winners: defending champion Justin Thomas, a four-time winner this season, including at Sunday’s PGA Championship; Jordan Spieth (2016); Patrick Reed (2015); Zach Johnson (2014); and Dustin Johnson (2013).

Poll: Parsing The PGA-Players Championship Trade & Next Moves

I've been a bit leery of the proposed Players for PGA trade because of potential issues with finding quality venues and locales for a May PGA. On the PGA Tour side, reducing the wraparound season to finish before Labor Day has made fantastic sense from day one, but we are clearly a long ways from sorting out the particulars. Rex Hoggard tries here for GolfChannel.com.

Though as Bob Harig notes in his assessment at ESPN.com, the puzzle pieces are tough to put together with World Golf Championship events in tough places on the schedule.

But this is PGA week and the focus in rolling this out was on the major championship. My review here for Golfweek gets into some of the confirmed elements that have me (and I think) others feeling good about what is a huge change in the Grand Slam ebb and flow.

Alex Miceli at MorningRead.com considered the worldwide ramifications and interestingly the European Tour is already positioning itself in interesting ways.

It's a basic question, but after hopefully taking in some of the coverage today online or at Golf Channel, do you like the switch?

Do you like the PGA's planned move to May 2019?

Yes

No

 

pollcode.com free polls

BMW PGA Announces Move To September Before Ink Is Dry On PGA Move To May Deal!

Pelley!

Wasting little time...about 10 minutes to be exact...the European Tour announced a shift in the BMW PGA Championship's date to September.

I'd give then an "8" for passive aggressiveness, even this could end up being a great switch.

With the PGA Championship moving to May and the Players to March, the European Tour immediately seized on the likely shortening of the PGA Tour playoff season to push their marquee event into a month where the field stands to improve. Furthermore, the European Tour's Race To Dubai should also benefit from the U.S. calendar changes.

More on the PGA move to May later, as we learned a few fun things in today's press conference that I'm writing about for Golfweek. In the mean time, for immediate release... 

The European Tour today announces that the BMW PGA Championship will move from its current date in May to a new September slot from the 2019 season onwards.

The prestigious Championship, which is part of the European Tour’s Rolex Series, will be played at Wentworth Club from May 24-27, 2018, before moving to September for its 65th anniversary edition the following year.

The move comes following news announced earlier today that the 2019 US PGA Championship will move from its traditional August date into May, with The Players Championship on the PGA Tour moving from May to March.

The specific date of the 2019 BMW PGA Championship will be released in due course but it will be central to a strong and robust end of season schedule on the European Tour.

Keith Pelley, Chief Executive of the European Tour, said: “Significant changes to the global golfing calendar have given us the opportunity to move the BMW PGA Championship to a more favourable date from 2019 onwards.

“Wentworth Club is an iconic location in the realm of British sport and the BMW PGA Championship is always hugely popular with the public as was seen in May when it launched our Rolex Series with 110,000 spectators in attendance over the course of the week.

“This is a new chapter for the event but we expect similar interest in the autumn, as was shown historically by the World Match Play Championship when it was played at Wentworth Club at that time of the year.”

The BMW PGA Championship was the first of eight Rolex Series events to be played on the European Tour’s International Schedule in 2017, all of which are part of the Race to Dubai. Sweden’s Alex Noren claimed the title in May, overturning a seven shot deficit with a stunning final round of 62 to win by two strokes over the West Course, which had undergone a multi-million pound revamp in the period between the 2016 and 2017 Championships.

Noren joined an illustrious Roll of Honour for the Championship which includes Seve Ballesteros, Arnold Palmer, Tony Jacklin, Sir Nick Faldo, Bernhard Langer, Ian Woosnam, José María Olazábal, Colin Montgomerie, Luke Donald and Rory McIlroy.

Rolex Effect? European Tour On Ranking Points Streak

Alex Miceli at MorningRead.com suggests we're seeing the first sign of success for European Tour Chief Keith Pelley's Rolex Series, with the three lead-up events to The Open offering more world ranking points than their PGA Tour counterparts.

Miceli writes:

Not since 2010, when the European Tour’s BMW International Open offered the same ranking points as the Travelers Championship on the PGA Tour, followed by France and Scotland outpointing AT&T National and John Deere, has Europe proved to be a better draw than America.

The Rolex Series, which consists of eight lucrative events offering purses of at least $7 million throughout the European Tour season, has allowed Keith Pelley, the tour’s chief executive officer, to create an environment in which European players want to return home to compete.

“There's no question Rolex has come in and has allowed us to elevate the tournaments,” Pelley said of the Swiss watchmaker’s sponsorship. “As the title partner of the Rolex Series, they believed in the vision … but what we have invested in the infrastructure to make it a much stronger and a better tournament.” 

Here were the points breakdown on fields for those events:

HNA Open De France 270 vs Quickens Loans National 229
Dubai Duty Free Irish Open 288 vs Greenbrier Classic 174
AAM Scottish Open 342 vs  John Deere Classic 140

In another nice sign for the tour's ability to intrigue players to tee it up more often, Pat Perez has joined the tour after rising to 42nd in the world ranking, joining Kevin Na and Japan’s Hideto Tanihara in taking up similar affiliate memberships with the European Tour this season.

Perez said: “It’s probably the first time I have been in a position to do become a European Tour member in my career. I’ve always stayed in the US. So I figured, after I won and got to the top 50 in the world, I might try and travel a bit and see some new parts of the world and play against other great players. I wanted to play the European Tour and become more of a global player.

“I am going to try and broaden my horizons, go to places such as Dubai and Malaysia, and see where I fall."

Ratings: Follow Up To Silliness Of Competing Golf Tournaments

Paulsen at SportsMediaWatch.com scrutinzed ShowBuzzDaily.com's ratings roundup and noted that the KPMG Women's PGA Championshp fared well against final rounds of the PGA Tour and U.S. Senior Open.

The 0.6 rating on NBC was up slightly even though it featured a much longer telecast this year.

Final round coverage of the Women’s PGA Championship, the second major of the LPGA Tour season, earned a 0.6 final rating and 840,000 viewers on NBC Sunday afternoon — flat in ratings and up 1% in viewership from last year, when NBC aired just 90 minutes of coverage (0.6, 829K), and up a tick and 21% respectively vs. 2015 (0.5, 695K).

It was the largest audience for the tournament in at least five years, and likely further back.

The KPMG beat the U.S. Senior Open telecast but as this chart shows, all of the events on at the same time diverted eyeballs and, as noted here, would have been better served with more coordinated finish times and/or days for the benefit of all.

Note To Five Families: Kang, Perry, Stanley Win Impressively; But Pro Golf Shoots Itself In The Foot Today

While the 2017 editions of the KPMG Women's PGA, U.S. Senior Open and Quicken Loans National probably won't be talked about a century from now, each featured enough intrigue for a sports fan to savor. Yet each started and finished at almost the same time on a summer Sunday in the United States.

Former USGA communications director Joe Goode wondered if this was a good or bad thing.

.@GeoffShac @USGA @PGATOUR @LPGA simultaneously airing golf on 3 separate networks. Flawed scheduling or smart programming?

— Joe Goode (@JLGoode3) July 2, 2017

Put me down for seriously flawed programming.

Even with the July 4th holiday falling on a Tuesday, therefore opening up Monday July 3rd as a de facto holiday, three golf tournaments went head to head for no good reason. With each played at compelling venues that alone would attract viewers (Salem CC, Olympia Fields, TPC Potomac), they competed for viewers on a Sunday that not only failed fans, but will fuel the ratings decline narrative.

Next time the five families meet, perhaps they can bring calendars along to their meetings and kick around a way to spread the viewing love. A Monday finish most likely would not have hurt any one of the three, particularly the Quicken Loans, where galleries were thin.

More importantly, tours that too often serve the needs of players over fans fail their players by asking them to compete for the public's attention.

End of rant, beginning of celebration.

The best story of the day and one of the most heartwarming of the year revolved around Danielle Kang breaking through to win her first LPGA Tour event and more importantly, first professional major.

A two-time U.S. Amateur champion, Kang's road to professional success was derailed by heartbreak over the loss of her father to cancer.

Randall Mell writes for GolfChannel.com that Kang would have given anything to have the person who caddied for her in those U.S. Amateur wins present for the pro breakthrough.

“I don't know what it would have felt like to win right away as a rookie,” Kang said. “However, if I could wish anything, I would wish that my dad saw me win.”

Kang’s father died from brain and lung cancer during her second LPGA season.

K.S. Kang was Danielle’s caddie for her U.S. Women’s amateur victories in 2010 and ‘11

“I think that it's been a really difficult road for me for the past four or five years,” Kang said. “It’s life, though. You have to pick yourself up, and you have to keep working hard at it, and then believe in what you're doing, and not letting yourself down.”

Bill Fields of ESPNW on the important role of Kang's Web.com Tour playing brother Alex.

When the tour made its Asia swing that fall, K.S., despite being gravely ill with brain cancer that metastasized to his lungs, watched Danielle play in two events. Three days after traveling to Japan to be with her at the Mizuno Classic in November, he went into a coma. After his death, the bond between his children, already strong, increased. The siblings communicate a couple of dozen times most days, according to their mother, and Alex offered Danielle valuable strategic advice about Olympia Fields.

"She was not the same girl, but her brother, he kept taking her out to play," Lee said of the period after K.S. died. "Her brother is like her dad almost."

If you were touched by Kang's triumph over Brooke Henderson, you won't want to miss Beth Ann Nichols' Golfweek story that includes some great behind the scenes insights, including a note from mom, Kang's Sherwood CC fans that texted after the win, and her tight bond with Michelle Wie.

A teary-eyed Bo Wie, mother of Michelle, came over a few minutes later for a hug. Michelle Wie and Kang are so close they started a lifestyle blog together, though they’ve been lax in updating it lately. There’s certainly something worthy of writing about now.

Wie, the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open winner, said they’ve been in constant contact this week.

“If I don’t text her in six hours she sends me 50 messages,” Wie said, grinning.
In fact, they’ve formed their own book club of sorts. A restless Danielle tried to get lost in the book prior to the final round.

The final round highlights from Golf Central:

As for the other events, Kenny Perry took home the U.S. Senior Open trophy in a two-man battle with Kirk Triplett at charming Salem Country Club. 

Jeff Babineau's Golfweek.com account on the incredible, record-breaking performance.

And Kevin Casey has the lowdown on Kyle Stanley's playoff win over Charles Howell at the Quicken Loans National.

As Steve DiMeglio points out from Maryland, the playoff loss for Howell was his first start in 9 weeks.

Is Tiger's Quicken Loans National Doomed In Schedule Revamp?

Sure sounds like it if you read from DMV insiders John Feinstein and Ryan Ballengee who each lay out the relatively short history and future of the PGA Tour stop that was started by Tiger Woods.

With the PGA Tour needing to contract to make a Labor Day conclusion work and Quicken Loans having not renewed sponsorship of the stop, the signs are not encouraging. Throw in multiple other anecdotal elements--including the Woods Foundation's involvement in the Los Angeles stop--and we could be watching the last or second-to-last playing of the tour's (mostly) D.C. stop.

All of this is set against a backdrop of a PGA Tour looking to shed a few stops to make the math work on a schedule overhaul moving the Players to March, the PGA Championship to May and a conclusion by early September.

Feinstein reports for Golf World that Congressional will not host the "National" again after contractually obligated playings in 2018 and 2020, all in hopes of luring a USGA event again.

While the members agreed to the deal, it was only to host in alternating years — 2016, 2018 and 2020. And once that contract is up, the tournament won’t return to Congressional. The board is now pursuing a U.S. Open, with USGA executive director Mike Davis telling it flatly that the association won’t even consider the course unless the tour event goes away.

But the event requires a sponsor and Feinstein says it won't be Quicken Loans.

With the contract up after this week’s event, there has been no sign from Quicken Loans officials that it plans to renew. There also has been talk that company CEO Dan Gilbert wants to take his money to Michigan, where he lives, to bring the tour back to his home state, which hasn’t had a tour event since the Buick Open outside Flint went away in 2009.

Ballengee's GolfNewsNet.com report pieces together the other anecdotal signs of an impending demise for the Quicken Loans National. With rumblings out of Minnesota about a likely new tour stop there, perhaps sponsored by a current sponsor, Ballengee writes:

At first glance, the only events on the schedule that appear vulnerable are the Quicken Loans National, with an expiring deal, and The Greenbrier Classic, which is locked up through 2021.

Meanwhile, Tiger Woods' TGR Live now runs the Genesis Open at Riviera near Los Angeles, a tournament with an established, legendary pedigree of winners and located in Woods' home state. The field is also imminently better than the National each year.

Quicken Loans, if they choose to remain a title sponsor, could latch on to the as-of-now sponsor-less Houston Open or taking over the Tournament of Champions from SBS (which sublet their deal to Hyundai before this year), both with better schedule slots and fields.

This year's even features one of the weaker fields in modern memory, with just four major winners and one top ten player. Tiger has stepped away for his back and addiction rehab as well.

SBD On 2017 PGA Tour Sunday Ratings Drop

Thanks to reader PG for this piece by Sports Business Daily’s Thomas Leary, who considers the PGA Tour joining "a growing list of sports properties to see a decline in audience in ‘17."

Many noteworthy points are raised in exploring the 18-week straight dip in Sunday ratings, including digital viewers not counted by Nielsen ratings and similar ratings drops in most sports. Not mentioned: fatigue from the wraparound season (aka over-saturation), the length of telecasts saturating numbers while also testing a short-attention span society, cord-cutting and a President Trump distraction effect.

Mostly though, the story suggests that no one has come close to replacing Tiger both as a charismatic figure and dominant force who people love watching win.

Colvin Sports Network Founder & President Bill Colvin, a veteran of the golf hospitality space, noted when Woods was winning majors at a consistent clip, it was easy for fans to keep track of the sport’s most popular player. Colvin: “Now there’s all the good young guys, but there’s so many to keep track of and all relatively speaking are inconsistent. There’s no momentum built on one storyline right now in golf.”

More PGA Tour Live numbers!

Total visits to PGATour.com this year are up 10%, while PGATour Live subscribers (+33%) and streams (+42%) are also up. CBS and NBC/Golf Channel’s combined live streams are up 16% this year, and the Tour’s social channels have grown by 36% over last year. "It’s not as if our fans aren’t consuming our content,” Votaw said. However, he conceded social and digital viewing "are our snacks, and the TV product is our meal.”

This is a point worth considering on digital growth, though I would say slightly refuted by the success of specialized feeds for The Masters and US Open.

As for its digital platforms, Pilson said golf “probably isn’t getting a bump” because its core audience is “older than almost any other sport.” Pilson: “I’ve yet to see a 60-year-old checking his mobile phone for the golf telecast. My guess is that the benefits that digital is providing for leagues like the NFL and NBA isn’t accruing for golf.”

Perhaps for mainstream audiences, but I think we all would agree golf has an opportunity with specialized feeds that are more engaging than any other sport can offer: featured groups, featured holes and other niche elements that make for great viewing on the office computer!

Video: PGA CEO Explains Possible May Move To Members

PGA of America CEO Pete Bevacqua lays out the timing, thinking and state of discussions to move the PGA Championship to May in coordination with the PGA Tour. The comments were directed at PGA of America members.

It was most intriguing to hear his comments on the changing sports landscape, which I take as he, Jay Monahan and others genuinely seeing that the long term health of their events will be strengthened by a tighter golf window before fall sports take over.

PGA CEO Pete Bevacqua from PGA of America on Vimeo.

TV Golf Viewers Still Skew Old, But At Least We're Not Wrestling!

In "Going gray: Sports TV viewers skew older" Sports Business Daily's John Lombardo & David Broughton return to their 2006 survey of sports viewers and find that the audience is getting older across the board.

Golf, naturally, tops most of their lists with a median age of 64. Only one sports saw their median age drop, and golf was not greying the fastest (that wrestling!).

The study, conducted exclusively for SportsBusiness Journal by Magna Global, looked at live, regular-season game coverage of major sports across both broadcast and cable television in 2000, 2006 and 2016. It showed that while the median age of viewers of most sports, except the WTA, NBA and MLS, is aging faster than the overall U.S. population, it is doing so at a slower pace than prime-time TV.

Of course, as fascinating as the story is, I can only imagine the meetings this week where this comes up and nervous execs obsess about how we get the kids in our sports. The answers aren't pretty unless you see an opportunity here to tighten broadcast windows up a tad.

The trends show the challenges facing leagues as they try to attract a younger audience and ensure long-term viability, and they reflect the changes in consumption patterns as young people shift their attention to digital platforms.

“There is an increased interest in short-term things, like stats and quick highlights,” said Brian Hughes, senior vice president of audience intelligence and strategy at Magna Global USA. “That availability of information has naturally funneled some younger viewers away from TV.”

We also got some PGA Tour Live numbers out of this effort, so there is that. From the PGA Tour's Ty Votaw:

Votaw also noted that audience trends today can’t be solely focused on the linear TV viewer and pointed to a younger audience on tour-run digital properties.

“When you go to PGATour.com, the median age is 55 and for our PGATour Live (over-the-top network), the median age is 20 years younger than on broadcast,” he said.

That still puts the median at 44, which PGA Tour Live is still largely watched by Non-People-Who-Matter viewers (aka millennials).

There were several charts with the piece, but the one showing golf not graying quite so badly proved eye-opening given the supposed hipster status of pro wrestling and UFC.

Jack Welcomes PGA Championship Move To May, Floats Muirfield Village As PGA Option

ESPN.com's Bob Harig on Jack Nicklaus' extensive comments endorsing a Players move to March, a PGA Championship to May and the end of the golf season by Labor Day weekend.

Interestingly, in the remarks I saw, Mr. Nicklaus suggested much of the decision-making at this point is in PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan's court, not the PGA Of America's.

Harig writes:

That would make The Open the last major championship and would clear the way for the PGA Tour to conclude its season earlier by moving its FedEx Cup playoff series, with the idea of finishing by Labor Day.

"To do that, [Monahan] has many moving parts,'' Nicklaus said. "But he wanted us to know he wasn't going to slight us in any way, he wants to encourage us and promote us.''

Nicklaus noted the "dismal" Tour Championship ratings and endorsed the new order of the majors, including the tighter window for play.

"It would bring the majors a little closer together,'' he said. "April [Masters], May [PGA], June [U.S. Open] and July [The Open]. I think that's good, too.''

In a suggestion that we could end up with only May PGA Championships in Olympic years, Nicklaus said he has discussed swapping out a Memorial for a PGA with the five families.

Nick Menta writing for GolfChannel.com:

If Muirfield were to host a future PGA, that would necessitate either a temporary change of venue for the Memorial or, as Nicklaus brought up himself, “a year off.”

“If we took a year off the Memorial Tournament, I’m not sure I’d want to do that or not. I’m not sure that’s what we want for our brand, our tournament. But whatever is best for the game of golf and however it works, I’m more than happy to about it and try to do it.”

Pressed on the issue of a PGA Championship at Muirfield later on, Nicklaus clarified, “I said we would consider it.”

Euro Tour Chief Anticipates PGA Championship Move, Agrees BMW PGA Would Work Well In September

European Tour Chief Keith Pelley visited Rich Lerner and Frank Nobilo during round two of the 2017 BMW PGA and mostly talked his new "product" geared at the kids.

“But golf needs something else, it needs something to attract a younger generation.”

At the 11:00 mark he is asked about the possible impact of a Players/PGA Championship switch on his tour and, specifically, the BMW PGA.

If in fact if the PGA Championship moved to May, which I anticipate that it will, we will have to look where is the best fit for the BMW PGA Championship. But obviously we would do everything around the majors.

Nobilo then made the case for early autumn at Wentworth and Pelley agreed that the conditions would be ideal, but lightly walking back how well the technology of maintenance now makes the current date fine, too. But it was pretty apparent that the European Tour sees an an ideal early fall slot for this event.

The full interview:

Euro Tour Chief Expecting Players/PGA Move Decision By August, Which Suggests The Verdict Is In

European Tour Chief Keith Pelley believes that a decision is coming this August on a blockbuster trade that has the Players moving to March, the PGA to May and three prospects going to an undisclosed tour.

Will Gray on the Chief's comments this week at the BMW PGA, which will be impacted should the PGA Championship move to May.

"It will depend on what they do in 2019," Pelley said. "The PGA of America says they're going to determine whether the PGA Championship is moved to May by the end of August this year. If that's the case, we are going to have to look at everything. We have plans right now, but there is no doubt that if those changes happen, the 2019 and 2020 schedule will be considerably different to 2018."

A cynical mind might say that given August being the PGA Championship's date, a decision has already been made subject to a few contract signings and conference calls.

Given the domino effect this decision will have on golf tournament schedules and other sporting events, there will certainly be added intrigue in Charlotte.