Major winner has idea to shake up PGA Tour events

One of golf’s better competitors has an idea for PGA Tour tournaments. 

Competition.  

Talking on the most-recent episode of GOLF’s “Subpar” podcast, Geoff Ogilvy said he knows change is coming to the Tour. There’ve been hints at what that might be. Perhaps a later start to the season. Maybe fewer events. 

And here’s the 2006 U.S. Open winner’s thought:

Pit tournaments against each other. Competition, as they say, breeds success.

“I would like to see the tournaments sort of compete against the other tournaments to be better,” Ogilvy said on “Subpar.” “I’d like to see the American Express try to be better than Torrey and Torrey try to be better than Phoenix and L.A. try to be better than Phoenix. If you have a situation where tournaments are competing, I mean, the players are going to win, everyone’s going to benefit. 

“When you just say, you guys are going to be the big ones and you guys are going to be the small ones, I don’t know. I’d rather see — the Masters is the Masters because they’ve done an amazing job for 100 years. Phoenix is a great tournament because it’s an unbelievable organization that there’s a lot of people who put a lot of time and a lot of effort in making that — it’s not just a tournament, it’s just an event and it’s just a massive event. And if you had to put in that sort of effort to sort of be better than all the other tournaments, then they would all be competing against each other and then they would all fight to be special. 

“There’s always going to be special events. People want to come to Phoenix because it’s an amazing atmosphere. Memorial is a great event because it’s a great course and you get treated so well and it feels special, don’t it? But they’ve done a great job at making it feel special. I think you put a bit of competition in the tournaments and they all try to outdo each other, I think everybody’s going to win.”

Ogilvy then went further. 

It’d be interesting, he said, to see tournaments compete for broadcast rights.  

“I don’t know if that adds up to as much,” Ogilvy said, “but if you had to be better than last week and next week because Amazon or Netflix or CBS or whoever it was, we want that tournament because that tournament’s always great on TV, well, the next week’s going to have to improve their product, they have to get better because they want to do that. And I think there would be such competition between the tournaments that the beneficiaries would be the players and the spectators and the TV audience because everyone would be competing to be better than last week and next week. 

“Again, I’m way out of my lane and I don’t understand how all that stuff works. But competition is good, and I think we’ve chased this sugar hit with if you don’t have a field, you don’t have a tournament. And we’ve just bought fields effectively with money, and I don’t think money is as exciting as prestige and history.”

Editor’s note: To watch the entire episode with Ogilvy, please click here or scroll immediately below. 

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