You’d be forgiven if Chris Gotterup’s win at the Sony Open didn’t cross your desk in real time.
New PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp will understand. Depending on his television setup, he might have even been in the same boat.
And that’s why he wants things to change. Because the chances are that Rolapp’s attention, like yours, wasn’t solely locked in on Gotterup as he fired a Sunday 64 to claim his third-career PGA Tour title. It might not have been there at all.
Because just as Gotterup was putting the finishing touches on his season-opening win, something else was calling — something 4,800 miles away from Waialae Country Club.
There in the freezing Chicago cold was Bears second-year quarterback Caleb Williams preparing to author the final moment of divine intervention in an improbable season. As Gotterup was tapping in and basking in the Hawaiian sun, Williams evaded Los Angeles Rams defenders and heaved a 40-yard prayer toward the Soldier Field end zone. Fifty-one air yards later — just a tad shorter than Gotterup’s final full swing of the tournament — the ball landed in tight end Cole Kmet’s hands, sending the game to overtime and the entire city of Chicago into a state of delirium.
A few minutes later, there was Gotterup getting emotional in an interview with Golf Channel about his journey from almost outside the top 200 in the world to a three-time PGA Tour winner.
You might have missed that, too. Because the Bears won the toss, deferred and eventually lost.
Of course, Rolapp understands all of this better than most. He knows that you might not have watched all or any of Gotterup’s win. There are countless things vying for our attention, pulling us in a number of different directions at once. Streaming services, text messages, emails, Slack notifications, push notifications, the list goes on. When the NFL is one of those things, Rolapp, who made his career as commissioner Roger Goodell’s No. 2 at the NFL, knows it’s hard to break away from the gravity of “The Shield.”
As does Tiger Woods, who, along with Rolapp, is in charge of shaping the future of the PGA Tour.
“That’s one of the reasons why we quit playing in September and October and even early November back when I was playing in my early days at the Tour Championship,” Woods said at the Hero World Challenge, alluding to the NFL. “There’s this thing with ‘The Shield’ that’s out there that’s influential.”
Rolapp promised “significant change” when he took over, and the PGA Tour schedule — both in volume and cadence — appears to be at the top of the to-do list.
Rolapp is now in charge of a for-profit entity, and his job is to deliver returns to investors at Strategic Sports Group and, eventually, pay out equity grants to players. To do that, Rolapp promised to look at the entire picture and make the changes necessary to improve the PGA Tour product and increase growth.
“Look, the sports business is not that complicated,” Rolapp said. “You get the product right, you get the right partners, your fans will reward you with their time because they’re telling you it’s good and they want more of it, and then the commercial and the business part will take care of itself.”
A shorter PGA Tour schedule seems to be on the horizon. Harris English hinted at it during the RSM Classic.
Rolapp is interested in creating a league built on parity, scarcity and an easy-to-follow season that leads into a postseason. The narratives will be easy to follow and the stakes clear.
If that sounds familiar, it should. The NFL has been something Rory McIlroy and others have long pointed to as a model for professional golf to emulate.
“I think the great thing about football is that it’s always in demand,” McIlroy said in 2014. “People, once the Super Bowl finishes, they can’t wait for football season to start up again. That’s the great thing about it.”
Eleven years later, Woods echoed that point. Going from 38 scattered events with the majors in the middle to a shorter, more streamlined season should help increase the appetite for professional golf, as it does for football. It is, at the very least, sound logic.
“The scarcity thing is something that I know scares a lot of people,” Woods said, “but I think that if you have scarcity at a certain level, it will be better because it will drive more eyes because there will be less time.”
Emulating part of the NFL is one thing, but not competing directly with it for the finite “attention” resource is arguably a bigger driver behind the rumored schedule change.
The NFL has loomed over professional golf for years. The season used to be 11 months long. Then, it was shortened to end in September. Then, the PGA Tour made changes to ensure the FedEx Cup Playoffs ended before the pigskins go in the air in September. Now, Rolapp, Woods and the “Future Competition Committee” appear to be heading toward a post-Super Bowl start to the PGA Tour season.
“Anybody who’s in the sports business, their general competition is for the mind share of sports fans and for their time,” Rolapp said. “[Sports leagues want to capture attention] in a complicated world that is increasingly disrupted by technology, where you have a million things to do with your time, a million alternatives.”
There’s an argument that golf shouldn’t tuck its tail and run from football. Golf is a global game, and while America might be NFL-obsessed, the rest of the world is not. That’s all true, but Rolapp left a league that commands eyeballs and is now leading one trying to find more. America is where those eyeballs and television deals reside.
“I didn’t cheer for teams, I cheered for television ratings. So whoever is behind, that’s who I’ll cheer for. How’s that?” Rolapp said of his rooting interests at the Tour Championship.
At his old job, Rolapp would have been doing cartwheels as Williams’ heave found Kmet. At his new one, the final Bears miracle was likely only further evidence of what he already knew.
A PGA Tour schedule change is coming — potentially in 2027 — and don’t be surprised when it does.
Just remember Williams launching a prayer into the Chicago night — because on Sunday, that’s what almost everyone, almost certainly Rolapp included, was watching.
