Does The Future Of Golf Lie In A More Varied Calendar?

As we head towards the end of the year, the future of the elite game seems almost as uncertain as ever, with a framework agreement between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund that finances LIV Golf still being thrashed out that could have huge ramifications, at least for men's game. 

While we await news on that in the New Year, though, one thing that’s certain is that innovation is coming into the game in the form of new competitions and experimental formats on existing circuits. But will this increasingly diversified calendar be one of the key ways the game evolves in the future?

One of the new contests won’t even take place on a real course. Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods’ TGL, which begins in January, will see 24 PGA Tour players compete each Monday from a purpose-built arena in Florida, with the action broadcast on prime-time TV in a clear effort to introduce the game to a wider audience.

One of its players, Adam Scott, has no doubt it represents an idea whose time has come. He explained: “I think it’s fitting in perfectly with kind of where everything is going in the world. This is another way to showcase the game and a game that is played differently by a lot of people now."

Scott made the comments while preparing for the PGA Tour’s ZOZO Championship in Japan, and he admitted the kind of tech-focused affair promised by TGL should appeal in that area of the world – and among younger people in general.

“I know a lot of people certainly in this region of the world are spending a lot of time playing golf in a simulator," he said. "This is a little bit more extreme version of a simulator, but should be a lot of fun, a chance to kind of showcase some of the top players in the world and maybe a bit more of their personality in a different environment on a Monday night.”

That desire to allow players to let their personalities shine certainly seems to be increasing. You can even find evidence of it on the apparently more stuffy PGA Tour, which, earlier in the year, allowed players including Billy Horschel and Max Homa to be mic’d up during tournaments.

Patrick Cantlay, who is also signed up to TGL, thinks that personal angle is appealing, too, saying: “TGL will give us a chance to not only highlight our skills as players, but also showcase a side of ourselves different than what fans traditionally see from us on the course.”

In a similar vein, Netflix docuseries Full Swing gave an unprecedented insight into life on the PGA Tour when it was released earlier in the year. It was a hit with viewers, too, as fans got to see the more approachable side of players, far removed from the hyper-focused professionals we see on the course.

Now, there’s anticipation for Netflix’s first-ever live-streamed sports event, The Netflix Cup, coming in November, which will see stars from the series take on F1 drivers featured in another of its big successes, Formula 1: Drive to Survive to coincide with the inaugural Formula One Heineken Silver Las Vegas Grand Prix in the city.

One of the players signed up for the contest is Collin Morikawa, and he thinks occasions like it can sit alongside the traditional circuits. He said: “I think we’ve seen these matches kind of co-exist amongst all of our schedules over the past handful of years and I think this is going to be a great event to kind of tie in the actual F1 race for that week in Vegas.”

Morikawa was likely alluding to The Match, a series of exhibition matches, often featuring athletes from different sports. It began in 2018 and has now seen eight editions, which surely demonstrates its popularity as much as anything, and suggests there is plenty of interest in shorter, made-for-TV contests that bring personalities into the game you wouldn't typically associate with it.

Then there’s the Grant Thornton Invitational, a new mixed team event co-sanctioned by the PGA Tour and LPGA Tour, to be held in December, which features 16 players from each circuit in a match play format.

That offers further evidence that, while some areas of the game remain rooted in tradition, the appetite for experimentation is alive, well and growing. See also the Scandinavian Mixed, which is co-sanctioned by the LET and DP World Tour and came along in 2021, offering a field split between men and women in a stroke play format.

Traditionalists would argue that there’s already enough variation to choose from for a top-level golf fix, whether it’s the match play of the Ryder Cup, Presidents Cup or Solheim Cup, the stroke play that dominates long-established circuits like the PGA Tour, DP World Tour, LPGA Tour or LET, or a more excitable newcomer like LIV Golf with its 54-hole no-cut tournaments and shotgun starts.

However, in a fast-moving world where endless distractions are no more than the tap of a cell phone screen away, it was surely inevitable that the game would need to evolve even more to keep pace.

As to what that means for the more established fare over the longer term, only time will tell. The hope, surely, as Morikawa suggested, is that they can ultimately thrive alongside the newer ideas that seem set to increasingly disrupt the game.