The U.S. Open is over, and we’re quickly teeing up hostilities again. Through all of this, especially after the announcement two weeks ago between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which owns LIV Golf, a thought keeps creeping in.
This isn’t the first upheaval within the world of men’s professional golf — specifically the touring variety. It’s natural to suggest nothing like this has ever happened before, and it hasn’t, but this also isn’t the first time onlookers have said, “Nothing like this has ever happened before.”
The PGA Tour owes its very existence to a late-1960s rebellion that had some high-profile critics — Bobby Jones, Walter Hagen and Sam Snead among them. About 15 years later, and 40 years ago, another big fork in the road arrived, and none other than golf’s two biggest draws of the day — Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer — had to receive the lion tamer’s treatment.
Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus in 1968, when professional golfers were still playing under the auspices of the PGA of America.
Some history …
Soon after the PGA of America was born in 1916, a tournament division was formed and was originally filled with club pros and teaching pros who could play a bit. Before long, the likes of Hagen, Tommy Armour, Gene Sarazen and Henry Picard were true touring professionals and paved the way for the early nomads. “The circuit,” most called the PGA’s tournament wing.
The great American triumvirate of Snead, Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan led the way through mid-century, and all was well for 30 or 40 years, until Arnie elevated the game into a marketable showpiece while also introducing it to America’s living rooms via the still-young network TV conduit.
More: Q&A with former PGA Tour Commissioner Deane Beman on the PGA Tour-LIV Golf controversy
By the time the ’60s arrived, the PGA’s rather draconian rules began to ruffle the double-knitted proletariat.
Among the bylaws, and impossible to fathom today, the PGA tournament division withheld all purse winnings from a new pro for his first six months. An internship, of sorts.
Also, by the fall of ’69, when Nicklaus made his first Ryder Cup appearance, he’d already won 28 tournaments, including seven professional majors, dating back to ’62. The PGA of America, which owns and operates the Ryder Cup to this day, had a rule forbidding a touring pro from competing in the biennial matches for the first five years of his career.
Seriously, imagine that. The Ryder Cup was nowhere near what it would become in subsequent generations, but still, it’s a head-scratcher.
The 1969 rancor between the PGA of America, which basically represents the nation’s club professionals, and its tournament-player faction didn’t have the international intrigue and subsequent geo-political controversies of today’s ugliness, but it was ugly nonetheless.
With the benefit of current knowledge, particularly knowing how it all turned out, it’s hard to imagine just how nasty it was as the newly named American Professional Golfers broke off from the PGA of America.
Over time, and after much posturing and some legalities, there was peace, and the eventual compromises included the settled-upon name: PGA Tour, which to this day confuses casual fans who assume “The PGA,” as in the Professional Golfers Association of America, and the PGA Tour are under the same officially licensed umbrella. They’re not.
The original Tour bylaws gave the new league authority to conduct professional tournaments, but also to market the Tour and, if and when feasible, get into the golf course and real estate markets. That little throw-in came into play 40 years ago and helped preserve the modern PGA Tour at a time when Palmer and Nicklaus often bristled at competing against their own Tour in the merchandise and course-design games.
The 1983 revolt specifically threatened the job security of PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman. Some digging through the original Tour bylaws reminded the leading rebels they had signed off on the Tour’s outside endeavors, beyond running tournaments, and Beman survived.
But it was close. Much of the legal and PR combat was hidden and didn’t surface until well after the fact, but that history suggests the professional game has been through turmoil before.
This time, of course, it’s different. But you know, every time is different.
— Reach Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com
