Translation: Monahan’s deceit had left Woods and his Tour brethren seething, and Woods was now in a position to ensure that the players would never again be left in the dark. As Woods said this week of the Tour’s covert dealmaking, “Can’t happen again and won’t happen again.”
It’s still stunning that the future of the Tour was decided without input from the guy most responsible for the Tour’s present-day success. But here we are and now there Woods is: attending meetings, taking calls and pecking away at his keyboard to make sure that, effective immediately, the Tour gets things right. “Lot of time on the phone, emails, Zoom calls, phone calls, whatever it may be,” Justin Thomas said of Woods earlier this week. “He doesn’t take it lightly. Obviously, he’s spoken to it, but it was an honor for him to kind of get the torch passed to him from Arnold and Jack. So I think he’s looking at it as he wants to kind of pass that to whatever the following generation is.”
Thomas called Woods’ jump to action “inspiring,” which is a common sentiment on Tour. Woods has never starved for admiration from his peers, but now he’s earning it less so with his play and more so with his politicking. Said Scheffler: “He could easily sail off into the sunset, never touch a club again, never do anything again, just go live his life and enjoy kind of the second half of his life and do whatever, hang out with his kids. … It’s pretty inspirational for the rest of us that are involved in the game with what he’s been doing right now.”
Jordan Spieth is a newbie to the policy board — he filled Rory McIlroy’s vacancy just a couple of weeks ago — but has had his finger on the pulse throughout this tumultuous stretch through conversations with Patrick Cantlay and other board members. Of Woods, Spieth said this week, “I know he doesn’t sleep a lot, but he’s spending most of his waking hours thinking about how to better the PGA Tour for the players.”
Spieth then said something else interesting about Woods: “He’s not stepping in to throw influence anywhere; it just comes with him when he walks in the door. He’s a listener, and he has a lot of experience. He’s seen the PGA Tour go through a lot of different changes over almost 30 years for him now. He comes with that kind of perspective as well as somehow a way of recognizing what can be good for the PGA Tour and its entire membership when he’s never been an ordinary member, but it doesn’t seem lost on him.”
Some of those “ordinary” members have been feeling slighted. Players like Lanto Griffin, who believes the new signature-event structure of the Tour makes it unfairly difficult for mid- and lower-tier players to ascend the ladder. Whether or not Griffin’s gripe has merit, soothing the Tour’s middle class while continuing to line the pockets of its stars will be one of the most pressing issues Woods and his fellow board members will need to address in the coming months.
Surely Woods is also weighing other questions, such as how he’d like the Tour to look in five or 10 or even 50 years. Woods is a legacy guy. Paramount to him will be maintaining the Tour’s competitive integrity and ensuring it remains the place to play. He wants those 82 wins of his to mean as much in 2123 as they do in 2023. Thomas, likely Woods’ closest friend among active players, will tell you that when Woods thinks about the future of the Tour, he also might be thinking about his son, Charlie, who is a competitive high school player in South Florida.
“I’m sure he has some visions in his head of, oh, I would love to have Charlie be playing out here, and then the kids he’s playing against,” Thomas said this week. “It’s bigger picture. I think as little as he’s playing, it’s very clear that the decisions he’s making and thoughts that he has isn’t for his own good, it’s for the betterment of the game.”
Whatever path Woods believes the Tour should follow, he’ll need to convince more than just his fellow player directors. Tour management will continue to hold sway. Assuming the Tour’s deal with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund comes to fruition, the likes of PIF’s director, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, also will have a strong voice. As will any other investor(s) that backs the Tour, which, according to Monahan’s remarks at a conference earlier this week, also seems likely to materialize. All parties will have ideas and opinions and road maps, and all will be seeking a tidy return.
Woods understands that. He also understands his primary mission: take care of his own. As Woods said earlier this week, “Without the players, there is no Tour.”
