Editor’s Letter
The folly of the PGA Tour’s new Player Impact Program.
What’s your current Q-rating? Happy with your Meltwater mentions this month? Not trending on the digital MVP index quite how you anticipated? To the keyboard, Batman!
Back in the good old days, golf pros were rated by a quaint metric called grind and how all that lonely toil on the range translated to the numbers they autographed on scorecards Thursday and Friday and hopefully on into the weekend.
Now, it seems, they’ve got to be on (social media mostly) 24/7. Acing Twitter, successfully schmoozing sponsors and a deep knowledge of Google Analytics can help you become one of the lucky 10 to share in the PGA Tour’s new $40 million bonus pool for players who best boost publicity and engagement for the tour.
The world really is a strange place and golf is not immune, especially not in these crazy pandemic times. Indeed, you could call the game wholly culpable for upping the madness courtesy of the PGA Tour’s ‘Player Impact Program’ (PIP) which will use algorithms to measure five criteria including popularity on Google search and a Nielsen Brand Exposure rating.
The PIP is a perceived vaccine to some of the incentives promised by the PGL. That’s the Premier Golf League for those you haven’t been following along or simply don’t do acronyms. The Saudi-backed breakaway circuit hit snags - not least very public rebuffs by Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka and Jon Rahm – in its attempts to go from concept to reality preCOVID but continues to simmer ominously in the background.
Like the PGL’s next move, it’s hard to know whether one should be excited or genuinely concerned by the PIP.
On one hand, the Twitter storm ignited by the announcement promises ongoing fun. Max Homa, the PGA Tour’s Twitter king, got the ball rolling with the ditty inset, an amusingly dark threat to peers suddenly considering “upping their activity on this soul sucker of an app”.
But surely those with a golf conscience will find it tricky to back this new trough for the already fiscally fattened superstars when there are so many pros on the breadline? Indeed, when there are so many tours around the world on their knees?
It’s not like Jordan Spieth and co. are searching behind the sofa for their next greenback, nor debatable that unheralded pros who grind just as hard on the range and on their personal brands couldn’t do with a hand-up.
Parker McLachlin summed it nicely up from a position of genuine authority - 244th position, dead last, in the FedEx Cup standings as we went to press.
“I understand why the tour is trying to pay the top stars more and keep them happy… [but] it would take a fourth of the money the tour is spending on its stars [to] allow its future stars to not starve on the way to stardom.”
So I’ll enjoy the guilty pleasure provided on the soul sucking platform but will mostly focus on golf’s most accurate stock exchange – the humble leaderboard.
Our cover star this month is a salient case in point as to why this should be.
You don’t have to like everything about Patrick Reed to admire his ability to thwack a ball and return a score. The helicopter twirl with a driver, the trademark sawn-off iron approaches and that short-game that should be copyrighted. Thankfully, the former Masters champion shares the secrets of his wedge wizardry from p.30 this month to go with a fascinating insight into his win at all costs psyche.
Sure, popularity is nice and content is king in this new era. But ask Rickie Fowler if he’d rather be trending on the PIP or be a factor on the front page of the U.S. PGA Championship leaderboard at Kiawah Island this month and, well, I don’t think you need to wait for a social media post for the answer.
Q-rating? Not nearly as impactful as a W. See you on the course where a player’s real value will, hopefully, always be found.
“…anyone with a conscience will find it tricky to back this new trough for the already fiscally fattened superstars.”