PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. – Jordan Spieth is no longer a board member.
Spieth said Tuesday at PGA National, ahead of his debut at the Cognizant Classic, that he attended Monday’s PGA Tour policy board meeting, but only long enough “to get through the governance” for Camilo Villegas, who also replaces Spieth on the PGA Tour Enterprises board after assuming a player director role on the policy board at the start of this year.
Then he logged off.
“After that, I couldn’t tell you,” Spieth said.
Spieth did say, however, that he believes among the big topics of discussion during the meeting was the Tour Championship format. It was reported earlier this year that the PGA Tour was mulling changing the current starting-strokes model at East Lake and potentially transitioning to a bracket-style event with seeded match play, including an option for medal match play.
And so, he put his board hat back on for a few moments.
“The idea is just to make the fan experience the best, make NBC – get them very involved in what they think is going to be the best option, and ideally, you end up having the most exciting Saturday-Sunday situation that’s easy to follow with the most drama you can have that goes all the way down to the last hole,” Spieth said. “We’ve had a couple different iterations of it. In the first iteration, I think the pushback was, whoever it was, didn’t want two different champions; it was confusing, on the same green. Then you go to the [staggered] stroke format, and although easier to follow, I think the idea is the Tour, the networks, and from polling fans, I think that they believe there’s a possibility of a better format, whether that involves any kind of head-to-head matches, it involves less guys on Sunday all playing for it.
“I think everything is pretty much on the table, and I’m not sure what they’ve narrowed it down to since.”
Spieth was also asked about recent comments made by Rory McIlroy in which McIlroy stressed the need for more scarcity on the PGA Tour (i.e. fewer tournaments). He admitted he didn’t have a great take, but did say that a lot of recent changes made to the PGA Tour landscape were “reactive and appropriately so.”
“It’s just figuring out exactly what the best future product model is, and we’ll have to see what happens within future investments, what that means, and then if the game comes together ideally, then you kind of figure out what is the actual market, what is the right number of events, what is the right number in the events, and whether it’s more elevated type events but more players, or it’s back to what it used to be,” Spieth explained. “That, I don’t know, because I’ve taken myself out of those conversations. I think we’ll have a good gauge off this year of if this type of model works, and that doesn’t mean that adjusting it on certain field sizes and whatnot wouldn’t happen.
“It’s just off to a good start in general this year. A lot of that probably has to do with, one, we’ve had great champions so far, and then I think when you get bad weather everywhere, ratings go up, too. You’ve got great Florida Swing golf with drama-packed finishes, so it should continue these four weeks.”
Spieth then added: “The idea is to try to get everything as fair as possible while creating the most opportunities for the top guys to be playing the best golf courses and the best tournaments as often as possible together and having pathways to create stars coming up. … Those kinds of pathways are what the Tour has always been about.
“So, having a combination of the bunch, I think is what’s going into the future product model, and everyone ideally is being heard.”
Read the full article here