HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. – That Maverick McNealy was the leading vote getter among PGA Tour players for co-chairman of the Player Advisory Council was no big surprise.
The 29-year-old Stanford graduate with a degree in management science and engineering has emerged as one of the circuit’s brightest minds and he made headlines last year when he discovered inefficiencies in how the Tour awards FedExCup points. But that’s probably not why the membership voted to put McNealy in line to be a player director starting next year on the policy board.
“There is so much to learn,” McNealy said Wednesday at the RBC Heritage.
Maverick McNealy and Keith Mitchell have been elected co-chairmen of the PGA Tour’s Player Advisory Council.
Simply put, McNealy is the rare Tour pro whose default setting is to listen, not talk. It’s a quality that came up during a lunch with Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and circuit executive John Wolf earlier this year at the Genesis Invitational.
“John was saying, ‘Man, I wish I would have gone through this whole process 25 years ago.’ He said he’s learned an incredible amount,” McNealy said. “[The business of golf] is something I’ve been interested in and I’m excited for the opportunity to learn how it all works.”
McNealy and Keith Mitchell, who received the second most votes for PAC co-chair, will replace Peter Malnati and Webb Simpson on the board beginning in 2026, and even though McNealy has opinions on many Tour policies he knows his first job is to listen.
“I don’t know [the biggest challenges] yet because I feel like there’s so much for me to learn about how the Tour actually operates and all the moving parts. The reason they even extended the [player director] term from three to four years is because it takes about a year for you to really onboard and understand everything that’s going on,” McNealy said. “I’m mostly excited to learn about the problems that this tour is facing, the problems we’re trying to solve and the situations we’re facing.
“For me, maintaining the integrity of the competitions and making sure everyone has a good chance to compete and the competition is meaningful and exciting. That’s the core of our business and if there’s a mission statement for the PGA Tour it would be to create the best tournaments in the world and do a lot good along the way.”
McNealy does have a head start on other players who have ascended to the policy board as a member of the business affairs subcommittee on the PAC.
The business of professional golf has become an increasingly important topic with the Tour’s move to a for-profit model and the addition of private equity investment last year, as well as the ongoing negotiations with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which owns LIV Golf.
“When we break up into subcommittees we look at it through a certain lens, so a business lens and a fan and relations lens. We’re just looking at a certain problem, whether it be the Tour Championship format or pace of play, we just look at it from the business perspective. How does this affect the Tour’s business?” he said. “It’s been interesting to put on that hat because all you really see is as a player and what might actually be best for the Tour as a whole are different. It’s been a useful exercise in stepping out of your own shoes and looking at it from multiple perspectives.”
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