PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Waiting tables during college, Brian Rolapp once had CBS’s Jim Nantz as a customer. That and two other stories shared by golf’s new big cheese at an intimate affair hosted by CBS Sports on Wednesday evening gave a window into the man who is shaping the future of the PGA Tour.
Rolapp began by recounting how he had been to Pebble Beach Golf Links, the famed layout that skirts the rugged coastline of Carmel Bay, once before as a graduate student at Harvard Business School. He said he didn’t have any money and he simply “peered through the gates and looked at it.”
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To return all these years later as the CEO of the PGA Tour, he summed it up in four simple words: “I feel very fortunate,” he said.
PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp shakes hands with Si Woo Kim after the third round of the 2026 WM Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale.
Rolapp, assumed the job in July after 23 years at the NFL and he watched his first Super Bowl in all those years on Sunday not from the host venue but rather from TPC Scottsdale’s Stadium Course, site of the Tour’s wild and wacky WM Phoenix Open. “And I loved every minute of it,” he said.
“I’m loving my new life here in the golf world,” he added.
Rolapp is new to the golf space and he’s still getting acquainted with a sport that he sees as having unlimited potential to grow. But this he does know: “You’re nothing without your partners,” he said.
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He spoke of AT&T, the longest-running Tour sponsor dating to 1986, and of CBS, who is off and running to a hot start through its first two weekend telecasts in San Diego and Scottsdale. He spoke glowingly of working with CBS President David Berson during his NFL days and of their many lucrative deals through the years that were agreed upon “mostly on a handshake.”
Speaking on a media call a few weeks earlier, Berson praised Rolapp for his wealth of experience and knowledge.
“You’ll be hard pressed to find anyone in the business smarter than Brian,” Berson said. “It’s also nice that he brings a perspective that’s different. I love in his letter when he took the job – his public letter – he said something akin to we want to honor the traditions of the game but not be overly bound by them. I think it was something along those lines, and I think that was dead on. And he’s surrounding himself with people that can challenge him, can add perspective and are also willing to make changes when necessary.”
Rolapp made it clear from the get-go that change is coming, significant change. What that change will be and what it may mean for the way fans consume the sport Berson wasn’t telling.
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“I wouldn’t jump to conclusions too soon about what those changes will be. They’re still in the process of assessing. But the fact that we’ve been asked to give our take, it means a lot to us because again, we care so much about this,” he said. “I’m not going to get into the specifics, because that’s for the Tour to talk about more than us. But the concept of having events of more consequence and having events featuring the best players in the world playing against each other more often is something that we and other media partners and the Tour and the fans all should be excited about. So, we’re encouraged by where conversations are going now. Let’s not jump to the conclusion of what exactly it will look like. But I think everyone’s hearts are in the right place here in terms of just making the Tour bigger and better and more exciting for fans, for sponsors, for players moving forward. And we’re enthused about what the future could be.”
Rolapp’s role for the evening was done. He had passed the baton to Jim Nantz, the voice of CBS Sports who has covered the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am since 1986 and with this being the week of Valentine’s Day tabbed the PGA Tour and Pebble Beach his first two loves. Later, this led to lead analyst Trevor Immelman expressing genuine dismay that he hadn’t been referring to he and Tony Romo as his first two loves. “You guys are Nos. 3 and 4,” Nantz said, breaking into a churlish grin.
But first, he said to Rolapp, referring to him as Commissioner, a title that technically still belongs to Jay Monahan, “Do you want to tell everybody how we first met?”
“I thought you might bring this up,” Rolapp said.
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Then he recounted how in the early 1990s, while in college at Brigham Young University, he was waiting tables during the summer at the Marriott Suites in Bethesda, Maryland, at the JW Steakhouse.
“In comes a young dashing sports broadcaster there to cover the Kemper Open and sits down and I wait on him,” Rolapp recalls. “I said, ‘Mr. Nantz, I’m in college and I think one day I may be in the sports business, I hope so.’ He couldn’t have been more gracious with his time. I was nobody, he was somebody.”
Rolapp most certainly is somebody now and along with Tiger Woods and members of the Future Competitions Committee he will determine how the PGA Tour moves forward as a for-profit business with private equity investors and players as shareholders
“How was the tip?” Nantz wondered.
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“Nobody’s perfect,” Rolapp said and laughter ensued.
Not for nothing but the new boss at the Tour had his audience eating out of his hands and showed a comedian’s touch for paying off his story.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp’s NFL past and his role in golf’s future
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