It was a chilly day in April and some of the young lads couldn’t have been older than 15 and here they were, all dressed up heading into the clubhouse looking like little gentlemen. I watched on as these young lads tried to catch glances of approval from their fathers - “does my tie look ok Dad?”

Prestwick is a golf club of history and tradition.

It’s a special place.

If you were asked in a quiz, what golf club hosted the very first Open Championship you could be forgiven if you answered St.Andrews. My guess would be if you asked 100 golfers in your local club that question, 80 of them would say St.Andrews. But the answer isn’t St.Andrews.

The answer is Prestwick Golf Club, 1860.

A Pub, Two Cottages and a Man Called Tom

On the evening of 2nd of July 1851, a group of men gathered in a non-descript pub called The Red Lion in the Scottish town of Prestwick as they often did. They would regularly meet to talk about life in general on Scotland’s west coast but this particular evening over a few pints they discussed the idea of forming a golf club.

Golf was a sport that was growing in popularity across the country so 57 of these men decided to purchase some land across the road from The Red Lion pub where they were sat that could be used as a course for this new endeavour.

Golf was a seaside sport so the land right along the beach seemed appropriate.

It was also decided to purchase 2 cottages across the road from the pub.

The 1st cottage would be used as a sort of clubhouse for the members while the other was gifted to a fella called Tom who was recruited from the other side of Scotland to design their golf course and be “the keeper of the greens”.

This fella Tom, or Old Tom Morris as he is better known, uprooted his family from their hometown in St.Andrews. His wife Agnes and their young son Tommy travelled across the country to Prestwick with Tom.

Old Tom Morris laid out a 12 hole course right beside the new railway station - something that had come to Prestwick a few years earlier making it convenient for people travelling down from Glasgow to visit this seaside town and so golf at Prestwick began.

Crowning a Champion

At the time it was widely agreed that the best golfer in the world (and by the world I mostly mean Scotland) was a man called Allan Robertson but when Allan died in 1859, there needed to be a tournament played to determine who was the new best player in the world.

So on the 17th of October 1860, 8 professional players (7 from Scotland, 1 from England) were invited to play in a tournament at Prestwick to determine “The Champion Golfer” to succeed Mr.Robertson.

The tournament would be played over 36 holes, 3 loops around the 12 hole golf course and the winner would receive a red morocco leather belt (the Challenge Belt).

A man called Willie Park Senior beat Tom Morris by 2 shots and so Willie Park Snr. was the Champion Golfer for the year 1860.

Open to the World

The event was such a success in that first year that they did it again the following year in 1861 and they decided to make it “open to the world”.

So clubs across the UK were invited to send their best players, either amateur or professional to play in The Open but it was not good enough that they just be great players.

It was a requirement that the players “produce a certificate of respectability from the Treasurer of the Golf Club to which they are attached” - basically, some professional golfers at the time had a reputation of being fond of the drink and were often a bit messy.

That simply wouldn’t do and so you must carry yourself as a gentleman.

And so the Open as we know it was born.

In 1863, prize money was introduced with £5 being given to the runner up, £3 for 3rd place and £2 for 4th place - nothing for the winner. A wee bit shy of the $3.1 million Scottie Scheffler received for his win at Portrush.

Old Tom Morris headed back to his home town of St.Andrews in 1864, his work at Prestwick was done.

Prestwick would go on to host 24 Open Championships, the last one being in 1925, only St.Andrews has hosted more.

Every golf tournament in the world that you see all stem from this one tournament played by 8 men in 1860.

_{Joe, myself and Colin, 1st tee Prestwick}

Standing on the First Tee

As a golf nerd I was pretty excited when I jumped out of the car with my 2 mates, Joe and Colin to play this old and historic golf course.

We strolled through the beautiful clubhouse, given a tour by the head professional, David Fleming. Something I would recommend for any fellow golf nerds reading this piece.

We stood up on the 1st tee and looked at the wall of the railway line that hugs the right side of the fairway. The 1st tee shot on this hole, aptly named railway is a bit of a crazy one - none of us had a clue what club to hit. The hole only measures 345 yards from the very back tee but driver did not appear to be the play.

After a nice little chat with the starter on the 1st tee, I poked a little 5 iron down the left side and we were off.

We all play golf for different reasons. Apparently after Branden Grace holed his par putt for 62 at Royal Birkdale (where the Open is headed in a few days) he had no idea he had shot not only the lowest ever round at The Open, but the lowest ever round at any major ever. Grace is obviously someone who doesn’t over think it and is just an unbelievable player.

I certainly don’t possess the same talent as a player like Branden Grace but as I strolled along these historic fairways of Prestwick on that April day I was very aware of the history. I love it.

A Handshake With History

The golf course is a quirky one. As you can imagine, it has evolved over the 160+ years since Old Tom Morris laid the course out but there are 6 greens still pretty much as they were. According to Top100 courses, Prestwick is currently ranked in that top 100 in the world, coming in at 93, sitting between Te Arai in New Zealand (92) and Peachtree in Georgia (94) in the rankings.

A round at Prestwick is a nod to history. The course has many blind shots and features several deep sleepered bunkers with wooden steps to take you down to the bottom to find your ball.

The greens are notoriously firm and fast – some are hidden in hollows whilst others are perched above you. The majority are quite small and all of them have wicked borrows to negotiate.

The course is great for its variety of holes but my favourite is probably the 17th which requires a long but straight tee shot and a 2nd shot that’s blind with the green sitting behind a massive dune. It’s been described as “the most spectacular blind hole in the world”. The fine people of Royal County Down may dispute this statement…

The 18th takes you gently back to the historic clubhouse and you feel like you’ve completed a small rite of passage. No drama, just a nod to history.

I watched a YouTube video about Prestwick made by my friend Ru MacDonald which I would recommend. Ru describes the first hole as a gentle handshake. I would take Ru’s point a step further and say a stroll around here feels like a handshake with the game.

Prestwick is a special place.

A Nod To Tradition

Something I love about this silly little game of ours is that we can walk along the same turf that the greats of the past have walked.

All eyes in the week ahead will turn on links golf and this special form of the game has a rich history. A rich history that started at Prestwick. My advice to anyone reading this, get stuck into that history. Immerse yourself in it and little things will reveal themselves to you if you pay attention.

Those young lads who I saw in the carpark that day in Prestwick making their way into the clubhouse to play their annual father and son foursome tournament in their suits had clearly been taught the history of this great game by their fathers.

I think that’s important.

The Read: If you’re someone who loves links golf then I would highly recommend you check out Linksland by my friend Ru MacDonald. Ru is one of the great experts of links golf and you can read some of his work here.

The Caddies Line: The Open is called “the Open” for a reason - it’s open to anyone. Around 7,000 golfers entered qualifying this year, from tour pros to club players, all chasing one of the few remaining spots. That principle traces right back to 1861, when Prestwick threw the doors open to the world.

I recently received a wedding invitation, but when it arrived in the post and I saw it was black tie, I rolled my eyes - I didn’t own a tux.

I set aside time on a Saturday afternoon three weeks before the wedding, dragged myself to whatever shop it is that sells tuxedos, and after going through the fitting experience I cringed to myself when the shop assistant told me the price.

Do these friends of mine not know I’ve got better things to be doing with my money and time than paying for a tuxedo for their bloody wedding that I’ll maybe use twice in my life!

The day of the wedding rolls around and you make sure the car is clean.

You drive to the ceremony, get out of your car, and look around at everyone else.

Ah, this is kinda cool I suppose.

It feels special. Like we’re all part of this little club for the day.

The men in their tuxedos, the ladies in their beautiful dresses.

You stand a little taller.

You hold yourself to a slightly higher standard.

You act like the gentleman you could be a little more often in your daily life.

You compliment the beautiful people around you.

You don’t rush.

You take your time.

The black tie rule feels silly and annoying at first, but then when you see it all come together, it just works.

Patrons, Not Fans

I haven’t been to the Masters yet, but I get the impression it’s a bit like that. You look at all the silly little rules and roll your eyes.

No running?
No phones?
No backpacks?
No asking for autographs?
No selfie sticks or signs?

But do they not know that this could be the only time I go to the Masters! What do you mean I can’t ask Rory McIlroy for an autograph!

Why call them patrons? Just call them fans!

Why not call the second nine the back nine like everyone else? (FYI, this is in case the commentators say “back side” by mistake.)

But then you see it all come together.

And it’s possibly the best sporting event in the world.

Ah, I get it now.

Look at the Crowd

Look at the moment below, when LeBron James broke the NBA scoring record. What do you see?

Of course, it’s a legend doing his thing. An iconic moment.

But look at the crowd. Look at the phones.

They were all there for one of the most iconic moments in sports history, but they all missed it because they were watching it through their phones.

Now look at Tiger on Masters Sunday in 2019, one of the greatest moments in golf’s history.

Look at the crowd.

Immersed.

I bet those people walked away from Augusta National that Sunday evening in April 2019 and whispered to each other: “we just witnessed something special.” They’ll never forget what they saw with their own eyes that magic day.

That moment with Tiger didn’t happen by accident. The environment was created over many years and many small decisions.

I’ve heard Rory McIlroy say that he tries not to watch highlights of his first Masters victory. He wants to remember how it felt as the man in the arena, rather than carving the memory into his brain through a screen.

How do the Masters manage to bring this all together so well?

How do they go about creating such an iconic sporting event?

Of course, there have been many men in green jackets responsible for making the Masters the Masters - but there was one man who was maybe more responsible than anyone else.

And this man had one of the most tragic and unusual endings to his life that you might not be aware of.

Clifford Roberts

Cliff Roberts was born in Iowa in 1894. Like the vast majority of people in America’s midwest at that time, Cliff grew up poor.

But Cliff made a life for himself. He started his career as a travelling salesman selling clothes, and by the early 1920s he had become a stockbroker on Wall Street.

Cliff must have had a certain charisma because he managed to build a relationship with Dwight Eisenhower, managing the president’s financial affairs.

He also built a relationship with a certain golfer named Bobby Jones. The same Bobby Jones (he actually preferred Bob) who won the Grand Slam in 1930 - all four majors in one year, a feat that hasn’t been accomplished before or since.

(The four majors at the time were the Open Championship and the Amateur Championship in Britain, and the US Open and US Amateur Championships in America.)

After this incredible feat, Bob Jones retired from competitive golf and had a vision to build a beautiful golf course in Georgia. He partnered with Cliff Roberts and together - with the help of Alister MacKenzie - built a course in America’s deep south called Augusta National.

A part of the world where manners mean something, and where, when asked if you like peach cobbler, you’d better say yes ma’am or yes sir.

Bob and Cliff wanted to host an event at this new golf club of theirs, so they set up an annual tournament they called the Augusta National Invitation Tournament.

After a few years, they changed the name to the Masters.

Because of Jones’ stature in the game, they attracted the very best players in the world to come and play in the annual April tournament, and it grew legs in the years that followed and, well, you know the rest.

The Man Behind the Curtain

But what you might not know is that it was Cliff Roberts who was the real driving force behind the many traditions and rules we see at the Masters each year.

In the early years, he helped bring the club back from financial ruin. There was actually a period when Augusta National very nearly ceased to exist. The club was on the edge of bankruptcy.

When Alister MacKenzie designed the course, he presented the bill to Roberts - and instead of payment, MacKenzie received a notice of debt.

Apparently things were so bad at Augusta in those early years that there wasn’t the money to buy toilet roll.

Unimaginable today.

But Roberts held it together.

As you know, the Masters grew into one of sport’s greatest events, and Augusta National is now one of the most powerful institutions in American sport. Almost every tradition you now think of as quintessentially Masters - the patrons, the pristine conditioning, the control over every last detail, the refusal to bend to television or commercial pressure - traces back to Roberts.

To his admirers, he was the visionary who created the Masters and made it what it is today. A genius organiser who believed that magic comes from discipline.

The Side That Can’t Be Tidied Away

But there’s another side to Clifford Roberts that can’t be tidied away, and it would be dishonest if I glossed over it.

To some, he was known as a benevolent dictator - someone who took things too far.

The same iron control that made the Masters beautiful also enforced something ugly. Roberts once said that as long as he was alive, the golfers would be white and the caddies would be black - and for most of his life, that’s exactly how Augusta National operated.

This wasn’t an unfortunate quirk of the era, separate from his genius. It was built into the institution he created.

Augusta National didn’t admit its first black member until 1990, thirteen years after Roberts’ death. It didn’t admit a woman until 2012. The exclusivity that gives the place its mystique and the exclusion that shamed it for decades came from the same source - a man who believed, absolutely, in his own authority to decide who belonged.

You can hold both of those things at once. Roberts built one of the most extraordinary sporting institutions in the world, and he built prejudice into its foundations. The Masters spent the decades after his death slowly, reluctantly reckoning with that - and some would say it still is.

Which makes the end of his story a complicated one to sit with.

The End

As the years went on, Roberts’ health failed him. By 1977 he was gravely ill - a stroke had weakened him, and he’d been given a diagnosis of cancer he wasn’t going to recover from. That year, for the first time, he was too unwell to attend the tournament he’d spent his life building.

One morning that September, Clifford Roberts walked out to the edge of Ike’s Pond, on the par-3 course at Augusta National, and took his own life. He was 83. He left a note for his wife.

There’s something sad in the fact that he chose Augusta itself - the place he’d poured everything into, the one thing he’d built and controlled and loved - as the place to end things. The man who controlled every detail of the Masters made a final decision, in the one setting that was entirely his.

I’ve read quite a lot about Bobby Jones, the other man behind the Masters, and although - like every human - I’m sure he had his flaws, he seemed like a genuine sporting icon of the era. People like Babe Ruth come to mind when I think back on that time in sport.

Cliff Roberts was the driving force in creating something iconic. Someone we can both admire and view through a lens of caution.

The Masters has a flawed history, but it has also caught up to the modern era.

I think it’s possible for both of these things to be true.

How you feel about it all is entirely up to you.

If anything in this piece has stirred something up for you, please don’t sit with it alone - reach out to someone you trust, or a support line near you. Help is there.

A quick note before you go

If you found your way here through a share or a search, this is The Reading Room -golf stories worth actually reading, published every week.

I recently launched Roam Golf, a community for golfers who love to explore great courses. Members get early access to events and trips around Ireland, full access to everything in The Reading Room, and a community of people who’d rather find a hidden links than queue for a famous one.

We launched last week. 120 members in the first few days. We’re playing courses like Rosapenna and Cruit Island this weekend.

If that sounds like your kind of thing - join us at roamgolf.club

€8 a month. Cancel any time.

The Read: The Grand Slam: Bobby Jones, America, and the Story of Golf

The Caddies Line: There's a tree on the 17th hole at Augusta that was known for years as the "Eisenhower Tree." The president - whose finances Roberts managed - hit it so often he lobbied to have it cut down. Roberts refused. The tree outlived them both, until a storm finally took it in 2014.

Last year, Scottie Scheffler earned $54.6 million on the course.

That’s more than LeBron James.
More than Super Bowl-winning quarterback Sam Darnold.
And only slightly behind Patrick Mahomes (highest paid QB in the NFL).

Which raised a question in my head:

How can a golfer make NFL-quarterback money when golf attracts a fraction of the audience?

Scheffler’s Open Championship win in 2025 averaged around 4.1 million American viewers.
The Super Bowl averaged 127 million.

That’s not a small gap.
That’s an entirely different universe of attention.

And yet professional golf continues to generate enormous wealth for its players.

The answer is that the PGA Tour operates one of the strangest - and smartest -business models in sport.

A model built not primarily on fans…
but on sponsors, tax structures, corporate hospitality, and one extraordinarily influential man named Deane Beman.

You might have seen in the last week that the PGA Tour is making some big changes to how it will do things going forward but I’m a big believer that context is everything, how can we have an opinion on something when we don’t know the full story?

So here’s everything you need to know.

The Puzzle at the Heart of Professional Golf

At first glance, golf shouldn’t work economically. At least nowhere near as well as it does (as LIV have found out).

Yes, golf performs well with affluent audiences. Yes, corporate hospitality is valuable. And yes, major championships still attract huge crowds in person.

The Open Championship at Portrush drew around 278,000 spectators across the week last year — far more than could ever fit inside a stadium like the Super Bowl.

But live attendance is not what drives revenue in modern sport.

Television is.

The Premier League, for example, earns roughly £6.7 billion annually from broadcast deals alone. Matchday revenue is important, but comparatively small (about £1 billion).

In most sports, TV ratings are oxygen.

Which is why golf’s economics are so strange.

Because despite relatively modest television audiences, the PGA Tour generates somewhere between $1.8 and $1.9 billion in annual revenue.

So how?

To understand that, you have to go back around fifty years.

The Problem the PGA Tour Faced

Deane Beman was head of the PGA Tour In the 1970s and he knew professional golf faced two enormous problems.

The first was television.

Football, basketball and tennis happen in contained environments. You point cameras at a pitch or court and the sport naturally translates to television.

Golf was different.

A tournament sprawled across 150 acres. Players were scattered all over the course. Live broadcasting was expensive, complicated and technically difficult.

Deane Beman understood that golf would probably never compete with the NFL or NBA as a pure television product.

The second problem was even more important.

The Tour was a travelling circus. Every Sunday night it packed up and moved to another city. That only works if thousands of local volunteers are willing to help run the event.

But why would they?

Why would communities repeatedly give up their weekends to help millionaire athletes pass through town for four days before disappearing again?

Beman realised the Tour needed something bigger than golf itself.

He needed a system where everybody benefited when the Tour arrived.

And that insight changed everything.

Beman’s Solution

Beman’s idea was deceptively simple:

Whatever money remained after a tournament would leave the city it just whipped through went to local charities.

That’s nice but the brilliance was in the structure underneath it.

The PGA Tour itself was organised as a tax-exempt trade association — essentially a governing body representing professional golfers (kind of like a chamber of commerce).

But individual tournaments were structured differently.

Most events were set up as local non-profit organisations, with surplus revenues flowing directly back into the community through charitable donations.

That single structural decision solved multiple problems at once.

Volunteers suddenly weren’t just helping rich golfers play a sport.
They were helping raise money for hospitals, schools and local causes.

Cities stopped viewing Tour events as temporary invasions and started treating them as civic institutions worth protecting.

And corporations gained something extremely valuable:
a prestigious marketing platform wrapped inside a charitable contribution.

In practice, that meant companies like FedEx, John Deere and BMW weren’t simply funding prize money. Their sponsorships were also tied to charitable organisations, creating significant tax advantages while generating positive PR. It made sponsoring PGA Tour events easier to justify in the boardroom.

The alignment was almost perfect.

Most sports leagues extract value from cities (like FIFA are doing right now at the World Cup which you can read here)

Beman designed a system where cities felt they benefited from hosting the Tour.

That distinction became the foundation of modern professional golf.

Why the PGA Tour Doesn’t Depend on TV Like Other Sports

Here’s the really important consequence of Beman’s model:

The PGA Tour never became fully dependent on television ratings in the same way as other major sports.

That doesn’t mean TV money isn’t important — it absolutely is. Media rights remain the Tour’s single largest revenue stream.

But unlike the NFL or Premier League, the entire economic structure doesn’t collapse if ratings soften slightly.

Because sponsorships are such a huge part of the business.

And golf sponsorship works differently from almost every other sport.

In football, sponsors interrupt the product.

In golf, sponsors become part of the product itself.

You cannot talk about the Honda Classic, the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, or the Zurich Classic without saying the sponsor’s name out loud.

Every leaderboard becomes branded content.
Every highlight package doubles as advertising.
Every historic victory keeps paying dividends years later.

Tiger Woods won the Bridgestone Invitational eight times.

And here I am, decades later, still saying the word “Bridgestone.”

That kind of long-tail brand exposure is almost impossible to buy elsewhere in sport.

According to Adam Schupak, Deane Beman’s biographer, companies spending around $7–8 million sponsoring PGA Tour events could receive many multiples of that value in media exposure and brand association.

And because many tournaments were tied to charitable structures, sponsorship carried additional financial advantages too.

It was an extraordinarily efficient system.

The Five Ways the PGA Tour Makes Money

Today, the PGA Tour’s revenues broadly fall into five categories:

Revenue Streams

• Media Rights $750m

• Sponsorships $422m

• Royalties & Licensing $302m

• Tournament Management Fees $200m

• Investment Income $130m

The important thing isn’t the exact numbers.

It’s the balance.

In most major sports, media rights dominate everything.

In golf, sponsorships, licensing, hospitality and corporate relationships collectively matter just as much.

That’s why the Tour has historically been able to pay players extraordinary sums despite attracting significantly smaller audiences than football or basketball.

At its core, the PGA Tour has always operated less like a traditional sports league and more like a massive corporate partnership ecosystem.

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What were LIV actually trying to do?

For decades, the system in professional golf worked almost perfectly.

Sponsors stayed happy.

Prize money kept increasing.

Players became wealthier every year.

Then LIV Golf arrived with a new business model.

They weren’t trying to play the same game as the PGA Tour.

It’s easy to look at LIV’s enormous losses and conclude it was simply an exercise in sportswashing. That may have been part of the story, but it’s also an oversimplification. LIV’s backers weren’t acting like reckless billionaires burning cash for fun - they believed they were investing in assets that could eventually appreciate in value.

They just placed a bet that lost.

The problem the PGA Tour has always faced is that their players are essentially independent contractors and the top stars can pick and choose when and where they play.

LIV’s leadership wasn’t really trying to build another PGA Tour.

They were trying to build something much closer to a franchise sports league.

The PGA Tour’s value has always flowed through tournaments, sponsors and media rights. Players are independent contractors competing for prize money.

LIV wanted value to live somewhere else entirely:

The teams.

The theory was straightforward.

Spend heavily to acquire star players, place them inside permanent franchises, build fan loyalty around those franchises, and eventually create assets that could be bought, sold and invested in.

The PGA Tour saw a rival paying players far more than the underlying business could justify. Jon Rahm reportedly received around $300 million. Bryson DeChambeau around $125 million. Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and others received similarly eye-watering guarantees.

From a traditional sports-business perspective, none of it made sense.

But LIV wasn’t trying to build another PGA Tour. It was trying to build golf’s version of the NFL.

LIV wasn’t spending $100 million-plus on players just to improve television ratings.

It was attempting to create sports franchises worth billions.

Take Bryson DeChambeau’s Crushers GC.

Viewed through the PGA Tour lens, paying enormous sums to sign DeChambeau looked irrational.

Viewed through a franchise lens, the logic becomes clearer.

If DeChambeau could become the face of a team that eventually attracted sponsors, media rights, merchandise sales and outside investors, the team itself might one day become worth far more than the initial player investment.

This is essentially the same playbook being pursued by TGL.

The indoor golf league founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy has already demonstrated that investors are willing to place significant values on golf teams themselves. Recent transactions reportedly valued Los Angeles Golf Club and Atlantic Drive GC at roughly $90 million and $100 million respectively.

LIV was trying to graft a team model onto a sport where fans have historically supported individual players rather than franchises. The strategy looks like it was inspired by the Ryder Cup - the one event where golf fans genuinely rally behind teams rather than individuals.

LIV attempted to recreate that atmosphere every week.

It just didn’t resonate with golf fans.

Golf fans care about Rory McIlroy.

They care about Scottie Scheffler.

They care about Bryson DeChambeau.

They don’t naturally care whether Crushers GC beats Smash GC.

That distinction may sound small, but commercially it’s big.

Because franchise valuations only work if fans develop emotional attachments to the teams themselves.

And that is where LIV struggled.

The league could buy star players.

It could guarantee enormous purses.

But it couldn’t manufacture decades of tribal loyalty overnight.

When I think of the team the football team I support (Manchester United) I have a deep connection that goes back to when they won the Treble in 1999, I was six years old and my dad was jumping around the living room. Or the Munich air disaster in 1958 and the rebuilding of a squad that went on to become champions of Europe 10 years later.

Liverpool fans will have their own version of an emotional connection to their club.

It started with emotion, the wealth that followed actually detracts from the love for our club, it doesn’t enhance it.

Which is why LIV’s business challenge was never simply attracting viewers.

It was proving that golf teams could become valuable standalone assets which I believe could actually happen, but it needs to start with emotion and the money will follow, not the other way around.

So while critics often describe LIV as a failed business experiment, that’s not quite accurate.

The real question is whether its central bet was wrong:

Can professional golf create team franchises that people care about enough to support, invest in and ultimately value like teams in other sports?

So far, the evidence is mixed.

TGL has shown there is investor appetite for golf franchises.

But LIV has yet to demonstrate that those franchises can develop the kind of fan attachment required to justify the valuations its model depends upon.

And that may explain why the pressure from LIV ultimately pushed the PGA Tour toward a very different solution.

Rather than trying to create value through teams, the Tour chose to create value through ownership.

In early 2024, the organisation launched PGA Tour Enterprises — a new for-profit entity backed by Strategic Sports Group, a consortium of billionaire sports owners led by Fenway Sports Group.

The deal committed up to $3 billion in investment.

For the first time in modern PGA Tour history, elite players would effectively become equity holders in a for-profit sports business.

That would have been almost unthinkable under the old structure.

But professional golf had entered a completely different era.

The Big Changes Coming to the Tour

That pressure is also driving the Tour’s latest proposed changes.

From 2028 onwards, the PGA Tour appears set to move towards a more streamlined two-tier structure.

A smaller elite “Championship Tier” would feature the biggest stars competing in limited-field events with elevated purses, while a secondary “Challenger Tier” would operate with promotion and relegation.

The FedEx Cup format may disappear entirely.

The Tour Championship is expected to rotate venues instead of remaining permanently at East Lake.

And for serious golf fans, there’s even the possibility of iconic venues like Cypress Point, Pine Valley and Seminole entering the rotation.

On the surface, these changes can feel confusing.

But they actually follow the exact same logic Beman introduced decades ago:

Concentrate star power.
Increase the value of the product.
Protect sponsor interest.
Keep broadcasters paying premium prices.

The model is evolving.

But the underlying philosophy remains remarkably similar.

So, Back to Scottie

So yes, Scottie Scheffler can make NFL-quarterback money despite playing in front of a fraction of the audience.

Because the PGA Tour was never built like the NFL.

Deane Beman created a machine powered by sponsors, corporate relationships, charitable structures and local communities who all benefited when the Tour succeeded.

For fifty years, it became one of the most economically efficient systems in sport.

But LIV changed the equation.

Beman’s model was built on alignment — on the idea that everybody should win together.

Saudi-backed golf introduced something entirely different:
a competitor willing to lose billions in pursuit of relevance, influence and a new business model.

And now the question hanging over professional golf is no longer whether Beman’s structure was brilliant.

It clearly was.

The question is whether a system designed for cooperation can survive in an era defined by economic warfare.

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If someone asked me what golf course I’d most like to play in the world, my answer could possibly be Shinnecock Hills.

Places like Augusta and Cypress Point are of course up there too, but as an outsider looking in, there’s something about Shinnecock that has pulled me in for years.

Shinnecock Hills sits out in The Hamptons, which according to my sources, is a reasonably nice part of the world. The Hamptons, on Long Island, is where those fortunate enough to make a few quid in New York tend to buy their second homes to spend their summers. A quick Google search of properties for sale along the beach would cause your mind to wander.

A Summer in Newport

When I was 20, I got my first insight into this world of affluence on America’s east coast. I spent a summer caddying in Newport, Rhode Island — basically a different version of the Hamptons. It was my first real adventure. My mate Joe and I landed into this wealthy part of America with the prospect of a job at a nice country club, a suitcase each, and our golf clubs. We didn’t have anywhere to live but we did have our golf clubs.

As a young lad growing up playing golf in Ireland, the sport was far more accessible than in these wealthy parts of the US. I found the whole experience mind altering.

The two golf clubs in my local town of Wicklow were about 100 quid a year each for my parents to pay for my annual membership. For context, the current entrance fees at Shinnecock will apparently run you between $200k-$250k. Of course, you wouldn’t even have the privilege of paying those fees unless you know somebody.

The contrast was an eye opener for Joe and myself. We would nearly get paid as much for carrying a bag for one round as it cost to cover our annual membership back home.

Pretty early on that summer, as we walked side by side with the players we caddied for — or more often in my case, frantically running behind them trying to keep up and shut up — I would eavesdrop on conversations between members.

They would talk about the great courses they had played around the North East — Newport Country Club, where we were spending the summer, then Merion and Pine Valley. But I remember one day hearing about a place called Shinnecock Hills.

The first ever US Open was held at Newport Country Club in 1895. The second was held at Shinnecock Hills in 1896.

The exact words used by the member who talked about Shinnecock were “it’s the best fuckin course I ever played,” in his thick Boston accent. He spoke about it like it was a mystical place — somewhere behind a secret door. I have to play there some day, I thought to myself as I raked a greenside bunker.

I went home that evening and watched YouTube videos of Retief Goosen winning his US Open there in 2004. I remember hearing the commentators say “they’ve lost the golf course.”

What does that even mean?

Maybe that US Open stands out to me because Goosen had an Irish caddie on the bag — Colin Byrne. As far as I know, Byrne was the first Irishman involved in a major win on US soil. Maybe it was Byrne and Goosen who got the ball rolling for Irish major success in the years that followed, not Padraig Harrington.

As a man in the throes of caddying myself that summer, Byrne caddying for Goosen resonated — though caddying for an 18 handicap around a fancy country club is slightly lower stakes than what Colin Byrne faced steering his man to victory around a treacherous US Open course.

In the clips I watched, I noticed Shinnecock, this US course, looks more like an Irish links. The wind, the sandy soil, the high fescue. That’s pretty cool, I thought. This place just looks like an Irish golf course that’s been baked by the sun.

For clarity, Shinnecock isn’t a links course — there are subtle differences that make it different. But still, I wondered what Colin Byrne had been feeling that day, jockeying his man around the back nine while everyone else seemed to be losing their minds.

Shinnecock, A Special Place

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve listened to lots of podcasts about Shinnecock and read everything I can get my hands on about the place. This podcast from The Golfer’s Journal with Jimmy Dunne was my favourite.

The club has a pretty interesting history. The name “Shinnecock” comes from the Shinnecock Indian Nation, whose people inhabited the area long before the golf course was built. Historical accounts describe how members of the tribe helped construct the original holes in 1891, using oxen and ploughs to shape the land.

In the first few years of members playing the course, golfers occasionally unearthed human bones while playing from bunkers — an unsettling reminder that parts of the property had once served as Native American burial grounds.

As you can imagine, relations between the tribe and the golf club haven’t always been smooth. There was a lawsuit in 2005 — the year after Goosen’s US Open win — where the tribe felt land had been taken unjustly and sought compensation. The court’s verdict favoured the golf club.

Despite the obvious questions that come to mind when hearing about wealthy men taking sacred land and turning it into a fancy golf club, Shinnecock actually seems to have been a progressive club in a lot of ways.

Ahead of the first US Open held there in 1896, players in the field protested that two Black and Native American men were entered in the tournament — John Shippen and Oscar Bunn. Shippen, a teenager who lived on the nearby Shinnecock reservation, actually had his entrance fee paid by several members who’d seen his skill.

USGA president Theodore Havemeyer shut down the protest, saying the tournament would go ahead even if Shippen and Bunn were the only two players in the field. Shippen finished tied for fifth.

The logo for Shinnecock is a Native American wearing a ceremonial feathered headdress — an image that has long symbolised the club’s historical connection to the tribe. My understanding is there’s a respect between the people involved at the club and the land it sits on. I don’t want to speak out of place here, as I’m sure there are facts I’m ignorant of, so I’ll leave it at that.

Originally, two separate nine-hole courses were built — one for men, one for women. That may not seem all that progressive today, but at the time it was. The women’s nine-hole course hosted one of the first US Women’s Amateur Championships in 1900.

2018 — Brooks and Ricky

In 2018, 14 years after Goosen and Byrne’s win, the US Open returned to Shinnecock.

You probably remember Phil Mickelson’s incident that year — he hit a putt too hard, it started rolling off the green, so he hit it again while it was still moving. Two shot penalty. Everyone made a big deal of it. I didn’t think it was that big a deal.

But more evidence the USGA had “lost the golf course” — a reference to how they let the greens get too baked and fast, pushing an already difficult but fair course toward something unfair.

I watched that Sunday evening from my couch in Wicklow as Brooks Koepka, the most dominant player in the world at the time, held off Tommy Fleetwood to go back-to-back at US Opens.

But who’s walking beside him down the fairways? Ricky Elliott — another man from the island of Ireland. Guiding his man around this Irish-looking golf course, just like Byrne had, 14 years before.

A couple of Irishmen in New York, winning caddies at US Opens at Shinnecock.

Is there something in that, I wonder?

The last two US Opens won around this Irish-style golf course were both won by men with Irish caddies on the bag.

Maybe that’s also why I feel such a strong pull to see Shinnecock in the flesh — maybe it somehow suits my Irish eyes. Maybe the same was true for Colin Byrne and Ricky Elliott.

The first time I heard about the course, my ears pricked up. The first time I saw pictures of it, my eyes lit up. Shinnecock strikes me as a special place.

I wanna play there.

Maybe Some Day

I’m writing this piece in the week leading up to the 2026 US Open at this special golf course. Right now I have no idea how the US Open will play out, and maybe it’ll be pure coincidence that two Irish caddies have steered their men to victory around this Irish-looking golf course that sits on the land of those who’ve made it in America.

Those who’ve made it in New York.

What I love about golf is that us weekend warriors can, under certain circumstances, sometimes play these great courses. Shinnecock is officially ranked 4th in the world according to Top 100 Golf Courses.

Of that list, Shinnecock is ranked the best golf course in the world to host a major championship. Cypress Point, Pine Valley and Royal County Down are the only courses ranked higher overall, and although RCD has hosted Irish Opens in recent years, Shinnecock is the only current major championship course in that top five.

Shinnecock may not be quite the same delight for the eyes that Augusta is, where everything is built around beauty — but as you watch the US Open this year, be aware: this is a special place.

I haven’t been fortunate enough to walk the fairways of Shinnecock yet, and maybe I never will. But if I ever do, I suspect a part of me will still be that young lad in Newport, raking a bunker, listening to a man in a Boston accent tell me about the best course he ever played.

Maybe some day.

The Read: Bagman: Inside the Exclusive World of Pro Golf, by Colin Byrne

The Caddie’s Line: Irish caddies who’ve been on the bag for major wins — records before 1950 are hard to find, so let me know in the comments if there’s anyone I’ve missed.

• Ricky Elliott — Brooks Koepka (5 majors)

• JP Fitzgerald — Rory McIlroy (4 majors)

• Ronan Flood — Padraig Harrington (3 majors)

• Harry Diamond — Rory McIlroy (2 majors)

• Paddy Byrne — Paul Lawrie (1 major)

• Colin Byrne — Retief Goosen (1 major)

• Bo Martin — Shane Lowry (1 major)

• John Mulrooney — Darren Clarke (1 major)

There’s a private golf course in New Jersey that is widely considered to be the greatest golf course ever built, and it’s possible you’ve never even seen it before.

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Before we get into the story, let me give you the numbers.

Kingsbarns Golf Links, which opened in the year 2000:

• Sells between 27,000–28,000 rounds of golf per year

• Has an average green fee of £420 per round — £70 more than the Old Course at St Andrews

• Has no members

• Closes for winter

• Is one of the most profitable and operationally efficient golf courses in the world

The vast majority of people who play Kingsbarns don’t know the story of how it was built.

Landmines and Barley

In 1939, at the outbreak of World War 2, the British army wanted to defend its shores against a potential German invasion. The army put up defences along certain areas of the coastline that they believed were exposed to a German attack.

One such area was a 2 mile stretch of land just south of St.Andrews near the village of Kingsbarns. A series of landmines and defensive structures were put up to defend this wee part of Scotland should the Germans ever decide to invade.

After the war, the land was converted back to farmland for potato and barley to be used for the production of whisky.

Golf, as you know, began in St.Andrews but it was really only in the 50 or so years after the war where travel became more accessible and the average golfer was able to make the voyage to the home of golf.

Throughout the 90’s more and more golfers were making their way over to this special part of Scotland for a once in a lifetime experience in golfing heaven.

By the mid 90’s, demand for tee times at St.Andres was growing with about 116,000 rounds of golf played across the St.Andrews courses each year and the R&A identified that figure was rising by 16% YoY.

For context, as of 2026 The Old Course currently hosts around 50,000 rounds of golf each year and over 280,000 rounds are played across the 7 St.Andrews courses.

It was clear that soon there would be an overflow of keen golfers looking for tee times in the area. It may seem obvious now to build a new links course in the area but for context there hadn’t been a new links course built in Scotland for 70 years.

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County Louth Golf Club, Baltray

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Michael loved golf and so when he received his payout after his years of hard work, he did exactly what any reasonable man with a few hundred million dollars and a love of golf would do.

He built his own golf club.

But he didn’t just build any golf club. He built one of the most interesting, secretive, and brilliantly designed golf experiences you will ever hear about.

The Excitement of a Golf Trip

If you’re reading this, you’re probably a golfer and if so, you will be well aware of that feeling you get the night before a golf trip. That feeling of excitement.

You take out every club from your bag and clean them all one by one. From the grips down to the grooves. You clear out any rubbish that may have accumulated in the golf bag like the empty boxes of golf balls that have long since been lost to a lake or a bush. You mark all your golf balls with a fresh sharpie, clean your shoes, lay out the clothes you plan on wearing over the next few days.

I don’t do this for any other part of my life but I do these little things the night before a golf trip.

You wake up the morning of the trip, jump in the car, coffee in hand playing your favourite songs as you drive to meet your mates. I’m picturing that scene where “The Dude” played by Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski is driving along smacking the roof of the car in joyous excitement as the music plays. The only difference between me and The Dude is I’m in my golf gear and the clubs are in the boot and unfortunately I certainly lack The Dude’s laid back charisma.

I digress.

The Drunken Promise

One night, after a few too many beers with his mates, Michael Walrath made a promise: “Every year, we are going to go on a proper golf trip.” Unlike most of us who make such drunken promises at 1:00 AM, Michael and his mates actually followed through.

Every single year, the group traveled across the US, playing different courses, chasing the perfect golf trip. At the end of every trip, Michael would sit back and dissect it. What were the best elements? What parts felt like a chore? Money was rarely a problem on any of these trips so Michael was trying to strip everything back and think what are the components of a golf trip that genuinely elevate the experience?

After a few years of this, Michael started chewing on an idea. What if he could take everything he learned from his various golf trips across the US and the rest of the world and build his own club centered entirely around the perfect friend’s golf trip? He could include only the absolute best parts of all these trips and remove all the pieces that take away from these trips.

From Onion Farm to Masterpiece

In my experience, the best golf trips usually require an adventure just to get there.

There’s something about the journey that is part of the experience. You need to have that separation between your normal life and the golf trip and that separation usually comes in the form of a winding road away from motorways or a plane journey to another country. For his golf course, Michael needed to find somewhere that was close to nowhere.

Eventually, he found what he was looking for.

Michael came across a secluded, completely off-the-beaten-track piece of land in rural Georgia that was previously used for growing onions. As it turns out, the sandy soil that’s perfect for growing onions is also ideal for building a world-class golf course. It’s like a cross between Pinehurst and the legendary Melbourne sandbelt.

But Michael thought of the little details that play into this idea of the journey. When you turn off the main road you see a little sign for an onion (the club’s logo) and every few miles when you need to take a turn down another dirt track you see another onion. It’s like Hansel and Gretel’s crumbs except at the end of the road you know you’re going to arrive at paradise.

The excitement builds.

The Golf Course

Michael wanted his golf course to be incredible and over the years he had developed a relationship with one of the best golf architects on the planet, Gil Hanse. When Michael and Gil eventually agreed to get going with the project, Michael gave Gil a pretty simple but brilliant set of instructions: Build me a golf course designed for match play only. When Michael and his mates went on their trips, they never played stroke play. They played Ryder Cup-style match play like we all do.

With that blueprint, Hanse built one of the best new courses in America, and in 2018, Ohoopee Match Club opened its doors to about 50 members.

The “No Score” Rule

When you build a course purely designed for match play, the architect is completely freed up. It means Hanse could build daring, wildly exciting greens and half-par holes that reward massive risk and severely punish poor execution. You don’t have to worry about a guy making a 10 and ruining his scorecard, because the worst he can do is lose the hole.

In fact, you aren’t even allowed to keep your score at Ohoopee.

If you walk into the clubhouse after your round and try to tell anyone what you shot, the bartender will literally slide your drink over on a coaster that reads: “Nobody Cares What You Shot.”

The Ethos

Every detail at Ohoopee is designed to remove the stress that usually winds us up on a golf course.

• It is walking-only. No carts allowed.

• It’s a winter golf course, meaning they close completely for the summer months due to the intense Georgia heat.

• There are no TVs in the bedrooms.

• There are no menus in the clubhouse. Instead, incredible chefs take responsibility for cooking a massive, family-style feast for the group.

• They even spent an absolute fortune engineering the plumbing just to make sure the shower pressure is life-changing after a 36-hole day.

There are only about 50 members (including Rory McIlroy). But unlike most hyper-exclusive private clubs, members can invite up to 48 guests at a time. The entire property is designed to be rented out for the ultimate, private golf trip.

Some famous courses, like Oakmont, pride themselves on being brutally difficult and punishing. Ohoopee went the opposite direction. They stripped away the scorecards, the menus, and the stroke-play stress, leaving only the purest version of the game: you, your mates, and trying to win the hole.

It’s known as one of the best new golf courses in the world, currently ranked 54th in The US according to top100golfcourses.com and sounds like one of the coolest experiences in golf.

I may never get the chance to play Ohoopee, but if you have I’d love to hear what the experience was like.

If you could build your own private golf club, what is the ONE rule you would enforce? (e.g., No scorecards? Dogs allowed? Pints every three holes?) Let me know.

The caddie’s line:

Ohoopee is a 22-Hole Layout: While it is an 18-hole course, Hanse designed 22 holes. This allows for flexibility and a bonus 4-hole loop known as the “Whiskey Run,” which can be used to create alternative routings. The shorter "Whiskey Run" course has a bottle of Woodford Reserve tucked into a tee marker, encouraging players to take a shot before starting their round.

The read:

The Match by Mark Frost:

In 1956, a casual bet between two millionaires eventually pitted two of the greatest golfers of the era -- Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan -- against top amateurs Harvie Ward and Ken Venturi.

The year: 1956. Decades have passed since Eddie Lowery came to fame as the ten-year-old caddie to U.S. Open Champion Francis Ouimet. Now a wealthy car dealer and avid supporter of amateur golf, Lowery has just made a bet with fellow millionaire George Coleman. Lowery claims that two of his employees, amateur golfers Harvie Ward and Ken Venturi, cannot be beaten in a best-ball match, and challenges Coleman to bring any two golfers of his choice to the course at 10 a.m. the next day to settle the issue. Coleman accepts the challenge and shows up with his own power team: Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, the game's greatest living professionals, with fourteen major championships between them.

“No phones a…

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Jake Knapp, PXG Player

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Royal County Down

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