No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - 1219: Deane Beman

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

We’re pleased to welcome former PGA Tour Commissioner Deane Beman to the pod as he recently paid Soly an in-home visit to discuss his career as both a player and his twenty year career as the head of the tour. Support our Sponsors: Titleist Rhoback Club Glove AT&T If you enjoyed this episode, consider joining⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Nest⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: No Laying Up’s community of avid golfers. Nest members help us maintain our light commercial interruptions (3 minutes of ads per 90 minutes of content) and receive access to exclusive content, discounts in the pro shop, and an annual member gift. It’s a $90 annual membership, and you can sign up or learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠nolayingup.com/join⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the No Laying Up Newsletter here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://newsletter.nolayingup.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the No Laying Up Podcast channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@NoLayingUpPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Be the right club today. Johnny, that's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Up podcast. Sali here. I am thrilled to bring you today's episode.

I'm very, very stoked. This was a career highlight one, honestly, for me. Dean Beeman, former commissioner of the PGA tour, second commissioner of the PGA tour, came over here, right over here to my house in my office. I kept him for as long. as I felt physically comfortable keeping him, peppering him with questions.

I do have to give a massive, massive shout out to our friend Adam Schupack. He has a book. It's called Dean Beeman Golf's Driving Force. I studied this thing in and out. I'm still reading it again for the second time. I did not get to everything, as you might imagine, in this interview about the life and career of Dean Beeman.

There's just too much stuff. But I would highly recommend you go find somewhere that sells books and read this. If you like this interview at least, you will learn a ton about the history of the PGA tour and how Dean took it from, you know, kind of a podunk little series of events to the massive, massive global marketing machine that it is and all the little fights along the way. And the little things that if it would have just gone a little bit differently could have

resulted in a very, very, very different golf world. So I think you're going to love this interview. You'll love the book as well. I get no incentive, of course, but I feel bad because I used a lot of the material in this book to come up with the questions and subject for the interview. So knowing a podcast is brought to you by Footjoy. number one shoe in golf. No Leng Up listeners, you might have already seen the official announcement that we came out with on Friday. We are extremely excited to announce the second shoe in our

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well. The ability to hit the ball long and left of the green while wearing these is thankfully not guaranteed. Before we do get launched here, Taurus Season 10 Islands and Highlands sponsored by our friends at Roeback. Roeback is all about bringing people together. They crave activity just like us. That's why we are so excited to have them on board this season as the presenting sponsor. To kick off season 10, you can use code sauce at rowback.com. There's an incredible amount of stuff in there. Be on the lookout tomorrow morning, Wednesday, if you're listening to this,

when the Torres Sauce Roeback collection drops in the No Langup Pro Shop as well. So that's Roeback, best fit, best feel. It's Tora Saucies, and we're excited to get this out into the world. Greatly appreciate their support on it. So make sure you guys are watching the premiere episode tonight, 8 p.m. Eastern Time here on Wednesday, the 7th to get Toras launched. That's all I got. Here is Dean Beeman. So I've long had a joke with Billy Kratzer. He got, who is now my sister-in-law, helped get her a job at the PGA tour.

I joked, and I showed him pictures of my kids. I said, these kids would not exist if it wasn't for you. That's what ended up bringing me to Jacksonville. It's a long story. But if you never got her of that job, I don't know if my life as it stands would exist now. And as I'm reading about your career and everything, I think there's a lot of people in Jacksonville that would probably say the same thing. If you had not chosen this as the home of the PGA tour, I certainly wouldn't be sitting in this house right now. I'm sure you get that feedback a lot in Jacksonville.

Well, it certainly made a big difference here when we came here in. In the golf world, Jacksonville was sort of the tail end of the Florida tour. Everything was bigger sort of and everybody thought better. I personally myself played in the Jacksonville Open a couple of times. I really enjoyed the community. But when we were looking for a place for the players championship, what happened was it was so almost an accident. I was here on vacation in the springtime with my son.

The tournament was on. So we were in this part of the world. We'd gone to Hilton Head and came over here. I was taking him to a couple of golf tournaments and say hello to some of the volunteers and the chairman of the tournament. I asked one of the chairman of the tournament where I might take my son to play golf.

He said, well, you know, there's a new golf course uh course it's it's gone bankrupt uh it's owned by the banks over there nobody's really playing it much uh you can get in there really easy so we went over to sawgrass to play sawgrass country sawgrass country club and uh and played nine holes and by the time we got to the ninth hole i was uh super impressed by the golf course so i cut the the uh i cut the round short with my son who wasn't very happy about it i went back to the tournament organization people and asked them whether they might be interested if we could uh work something with uh sawgrass if they might be interested in hosting that the player's championship and we were looking for a site

and that's how it all came together was it was it was a happenstance that i happened to be here during the tournament and went over to play the golf course and was impressed by that and everything after that is what you see today. Well, just the sequence of events always gets me too because the tournament, you know, the Players' Championship does move to Sawgrass Country Club. It sounds like a tournament I would have loved to have watched on TV when it did go there because it sounds like the type of playing conditions we like to see the pros playing in in those early, early editions of the championship.

Players didn't like it as much. Well, actually, they were, it was, it was pretty well, uh, accepted. We, you know, unfortunately, uh, when you play on the ocean, you got wind. And when the wind blows really hard, players don't like that. Yeah. I think they like the golf course. Yes, that's, but the conditions, uh, when the wind started blowing were a little tough, but, uh, that's just the way golf is.

My favorite was hearing that, uh, guys wanted you to come hit the T shot on 10 back into the way it was a 210 carry I think back in there the on from the back tea on 10 which I think they were some guys couldn't get there they said why didn't Dean come out here and try to hit this shot well that was I think they maybe the either the second or third year we were playing there we'd put a new tea and unfortunately the wind was blowing straight from the West the tournament staff decide to use the very back tea that we built a new back team Of course, it was a mistake because the wind was blowing so hard.

It was hard to get across the water there. So, yeah, that was a bit of a controversy. But after the tournament was over, I had the golf course superintendent take out that T. So the T's no longer there. I didn't want to see that mistake again. Well, it might be back with the distance element we have in golf now, which I do want to chat with you about. But we know part of the story.

And I want you to kind of tell a bit of the story of how we ended up across the street at the players championship. But what was it that made you think this area was going to be the future home of the PGA tour? Probably the siding factor was the community volunteers in the tournament structure. They were, you know, it was a smaller town, but they held a bit. a very big tournament and they did a great job i was very impressed by the uh john tucker and and the uh the newspaper of chairman of the news local newspaper was part of the structure uh they had a great community support i thought that uh yeah the the players championship was just another tournament back then and uh i wanted it to be something very special when we sat down i

sat down with the with the organization here in Jacksonville they were willing to abandon the Jacksonville open and fully embrace the players championship and we struck a what I thought was a fair deal I think the most money that they'd ever raised for charity was $40,000 and we guaranteed them that they would get the first $100,000 for charity. if we made a deal together, that all came together. And the tournament, the first tournament, was very, very successful. And, you know, it's kind of the kind of deal that I always envisioned. And every deal I made, whether it was television networks or a local tournament sponsor or a business,

I thought the best kind of deal was we're both sides won. And this was clearly one that the community won as well as the PGA tour. There's a great line in Adams book, though, about describing the deals that were win-win, some people said that means that means Dean won twice. Well, we certainly benefited by most of the deals, but I think most of the people that we've done business would feel that they've been winners too. Well, maybe we wanted to be a bigger winner, but the other side, you know, a deal is not going to stay on when one side. win the other side doesn't win right that's been my philosophy from the start of my business career how did you from if from what i read you take over in 1974 and it seems like you you saw a vision for how

to what you just alluded to more value could be created both for the people that were involved in professional golf companies sponsoring it the lack of companies really sponsoring at that point tv networks uh how they were presenting it and and guaranteeing costs and things like that for them how did you you when you took the job did you feel like you had a great idea of exactly what you wanted to do? Was there a learning curve there? And I just don't know if a lot of people in my generation really understand the tour why it has looked the way it has for a long period of time came with changes you made when you took over in the 70s. Well, it's it's a little more complicated than that. First of all, when I became commissioner, the the tour was a minor minor sport. Golf was a minor sport.

I played on tour for several years myself. I won five tournaments, four official and one unofficial events. But it was even when winning tournaments, as I did, it was very difficult to make a living. In five years I played, to give you some perspective, five and a half year as I played after winning four tournaments and finishing second several times and making cut most of the time. I made $360,000 in prize money. I noticed this past fall in the in the in the in the finishes of the season the 10th the 10th place in the tour championship won more money than why won in my entire career. So that gives you a little perspective about about the way it was.

And I just thought the golf was more valuable to that, was more important than that. And I thought that it could do better, do better for the game of golf and do better for the players. There were several things, quite complicated. There were a million things going on when I became commissioner on the first of March, I was confronted with, there was, there were not a schedule for the tournament for the following year. We, we didn't have a schedule. So that had to be done. Was there off with their offices, was their staff? Was it? We had, I had a few people in New York with the officers with New York, but actually interesting enough, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't negotiate a salary for

myself or anything else when I agreed to be commissioner. The only thing that I demanded from the board was that I wasn't going to live in New York and that if became commissioner, I was going to move the offices, which I did. It took me, I think, 12 or 13 or maybe 14 days to get out of New York. But, you know, the situation was the television networks literally dictated what we got. Joe Dye wasn't a businessman. He was a golf enthusiast and certainly was a rules guy for golf, but he was not a businessman. And I think that he didn't conceive the PGA Tour as a business. He looked at it as the game of golf. And I came in with a perspective of looking at the tour as a business. And I knew there were several problems. One was the unfairness of the competition on every week of the year.

And what I mean by that is the system then was we had 50 money winners of the year before, the 50 top, and they got a full exemption for the tour. Everybody else went to money qualifying. And I can, my own personal experience, I went to qualifying school when I turned professional I finished second in Q school, and that earned me a place as a Monday qualifier. Didn't earn me a place on tour. And my first tournament was the LA Open. I went to play in the LA Open, and there were six places for 300 players trying to qualify.

I went to Riviera where they had 100 players for two places to get in the tournament in the first. So that was my personal experience and starting out. And of course, if you happen to get in, which I did, I qualified in one of the two places. I got in a tournament. But if you didn't make the cut, then you have to go back the next week for Monday qualifying. And so you had 50 players who could set their schedule,

know where they wanted to play. Don't worry about it. and everybody else was chasing. So a very, very unfair competition. So that was one of the first things I knew had to be changed. And it took several years. There are other problems at the time. They were actually setting a schedule.

And we had a television contract that was very slanded towards the networks. And ABC did most of our telecast. for golf. I think NBC had one or two events and CBS had one or two events. The difficulty there was that ABC not only had the rights, but they had their first right of refusal if we decided to negotiate with another network. So it was very slanted. So it took me a couple of years to get out of that contract with ABC and eliminate the first right of refusal so I could actually have a real negotiation with networks on the value of golf took several years in order to convince both the players and the board to change the system to what is now called and was called the all-exempt

tour where the top 125 were exempt but that took several years of a lot of controversy and and work so it wasn't it didn't start it didn't start jumping right away and and of course i knew i had to negotiate for higher price money because there wasn't enough money in golf for enough of the players to earn a real living uh and so uh the combination of all those things uh took took a lot of time and a lot of effort uh starting out well take us to to to that because i'm so interested in how how you know, how you sold the PGA tour, how you convinced a lot of people involved that there was value that wasn't being captured here and how you developed, you know, that comes in with the changes that are made to the structure of the system, but in terms of turning it into a 501c6

and the timeline for that and how you convinced the networks that, you know, how you marketed the PGA tour and kind of, because there wasn't much marketing going on at the PGA tour level prior to your initiatives. Is that fair to say? there was no there was no market not a lot you were yes you were being kind well actually what what what you we were confronted with is uh probably the biggest thing we were confronted with was the term the tv networks had a policy of anti what what what i'm a hard to come up with an explanation of it, but they had a policy which would not allow the mentioning or the picture of a commercial unless it was during a commercial break. So a tournament, even if they

thought about it to get a commercial sponsor of some kind, the commercial sponsor wouldn't get any value from the television coverage because that cameras wouldn't ever be on it unless they bought time on the air. So the first problem I had to confront was, was could I change the policy of the networks to allow the tournament, the PGA tour and our tournaments to commercialize what they're doing to get to add value to it? And that took a while. As a matter of fact, ABC would never agree to it. And that's where we had most of our telecasts. And we had a contract that we couldn't get out of because they had a first right of refusal clause. So it took a couple of years to get out of that. And as we got into the opportunity

for other networks who seemed to be interested, I got NBC and CBS to agree that we could get commercialism involved and they wouldn't turn the cameras off and that they would help us promote it and and my agreement with them was at the time if we got a commercial sponsor we would get those commercial sponsors to buy time at at the top rate so that the networks would benefit as well as the local sponsor could have sponsorship and everybody would win But Roon Arledge and ABC would never agree to that. So we ended up a couple of years later after I got through the contract that was one-sided with ABC so that I could actually negotiate with somebody else.

It took a couple of years to get that done. And when that opened up the ability of the tour to use commercial sponsors and to market itself, and market the product and help the network sell the time because we sold it in advance at the at the premium price it was one of those things that everybody again the tour all of a sudden got higher rights fees the players got more money and the networks started making money in golf instead of losing money and of course we had a huge disadvantage to other sports golf does because back in the day I don't know what the numbers are today but I know back when I started a television network could telecast a football game basketball game college or professional

a tennis tournament they could do that for probably 25 or 50,000 dollars because they were in one place they only need one or two cameras everybody was there they didn't have to reconstruct everything or constructed every year. But in golf, it cost about $250,000 to produce a golf tournament. So we had a huge economic disadvantage from the standpoint of that cost of actually producing a golf telecast. So that was one of the other things we needed to overcome. And the only way that we were ultimately able to do that was to bring in a commercial sponsors that they supported the tournaments and at what a lot of people thought were enormous fees

to the commercial sponsor but as I pointed out to people for the last couple of decades it was amazing as we sat down and talked to commercial sponsors at first and we were started with their advertising agencies. And of course, that wasn't very helpful because the agencies, they got money when they bought time on the air, but they didn't get money when they bought a sponsorship. So the agencies weren't in favor of their customers or their clients spending a bunch of money on golf where they didn't get a fee. So we ended up learned very early that we had to buy, bypass the agency and go directly to the corporate sponsors and the executives who most of them played golf. And so we had an opportunity to see them directly and have them understand that if they spent,

and it started out a couple of hundred thousand dollars, wasn't in the millions that it is today, that if they spent a couple hundred thousand dollars to sponsor a golf tournament, that they could get more in value than the couple hundred thousand dollars that they spent. And the executives would look at me and my staff and they'd say, well, how can that be? And we said, well, not only are you getting the value of the event and the television of the event. but every day that the tournament has held in four days a week in every newspaper and every local television station is going to cover that event and with your name on it when you add up the value

of hundreds of communities and hundreds of televisions and hundreds of newspapers that you're getting on the sports page and your name is on the tournament that that is that is, is the travelers it is not the Hartford open anymore the travelers and even on the agate page every day that the tournament is being played where you can't even buy an ad and you add up the value of that it dwarfs the cost that you're putting up so you're getting the bargain of the century and that's how we actually end up what people call today commercializing the tour and what I say is monetizing the value for the benefit of the players and the communities because, you know, the charity was a very small part of what the tour, as I indicated earlier,

the most that the Jacksonville ever raised for charity was $40,000 a year. Once we were able to develop this system with commercial, sponsor and and which added television value which gave us more television rights which allowed tournament organizations to raise more money for charity i think uh as of a couple years ago we'd raised more than three billion dollars for local charities it's i think it's past four billion dollars now so the system has worked for the benefit of players and certainly for the benefit of the the television networks, who I believe make money in golf. I don't think the television money make money at all in other sports.

Yeah, I think the NFL sucks all the money out of it. And the networks don't make actual money on the NFL, but they benefit because they use the NFL to sponsor and to promote their other later telecasts, which make money. the lead in, yeah. So but, but I believe the television networks actually make money by sponsoring our golf tournament. Well, that's that's how you the what still exists today with how the PGA tour does it of yes, they pay a hefty rights fee, but you have you help pre-sell a lot of the inventory. So they we pre-sell probably 70% of their inventory. So the the 30% that they sell,

they can sell it a premium. And so again, it's one of those wonderful things where everybody wins. The Nolayah podcast is brought to by Clubglove, the number one golf travel bag on tour. The best players in the world get their clubs from event to event

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But not everyone always had this great, you know, not everyone was aligned with you on this vision necessarily. What kind of, if I remember right, some, a fair amount goes back to a 1979 board meeting where you guys had a, ratings were in decline at somewhere around that time and you felt like you were finally empowered to get movement on several things you needed to gain, to market, market products, head towards statistics. The senior tour was birthed right around. Then can you take me to right around that time of what? It took a little bit ahead of that. it took and i don't know the exact date i don't recall quite quite a while ago but when i became commissioner the name of the tour the brand name was the tournament players division of the pga

of america which is not real saleable as a brand name so i decided to rebrand the tour with a name and with a logo that i thought would be marketable and that's where the the PGA tour came from and the logo as you as you see it today. And that took a little while to get, of course, the PGA of America who were three members of my board at the time. We're not in favor of us changing our name to the PGA tour. But we worked through that and finally got that done and got the new logo and the name approved. And of course, it is one of the,

one of the most valuable brands in golf and in all of sports today. Because we're just a few years after the 1968 split from the PG, for listeners' sake, from, you know, the tournament players division separating out from the PGA of America. And then there were not only would you have three seats on the board there, but it was a complicated, a bit of a complicated or unfavorable financial arrangement at that time, which you were able to negotiate. Yes, it was when that agreement, was made in 1968 and the board was formed and Joe Dye was appointed as commissioner. There were some agreements made that provided for the PGA of America to get certain income from the tour.

and it was difficult to negotiate out of those, but sooner or later, but if we hadn't negotiated out of those when it was not a lot of money, but it was still pretty substantial. If we had not negotiated out of those, the tour would have had to turn over literally hundreds of millions of dollars, to the PGA of America in in in rights fees for the use of the letters PGA so that was over several decades over several decades it would have been probably a billion dollars by now negotiating out of that was difficult it was one of those

times that I wasn't the most favorable guy in in three of my board members eyes but you know as you look down the road and where you hope you're going to go and where your vision hopefully is correct, getting out of those on any basis at that time would have been long-term, very valuable. And of course, we got out of those agreements and it was very much in the players and the PGA Tour's favor and our tournament sponsors and the local volunteers. And take us to the, we kind of breeze past the initiative of turning the tour into a 501c6 and the tax advantages that were gained of that and how you were able to use that also to sell to sponsors and how certain expenditures that they had would fall

under potentially under a different category because of the way the tour was organized. Well, that was, that goes back to my pre-PGA tour days. I was in the insurance business, mostly in corporate business of corporate insurance and pension funds and things like that. When I became commissioner, I went to New York, actually between the 1st of January when I was going to be appointed commissioner, but I wasn't. I was just hired by the tour. I didn't become commissioner for 60 days when Joe Dye retired. But in that 60 days, I lived in Washington and I commuted to New York every every week. I went up on Tuesday and back on Thursday night. I had a family and had four children at the time, but I spent three or four days in New York every

week reading everything in the office. And as I was reading some of the original incorporation papers of the PGA tour that was a Delaware corporation when it was established by our attorneys in New York. I called our attorneys in New York and asked them to visit with me. And I went and had lunch with the senior executive from one of the firms that represented us. And I asked them why it was that we were at Delaware for private. instead of a nonprofit. I'd done business with a lot of 501C6 organizations in Washington, D.C.C. As a matter of fact, I got the first deferred comp plan approved by the IRS by a nonprofit organization, 501C6. It was a third-class mail users. And the president of third cast mail user was a good friend of

mine and I got him a deferred comp plan, first one ever approved by IRS. So I had I had some knowledge and not perfect knowledge of how that all work. And I asked our attorney why it was that we were a Delaware for-profit company when the NFL and baseball and all of the sports were 501 C-6s and didn't have to pay taxes on the rights fees that they could then pass on to their to their organizations that their teams and the course teams were able to pass it on to the players and instead of paying taxes on the way and he basically looked at me and said well sonny he said you ought to you ought to were about putting on tournaments and scheduling things like that and let the big stuff let us think about the big stuff so i went back to uh to washington dc to the attorney

that helped me with the deferred comp plan that i got approved and asked him whether somehow i was wrong about the ability for the tour to be become a 501c6 and he said not a not a problem at all i said the only problem is is converting from a profit making to a 501c6 uh not anybody's going to give you that overnight it's going to take you a couple of years probably and quite a bit of attorney's fees probably a couple hundred thousand dollars of of fees to fight that but you'll eventually prevail because uh everybody could do that so I said, okay, let's do that. So he was putting together the papers, getting ready to do it. And kind of a funny story, I was, I was flying to Phoenix, as a matter of fact, for a meeting.

And I arrived in Phoenix. And of course, we didn't have cell phones back there. I put a quarter, had a quarter and I got some change because I didn't know how long the phone called with last. put a quarter in the machine and called our attorney. And I said, Bob, are you ready to, are you ready to file those papers? He says, yeah, it's all set. I said, well, I'll tell you what I'd like you to do. I said, I don't want to file the papers for us. I want you to file a completely separate organization that's going to be in competition with us. You put a new name on it. I don't care what the name is. You go ahead and get your office staff to be the board of directors and file it as an independent organization. And he did that. He filed it and the IRS approved that literally in

30 days by return mail without a hearing. And so then there existed an organization tournament players Association of America or something like that and they they had an approval from the IRS for a 501c6 once we got that we changed the board of directors to ours and we folded the PGA tour as it was and and folded everything into this new organization that had been approved it was done in 30 days instead of a couple hundred thousand dollars of attorney feel I think it had cost us $2,500 for his time and we got it done in 30 days. Wow. I don't know if I knew that story. And of course, that has saved ourselves and our tournaments and provided the opportunity for more charity dollars by literally a billion to $2 billion over the last 30 or 40 years.

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When the connection matters, it has to be AT&T. To find out more, head to ATT.com backslash connect to change. AT&T connecting changes, everything. So you touched on it there of the time. you spent going through those board meeting minutes and charter and everything you spent time spent reading documents. If I fast forward a little bit to the early 80s, 82, 83 time period, that pays off for you in a big way when things come to a head famously in 1983.

Take us to what was going on at the tour at that time. And when you fought one of the, you ended up with one of your toughest battles, I would say, in the early 80s with several of your star players. Yeah, this was in the 80s. 283 period, we were starting to be very successful. We were getting more and more corporate sponsors for tournaments. Almost all of them by then had converted. As a result of that, we were getting substantially more rights fees and prize money.

I guess when I became commissioner, my last year on tour, I think total prize money. for all players and all events was something like $8 million total for the entire year. And in that time, I think we had gotten our prize money up into the $20 million range, maybe $20, $30 million range. It was, you know, things were going well. We were starting to not only have tournament sponsors, corporations for tournament sponsors. we were using the tour brand and getting corporate sponsors to join us in promotion, helping them promotion and providing additional dollars for us,

apart from my golf tournament. There were a group of, and I, of course, I wasn't in the meeting. I don't know exactly what was said, but apparently it started with Arnold Palmer and his agent in Orlando starting talking about they were worried about the tour and what it was doing commercially and that it might take away from the individual players commercial opportunities. That came to her ahead, I believe, during Jack Nicholas's tournament. and out of that, Jack and Arnold and Tom Watson were the leaders of that. And they got, I think, 12 or 13, maybe 14 other players to sign a petition that was sent to the chairman of the Tournament Policy Board that objected to the commercialization of golf in the tour.

and that I had literally exceeded my authority and the board had exceeded its authority and authorizing these things and that they wanted me gone and they wanted all that stuff to stop. So that was, yes, that was a turning point, really. It was the fit. I have it just for historical reference. here. There's five points in there as related to golf course development, marketing, TV package, player television rights, and the fifth one being the role of the tour. And the line you're

referring to there, we do not intend to stand silently by while the tour continues to exceed its mandate by progressively encroaching upon the basic rights of all the tour players. Right. Which ends up being a key part of what unfolds next. Yes. Well, yes. What I, as I read through it, I was concerned our chairman uh delta went was chairman of of eaton corporation a wonderful guy and he looked at this as a sort of a corporate fight and they said uh you know in the in the final analysis uh you know we're going to win this battle and i said to dell i said del you need to understand this if Jack Nicholas and Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson, who were the superstars at the time, and 12 of the best competitors and best known players,

this is a player organization. If they stay with that position, the answer is they're going to win. So I said, I've got an eye. of how to get this done without a, without a fight, really. And, and, and, and it has to be one without a fight. So if you let me proceed, I said, you know, if, if, if this fight is lost, I'm gone. I won't be here. I had two years left on my contract, I believe. And I said, uh, I'll tell you what if you let me proceed uh dale i said i would uh i will trade my two years of contract for the players club and the network because on in this they don't want them and not only that

the tour never paid a nickel well they did they played one dollar and i was able to build the start to this this process and we'd had several we had several we had had several TPCs by then. And I said, I will trade for the value of $1 that the tour played for my contract. And that's worth a couple hundred thousand bucks. And if you would let me do it on my own, and he said, well, that sounds like a good deal to me. If we can get out of your contract for nothing and give you what they don't want, it sounds like a good deal. So I said, fine. I engaged Jim Colbert, who was a good friend. He and I were friends on tour.

We played Gen Romney together and played mostly Bridge with a couple of other players. We all had families and in the evenings after golf we'd go play bridge. So Jim was a really good friend and I engaged Jim and I said, Jim, I want you to, Jim was on the policy board at the time. I explained to him what was going on. And I said, you're not going to win a battle against these players. You're not going to win a battle. Here's the problem.

What they said, somebody got a little enthusiastic about the language. Now, on the one thing, it's one thing for the players to say, we don't want you to do this. It's another thing for them to say that you've, exceeded your authority by doing what you're doing. And so I said, I want you to go and talk to Jack Nicholas one-on-one, eyeball-to-eyeball. It's best that another player do it. Not me.

And I've got to, if we win this battle, I've got to live with them all anyway. So you go eyeball to eyeball, Jim, and tell Jack that the PGA tour is prepared. We had a couple hundred thousand dollars at the bank. and then we don't have a lot of money. But if he doesn't withdraw this letter and convince the best of the players to withdraw it, we're going to spend every dollar we have to make sure that he never gets another commercial deal for himself. And Jim said, well, how's that? I said, well, Jim, they have said that we've exceeded our,

which means the chairman of Merrill Lynch, the chairman of Westinghouse, the chairman of Eaton Corporation, have exceeded their authority and their mandates. That is the impugning the integrity of these chairman of these boards and their presidency of these companies. And that is just incorrect because I pulled out the document for Jim. I said, Jim, if you'll read here, the PGA tour that organization that was established in 1968 had the authority to build golf courses, to own golf courses, to do all of these things. It's a sort of a blueprint for corporate documentation for a corporation. So nobody exceeded their authority. And so you need to look Jack Nicholas in the eye and tell him that he has impugned the integrity of the chairman of the board

of three or four of the biggest corporations in the world. And unless he withdraws his objection to what we're doing, we're going to do everything in our power to make sure that he can never get and that by impugning the integrity of these people, that he will be blackballed from all corporations. And Jack looked at that and said, well, who authorized this? And he pulled the next piece of paper out. And of course, Jack Nicholas was one of the original directors of that organization. And Jack Nicholas signed that document back in 1968. And of course, he didn't remember that.

And of course, he probably never read it in the first place. So when he looked at that, the result was that he, I met with Arnold Palmer. We had a big meeting in New York. Arnold flew in on his jet and Jack flew in on his and they met at the airport. And as I understand what happened, they sat on one of the airplanes and had this discussion. And Arnold Palmer got back on his airplane and flew back home and Jack came to the meeting and withdrew the document that all these players had assigned to. and that issue was settled. It's an unbelievable story.

It really is and how much things could have changed for the future of golf had they not used some of the language in that letter. Right. Of course, one of the things, one of the things that people don't realize is that by winning that battle, it cost me about a billion dollars, which is I would have owned all the players close today. It's incredible part of it. And the timing of everything at this point, well, going back to that. What was your relationship like with Jack Nicholas after that? We've had very little relationship after that.

He's never said a word to me after that. I've just stayed my distance. I tried to minimize. you know us us having a confrontation personal confrontation that's why i asked jim kovar to do it but having that kind of a direct confrontation wouldn't have been good he's going to be around a long time and i hoped i'd be around a long time so uh i used an intermediary and just uh i sort of put that in the background of my thinking uh jack is an old friend uh i played a bunch of amateur golf with him we were great friends way back when it's been

Matter of fact, my wife and I went on, were with him on his honeymoon when he married Barbara. So we go way back. So we didn't have a confrontation and I just sort of set it aside after it was all over. Looking back, do you feel pretty, you know, do you feel like you could fly the banner in terms of the vision you had for the PGA tour and the success that would come? Well, it was a turning point if the players had prevailed. And if Arnold and Jack and their advisors had prevailed, sure, they made it a little more money for themselves. But the tour would be, not would be what, no way in the world would it be where it is today. Well, because going back, this is around the time, as I mentioned in that timeline of the TPC Sawgrass was, had been built.

Had there been one players, 82 players would have happened already at that point at TPC Sawgrass, I believe. When we got the Players Club built, it was open in 81, but it was not ready for a tournament or for a tournament to be played there. We waited until 82 to have the first event at TPC, yes. Is it fair to say maybe some part of the frustration that would have contributed there was, the reviews of TPC Sawgrass from the very first year in terms of the severity of the course and the Darth Vader comments and things of that could have contributed in theory to some of the displeasure of some of the top players. Is that fair to say? It's possible, although when we used the first tournament players club for the event in 82,

the golf course was a bit too severe. No question about it. And I agreed with that. And we may changes in that there have been a lot of changes over the years but put a committee of players together to go around the golf course after that first year played jack nichols was on that committee and uh went through uh hole by hole green by green and made some change changes that over the time uh it was recognized it was a little too severe uh but but it's all worked on. Well, take us back from the timeline of sawgrass country club to building TPC, right? And what was here in Pontevira, as we're recording this at that time,

all the way to the helicopter ride of how you discovered the site of what would eventually become TPC sawgrass. And of course, what was there before it was built. Well, you know, the helicopter thing is kind of a different story on itself. It might reflect a little of me. I don't know. I love this part. But we were, we were, I, I, what I, I went to the, uh, originally I went to the, uh, banks to, and, and, and tried to make a deal with the banks to buy the TPC.

I, I felt that over the years, we were going to have to invest a lot of money in the facility. And that I thought we should own it. You mean, sawgrass country club is sawgrass original sawgrass country club. So we went to the banks and I negotiated a very, I think, an unbelievable deal to buy the TPC, the Sawgrass Country Club. We were going to get that for a million 800 or a million $900,000, something like that. that we'd get the golf course and the, uh, the tennis facility, uh, the, uh, all the recreational facilities there, maybe 10 acres around the, uh, the maintenance facility, as well as I think it was 36 condos on the beach for a million, $800,000. So, you know, the tour had never owned

anything up until that point. And of course, our offices were in Washington, D.C., but we had a board meeting, and I had talked to all individually to all the board members, and I think I got pretty much an agreement with a hell of a deal that what I explained to them is that even though we were paying a million, $800,900,000 for this whole facility, plus the condominiums, that if we had any problem on operational, we could turn around and sell the condos for about a million dollars. So we'd only have seven or eight or nine hundred thousand dollars in the total facility and have a and have a million dollars in cash and uh and you'd have the golf course and have the golf course right and have the facility. So in discussing with each individual, they all thought it was a hell of a deal

We got into the board meeting and one of our player directors, basically, everybody was sort of ready to say to go ahead and approve this deal. But one of the player directors basically said sort of offhandedly to the board who'd never, we'd never spent a nickel for anything. and the tournament policy board never done made any investor in anything he said you know it might be a good idea if we waited on this until after the first tournament was played there and everybody sighed and said great idea great idea so they tabled it until after the tournament was held well unfortunately a big company from South Florida came in and bought the facility out from underneath us.

And so there was no deal. So after that, I went to, there was Arvita company in South Florida. And I went to Arvita and tried to make the same deal with them for buying a golf course. and they looked at me and said, well, Dean, he said, you know, if they, if they wouldn't buy it for the bargain that you had before, they ain't going to buy it now. So the answer is, and so we bet, we bet $100. I bet them $100 on, I could get the deal done ultimately. And so we put my, put my, wrote up my sleeves. And what I did was I rented a helicopter.

And they had an office right out on the property and a little helicopter pad. So I landed the helicopter pad there and drive my car into their parking lot and jumped on the helicopter. Took off, started looking for property. someplace else. And so that was the message I said to them that we're going to get this thing done. And so we did find the property ultimately literally across the street from them. There was 2,000 acres. Developer was the real estate business wasn't real strong at the time. And they were they had had problems paying their interest to their bank in New York. But I made a deal with them to get 415 acres from them for a dollar.

And I convinced them that if we did that, the property around the golf course and the rest of their property would, would blossom in value. And I, as a matter of fact, I had to go to New York and sit down. with their bank and get their approval if they couldn't do it and got the bank's approval ultimately and so we made the deal for a dollar and the rest is history they never cashed the check it's still on display now of that in the clubhouse at tpc sograss but financing it was difficult the tour would not put any money in it at all we were able to buy the property for a dollar i was able to yet I think a four and a half million dollar non recourse loan from an S&L on

Daytona Beach and we got 50 local business people to buy a $20,000 membership raised a couple million dollars and gave him a 20 year membership with no dues and free carts which was a hell of a deal for them and we sold I think something like a couple hundred local members, association members that gave them one free round of golf, trying to get maybe a couple hundred local members so that we'd have regular play. So we'd make sure that we wouldn't be losing money as soon as we opened up. And all that came together. And that's how we financed it and built it.

And the tour never put a dollar into it. Well, but how did you how did you envision a golf course, especially the one that we see today now on this land in particular? And take me to why it was, you know, it's obvious now in a lot of the places that the tour goes. And what you had seen prior, both at Muirfield Village, a tournament you attended as well that you outside the ropes trying to view the golf, why you were so convinced that the tour needed its own site and what the kind of the. the strategy was going to be around building that for spectators. Well, the tour needed its own sites simply because as I wanted to build the event over time, I felt we had to put a tremendous amount of money into the facility. And it's very difficult to do that unless you own it.

And you don't want to negotiate every year with a separate party or what you want to do for the long-term future. So it was clear to me we needed to own it. But the second part of that was, and part of your question is, is that I played a Hilton Head, Pete Dye course there, a very similar piece of property on a all dead flat in, and I was very impressed by what he built there in that, in that similar piece of property.

So I was convinced that Pete Dye was the guy to do it because not only did I like that, almost every player, even today, it might be one of their favorite golf courses. So he did a wonderful job there. And part of the other part of that is this, is that back in the back in the early 60s, I was involved in a potential project with a golf course architect called Eddie Alt. and on the eastern shore of Maryland. And we were involved in designing and laying out a golf course and trying to convince a developer to build this golf course.

And it was not to own it. It was just to design it and build it. But as we were as we were talking, and back in the early 60s, I was out, I think at congrats, at congressional at a big golf tournament there. I think the U.S. open along in that time. I was convinced that the golf courses were currently not built very well for galleries

because the biggest seller on a golf course back then for a tournament with a periscope so that you could see over the gallery in front of you. Eddie Alt and I conceived this notion of building a stadium golf course. And it was a collaboration between Eddie Alt and myself. And we went so far as Eddie Alt designing on paper a stadium golf course. And he and I went to New York and sat down with Joe Dye, who was the executive director of the USDA at the time. This is the early 60s and tried to convince him that the USDA should build

six to eight golf courses around the country that they could hold all of their championships on the amateur, the open ladies, a junior, all of those are on their own golf courses because at the same time they were starting their ag program agricultural for agronomy and that they could do the agronomy work on their own golf courses, own their own facilities and hold their own tournaments. And of course, Joe Dyes spent about four and a half minutes looking at this and looked up and said basically wasn't interested. So that just that deal and that notion went dead until I was confronted with this new challenge of building the first tournament players club. And so that was that's where the concept of stadium golf came from. And because of the nature of the piece of property we had where there was probably 18 inches of muck on everything of this low laying piece of ground, we had to take 18 inches of muck away and do something with it.

We build all the mounds around to build the stadiums around almost all the holes. So we had the perfect site for building a stadium golf course. We needed to make lakes. When we made the lakes, we found wonderful sand to be able to cap all the golf course and build the greens. So it was a perfect site for a stadium golf course. Except for the water moccasins, right? Well, the water moccans and alligators, that's correct, yes. But ultimately, those are gone.

Well, we actually met last, I guess it was this year when Bobby was giving us a tour and kind of given us a little history of every hole. And I never really fully understood the canal that sits on the outside of the course as well. And what purpose that served and how important that was. Well, yeah, in order to build the golf course, the first thing we had to do was, built we built a 360 degree canal all the way around it to drain the property into the intercostal waterway and that lowered the water table and allowed us to be able to use the rest of the property so take me take me to again still early 80s but you have the PGA there's more stuff that goes on

with the PGA of America there is a name change for in a logo change for a little short period of time there in the early 80s. But I think, you know, to this day, PGA, PGA tour does get mixed up in a way. There was a, take us to the TPA in that, that era and what the negotiations were like at that time. Well, it was one of those difficult confrontations. The PGA, of course, very protective of their name. And I had wanted to do some certain certain things beyond what they thought we ought to be able to do and they were in the position they thought to have their way because they own the letters pGA and i said you know we'll either we'll either agree to let us do this or i'll just change our name and so we we had a battle back and forth and they finally decided

and you can't do that and so i changed the name uh to the tournament players association tpa and uh we started the season and as the tournaments came on the pgia of america didn't see the letter's pga anymore they thought better of their position that they took and so uh less than three months later they came to we came to an understanding on how we would be able to use that for for all that we needed to to make the tour what it is today and uh we then changed the name back to the pGA tour what uh you you gave an answer it was a pretty quiet thing it wasn't a wasn't a i just found that interesting wasn't a big public fight but you know, best kind of fights are quiet.

Yeah. Well, there was a very, you gave an answer in I think it was a 2011 golf channel interview about what, what your greatest regret was about your tenure. And I won't give you the answer you gave. Then I'm curious if it's still the same answer 15 years later of what you think maybe your biggest regret would be from your tenure. My greatest regret in not my tenure, but of my retirement. As I was getting ready to thinking about retiring after 18, 19 years, and I went to the full 20 years,

we were in a battle with the U.S.J as well as ping over technology, really. Square grooves in particular, but I was concerned even beyond square grooves. And we ultimately settled the lawsuit with Ping. And they agreed our insurance company paid their attorney's fees and our attorney's fees. So nobody, you know, the tour didn't squander a lot of money in this lawsuit. But out of that lawsuit came Ping's agreement that in recognition that, Just like every other sport, the PGA Tour had the authority to make its own rules, whether it's the rules of the game or equipment.

Every sport has the authority to do that. And they recognized that golf did too. It wasn't any different than any other sport. And as that lawsuit was being settled, I contracted, we contracted, with a company to develop a very, very specific technical equipment to test particularly grooves in clubs. And so when we got that settlement and we had, we had ordered that equipment and it was

ready to be delivered to us fairly soon, I was comfortable in retiring. I mean, I wanted to retire, but I stayed on for almost another year later than I wanted to retire. But I thought everything was set and that the organization I left beside would follow up. And we had done some preliminary testing on grooves. I was convinced that that testing was fine, but it was not scientific enough to prove it. but it was my my intuition and instinct and my experience in golf told me that they even know that it wasn't particularly scientific that it did prove to me that we were correct that squirroof were I don't know quite but they would carry they would carry the game the wrong way okay

Des skill it in a way. Yes, that's right. Okay. It would change. It would change how golf is played. And I was convinced of that. I'd been a competitor my whole life from the time I was 13 or 14 years old. Just because the added spin, you're able to get out of.

Yeah. Bush lies, rough lies. You got that. Yes. So I, I, a contractor, I felt comfortable. We were on the right. path that way and so I did retire it turns out that the following administration and golf didn't think that that was as important they wanted to turn all those

problems over to the USDA instead of us taking a big role in it and I can tell you today as a result of that there are many other things in golf today that have gotten out of control and that 20 years later the USGA did scientific testing on grooves and their their technical guys told me that it was the most provable thing they've ever done and of course they then made some rule changes 20 years later that that that that that rain the those square roofs in. Unfortunately, I believe that we would have proven that 20 years before that that would have been the hopefully the example of taking a hold of technology advances that have completely changed.

change the game. The 360 Cc driver, the ability to make the hitting area sweet spots so much bigger on on almost all clubs, in my opinion, has drastically changed the game. And the golf ball itself is another problem. They completely changed the game, in my opinion. You know, I regret not staying on long enough to help lead the stopping of technology to change the way the game is played. And that's one, that's my big regret. And that's, I find that interesting from, from your perspective. One, I'm in like my generation it's a that's an I I share the same opinion of what tech has happened with technology but my generation that's a little bit unpopular like a lot of people think you know it might just be the previous generation doesn't like how athletic these guys are they don't

understand people like the long ball and the interesting marriage of just a commercial aspect the marketing aspect of professional golf particularly the pGA tour and the equipment companies that sponsor players that that how this differs from other sports it's not the same you know technology battle for individual consumers of the game in baseball for bats and things like that it's way easier to regulate and the major league baseball level we're going to use wooden bats and you know but just with all of your experience and how you transformed how come how golfers are able to sell themselves and the marketability around the game versus the integrity of the kind of the kind of competition, the makeup of the competition.

And I was curious as to how you felt so strongly about what has happened with technology and how difficult the game has the spot the game is in at this point in 2026. Well, I think the best example I can give you and I understand what you're saying. There are different perspectives of how this would affect things. but I don't agree with any technology that that hides a player's inability to be precise. Okay? That is. All right.

I've been looking for 10 years for a way to say it. All right. Now, having said that, recognizing what the proposal is, what the proposal is, is to change things now that they're now that we're 25 years down the road they want to they want to pull things back okay and I am diametrically opposed to pulling things back the way they're talking about it with they want to reduce how far a ball goes by 15 to 25 yards okay well let's talk about the PGA tour in 15 to 25 yards if you take the the long hitter the guy that can

hit it 310 to 340 which we're seeing today okay and I got another story to tell you a little bit but let me finish this one the average strong hitter today it's it consistently 310 to 340 okay you take 25 yards away from him okay so now he's hitting it or 3 270 what about the guy that can only hit it 280 or 290 today and you put him 25 yards back he's got to go home he can't compete at all because he can't now get home on all the par fives like everybody else like the other guy says on Paul along par fours he's going to be hitting a wood into it instead of an iron he's gone home you have tipped the scale to the guys and and and and the the modest hitter

who is super precise can do everything else you're you're sending him home that's just wrong okay Shrinking the distance in itself, only doing that would increase the value of distance at the top level. You got it. That's exactly right. And even worse, what they proposed and the way the rule was written, there's a world where, depending on your spend profile and launch profile, that if you were a shorter hitter, even compared to the longer hitters, you might be even farther back than just this blanket cover in a hypothetical world that you're talking. Yeah, you're right on. Now, the other part of that is that the average play, let's talk about the average player.

The average player probably hits the ball 1,75 to 210. It ain't, you average player, it ain't a, they're not hitting it too far. That's right. And the modern golf ball that spins less in curve, But because it spins less when you're swinging at 75, 80 miles an hour instead of 110, the ball doesn't stay in the air. So current technology hurts the average player.

Okay? It hurts them. So my solution is two solutions to the future of golf. One is to take the super big head, okay, and reduce that. Sure. Okay. So that a miss hit does affect you. Today on a 360 Cc driver, if you miss it, three quarters of an inch off center, it costs you five yards and still go straight. Okay. What's funny? It's four 60cc. Yeah, 460. When you, left in 94 then great big bertha came out in 95 it was the biggest head ever it was 253 Cc

right yeah so the big head the big head is a huge thing for for the tour player it it means you don't have to be as good simply as that but the spin of the golf ball hurts the average player and in and is a rescue to the guy swinging hard so So I would take and make a golf ball spin more. So if you miss hit it, you miss it farther. If you want to swing that hard, go ahead. But if you don't hit it correctly, the answer is it won't go in the edge of the rough. It might go into the trees.

And the golf ball that the tour used and everybody used in the early 70s and the 60s, and 70s are a wonderful golf ball, but it's been more. The dimples weren't designed in a wind tunnel. Okay. And so that would be the solution that would not hurt but help the average player and make the top player be more precise in how they do. So that that would be my solution. Well, you're a man that, you know, you get not only do you have ideas, you know how to get things done there. And what you just proposed there is, I think, a good idea. I would wonder, how do you write that into a rule that a ball has to spin, right? Because there's not current, as I understand the equipment rules of golf, there's not current rules that during testing that

a ball has to be under spinning a lower amount of environment. I think you have to recognize the modern technology in designing a golf ball and put it into rulemaking. That's all. Yeah. Yeah, you got to recognize the one example I use for most people when we talk about this subject is that if baseball at a professional level allowed aluminum bats, a lot of pitchers would be dead. Okay. and every ballpark would have to spend a billion dollars to expand it so that everybody didn't hit it out of the park. The scale of the game would not fit for Major League Baseball. It would not fit. And it doesn't currently fit for no matter what changes you make.

In my opinion, whenever what changes you make to golf courses, the scale doesn't fit golf course. You know, Augusta moved a road on the fifth hall. just to have Roy and Bryson hit not still hit nine irons into the green like the pace is is just hard to hard to fathom even that understanding what the technology of when you left as a commissioner to now and the lengthening of golf courses that's still two different games right like the the a long par four being 450 with old technology versus a long par four now being 500 yards with new technology it's still just a different game they're not equivalent you can't

move the T and keep the scale of the game the same is right but it's a it's a mess now and that's where I was yeah it's a mess it's but anyway you we started out by saying my regret I regret retiring at the time because I believe had I stayed a couple of years longer I might have had an influence on where we are today so the the the PGA tour obviously has gone through massive massive changes obviously the several years, been highly, highly documented. Do you have any involvement in any way in terms of advising in both the most recent or the current, still the current commissioner Jay Monaghan, Brian Rolap, the formation of PJTor enterprises and kind of the future direction of the PGA

tour. I'm curious if you have any thoughts and I'm sure you do have thoughts on how the tour has changed and what the future looks like based on, you know, it's been built off of what you've built over all these years. I don't have any direct involvement at all. I've had one social meeting with some of the new executives. And not sure I've had any influence over what they're doing. What do you, do you have any insight into or thoughts on, you know, kind of the formation of the for-profit entity and kind of the direction they're headed there? Well, I don't know all the inner workings of that.

I'd say, I don't have any comments on that part of it. I think from a standpoint of where the competition is going, it's interesting. It's going to be interesting, see how that pans out. It looks to me like an interesting and quite could be quite positive outcome. So we're all waiting to see, I think, and so are they. Definitely a change. Gosh, I could take up a lot more of your time and I promise. I will let you go here at a certain point.

But one thing that I think is, not that necessarily doesn't affect fans that greatly, but still under talked about and report on is the development of the retirement plan of the PGA tour. And how did that come about? And I'm wondering if you could speak to the amazing success that has been. Well, I was, it's a little complicated, but I was influenced by,

my prior in business business and experience and the fact that I was able to get approved by the president of the third class mail users a a retirement program which was really a deferred comp program and I took that experience from my business experience in the retirement field and as as the tour was continuing to grow and prize money was developing i thought we should try to incorporate something like that for the benefit of the players the problem of getting a retirement program for a deferred comp for a non-profit which we were able to overcome i was over to overcome one time years earlier is a problem for the tour and then there's an additional problem. Is the players are not employees. They're independent contractors. So getting a deferred comp plan

for independent contractors of a nonprofit is a triple problem. Okay. We put the plans together, the concept together, went to the IRS. And interesting enough, we were denied, based on some technicalities. But at the same time, I was coordinating some things and helping the LPGA and their executives and some of the concepts of what I had personally experienced in my tenure as commissioner. and they were interested in the same kind of a plan. So when we were denied, our attorneys were working with the LPGA, and we encouraged them to immediately apply through the LPGA for the same thing

and changing those technicalities and solving those. And the LPGA, with our help and our attorney's help, went in and applied for the plan and got it approved literally. And my guess is at the time, women were a big high on everybody's list of, you better do everything good for the women. And so the IRS approved it immediately. And then we tiggy back that one. So that's how we got it done. And then it creates this environment where the retirement plans are, you know, you've got a lot of amazing feedback, I'm sure,

on the benefits of the retirement plans for a lot of these players for many, many decades. Well, it's, you know, we've got a retirement plan that, that provides an opportunity for the players to set money aside and not take it, not have to pay taxes on it and accumulate through the years and then take it later on. It's a it's a win-win. What last last segment here, one of your more famous, famous battles, I think, was with Sevi by Astero, of course. What was your relationship like with Sepia and kind of what was your perspective on

on the head-to-heads you guys had. Well, it's pretty simple. Seve Ballesteros thought he was a superstar and thought that his presence was so important that he didn't have to follow any rules as a as a tour member. So he wanted all the benefits of tour membership with none of the obligations and that just didn't wasn't going to work. It was pretty that's that's about as simple as it gets.

And so he and I, he never changed his attitude and I never changed mine because I thought that that he ought to have to follow the same rules as everybody else. All right. I did lie. I have one final question for you just because this one, this one, it made me, I was real, I'm regretting that this never happened. Take me to the World Series of Golf. that almost happened at Shinnecock Hills. Oh, my goodness gracious. That goes back.

I thought Shinnecock Hills is a wonderful golf course. New York area is a place that having a golf tournament gives special exposure. And we were going to have a joint. venture with the PGA of America on this because of don't want to get into all the details of the negotiation but we finally got an agreement to put it together and make it work and I had Chinnacock Hills all set to go and it and I got a sponsor we had the I had it done and it had to be approved by the PGA of America as well as our board I got my board to approve it and it was being done by the PGA of America.

So they got their board and the president of the PGA decided to announce it on his own, which offended the sponsor. We wanted to have him announce it, not ourselves. And as soon as that happened, he pulled out and the deal crumbled. Oh, man, that had to be heartbreaking. No, it wasn't, when there's a lot of work went into it and, uh, sorry, it didn't work out. I think it would have been a very special event.

I think so too. So all right, well, this, we really greatly appreciate your time. This has been a honestly a career highlight for me, uh, getting to chat with you. So we, we, uh, you've been such an influential person in the way that the game is now. And, uh, I think it's, it's really only several years into doing this that I am starting to really fully grasp the full, full scope of everything you, you've done. in your career. Well, the thing that,

some of the things that we haven't had a chance to touch on, you can't do it all, but I think the development of the, of the Corn Ferry tour, started out as the Ben Hogan tour. And then the, we've had three or four different big sponsors. And now that the corn ferry,

a very important part of, of the development of, of, way of getting people ready for the tour, providing more opportunity for players, and of course, the development of the senior tours, which is quite important, I think. And that was quite interesting because as we were developing the retirement plan, we couldn't get approval for providing retirement for people who had been on tour for years. It was we couldn't do that. They wouldn't, the IRS wouldn't allow us to do that. So by providing and developing the senior tour and providing them an opportunity on their own

at age 50 was a way of compensating them for what they'd done for all the years that they played on the tour for probably for almost no money at all. Right. So, uh, I'm proud of the development of the senior tour that has made that possible. Especially some of the deep dives we've done lately. Going back and reading old newspapers from the 90s, I mean, purses were 75% of PGA tour purses, 70% around then. And I think the 94 or 95, I forget, the winning money leaner on the senior tour would have been like third on the PGA tour money list.

You know, it was a massive, massive thing in relation to the PGA tour. Well, it's great for. the game of golf because we were able to bring golf to more cities but at the same time it's a it's a great reward for those players who were the formation of what the tour is today and played for practically nothing yeah that's exactly right well if i haven't scared you away then we can do another episode in the future diving into everything we didn't get to today but uh really really really really appreciate your time and i know our listeners will appreciate it as well so thanks for coming over Delight to be with you tonight.

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