Geoff Ogilvy’s Right: PGA Tour Needs Tournament Competition, Not Just Player Paydays

I’ve spent 35 years watching professional golf evolve—some of it from inside the ropes as a caddie, most of it from the press box—and I’ve seen the Tour chase a lot of shiny objects. But Geoff Ogilvy’s recent comments on the “Subpar” podcast hit on something that’s been nagging at me for a while now: we’ve turned tournament golf into a salary negotiation, when we should be turning it into a rivalry.

The 2006 U.S. Open winner isn’t shy about where he stands. He wants tournaments competing against each other—not as afterthoughts in a Tour hierarchy, but as legitimate contenders for relevance.

“I would like to see the tournaments sort of compete against the other tournaments to be better,” Ogilvy said. “I’d like to see the American Express try to be better than Torrey and Torrey try to be better than Phoenix and L.A. try to be better than Phoenix.”

Now, on the surface, that might sound like a nice sentiment from a guy who’s been around the block. But dig deeper, and you realize he’s identified the central problem with how we’ve structured modern professional golf.

We Bought Fields Instead of Building Tournaments

Here’s what strikes me most about Ogilvy’s argument: it cuts straight to the heart of what’s broken. In my three decades covering this Tour, I watched it transform from a competition between venues and organizations to a competition between sponsors’ checkbooks. We stopped asking “What makes this tournament great?” and started asking “How much are we paying to fill the field?”

The Tour, faced with the specter of LIV Golf and the need to keep stars playing week-to-week, essentially decided to purchase field integrity rather than earn it through prestige and tradition. It worked—sort of. Players showed up. Tournaments happened. But something intangible got lost in the transaction.

“And I think we’ve chased this sugar hit with if you don’t have a field, you don’t have a tournament. And we’ve just bought fields effectively with money, and I don’t think money is as exciting as prestige and history.”

That’s not cynicism. That’s a competitor speaking from experience. Ogilvy played in an era when you *wanted* to win certain tournaments because they meant something beyond the paycheck. Phoenix. Memorial. Doral. These events had identities. They had gravity.

The Masters Model We Keep Overlooking

Ogilvy references the right example—Augusta National. But here’s what’s interesting: he doesn’t stop there. He immediately pivots to Phoenix as another benchmark.

“The Masters is the Masters because they’ve done an amazing job for 100 years. Phoenix is a great tournament because it’s an unbelievable organization that there’s a lot of people who put a lot of time and a lot of effort in making that — it’s not just a tournament, it’s just an event and it’s just a massive event.”

That distinction matters. Augusta National and Phoenix didn’t become great because the Tour mandated field sizes. They became great because the organizations running them invested relentlessly in the experience—the course setup, the atmosphere, the broadcast, the hospitality, the history they were building year after year. Players *had* to show up, eventually, because everyone wanted to play there.

We’ve inverted that logic. Now the Tour tells tournaments, “Here’s your field,” and tournaments scramble to make that work. It’s backwards.

The Broadcast Rights Angle Is Underrated

What really intrigued me was Ogilvy’s tangent about broadcast competition. It’s easy to dismiss—he even deflects a bit (“I’m way out of my lane”)—but he’s onto something real here.

“If you had to be better than last week and next week because Amazon or Netflix or CBS or whoever it was, we want that tournament because that tournament’s always great on TV, well, the next week’s going to have to improve their product, they have to get better because they want to do that.”

Think about that in the context of what’s actually happening in sports media right now. Broadcast partners are fragmenting. Streaming services are hunting for content. In that environment, tournaments that consistently deliver compelling television *should* have leverage. They should be fighting for better time slots, better production investment, bigger audiences.

Instead, most Tour events are fighting for the scraps of broadcast real estate they’re allotted. That’s a negotiating position problem masquerading as a structural one.

This Isn’t Just About Money—It’s About What Makes Golf Special

Having caddied in the ’90s for Tom Lehman, I remember the calculus was different. You wanted to win *that* tournament because of what it meant to your legacy, your reputation among peers, your place in golf history. The money was important, sure, but it wasn’t the primary motivator. The prestige was.

That’s what’s missing now. When every tournament feels interchangeable—when they’re all just stops on a circuit fueled by guaranteed purses—we lose what made golf tournaments distinct and compelling.

Ogilvy’s suggesting something radical: let tournaments actually compete. Let them reinvest in what makes them special. Let them battle for better fields, better broadcast placement, better sponsorships through the quality of the experience they create—not the size of their check-writing capability.

The Real Beneficiaries

Here’s where I think Ogilvy gets it exactly right: if this happened, everyone wins. Not the Tour bureaucracy—they’d lose some control. Not the money people—the incentive structure shifts from buying field integrity to building tournament excellence. But the players, the fans, the broadcasters? They all benefit from tournaments that are genuinely competing to be the best versions of themselves.

That’s a different Tour than the one we have now. Whether it’s realistic? That’s another conversation. But after 35 years covering this game, I know the difference between a good tournament and a great one. And I know what makes the difference: the people running it, the tradition behind it, and the genuine belief that it matters.

Geoff Ogilvy just reminded us all what we’ve been missing.