Secret Tour meetings, Tiger’s comeback: 10 lessons from Hero on pro golf’s future

Something is wrong with professional golf.

I couldn’t shake that feeling as I rode the bumpy Bahamas shuttle from the golf course back to the hotel at the Hero World Challenge late last week. As the bus plunged through another pothole, I considered the fact that, in the same week, squarely in the center of the golf offseason, Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Viktor Hovland would headline three distinctly different golf tournaments in three different time zones and three different corners of the world. Scottie Scheffler was at Tiger Woods’ event in the Caribbean, Hovland was at the DP World Tour’s headline event in South Africa, and McIlroy was at the DP World Tour’s headline event in Australia — all while Jon Rahm chased some sort of Krispy Kreme challenge.

To visualize the physical distance between these three superstars was really to face the latest iteration in golf’s most elusive question: Which tournaments actually matter? And it didn’t take much reflection to reach a handful of angsty follow-ups: Surely these tournaments should each get their own shine? Surely this was an inefficient distribution of golf’s top resources? Surely somebody much smarter and much more powerful would figure this out?

These are champagne problems to contemplate from a golf tournament in the Bahamas, so I swallowed my feelings of foreboding as I entered my resort and rode the elevator up a dozen floors. I entered my hotel room and stared over the Atlantic Ocean, watching the lights twinkle in the denim-blue pools of the resort spilling out in the foreground below. Then I flipped on the TV to find something even prettier: Rory McIlroy and Adam Scott hitting high-risk, downwind pitch shots at Royal Melbourne. As I researched margarita options downstairs, I felt my anxiety loosen. For the moment, the world had achieved perfect balance.

But now, a week later, I’ve returned to the real world (42 and drizzle in Seattle, Wash.) and as I debate the new duality facing me — to clean off my shoes or let them dry — I’m also thinking about the duality of professional golf, and how the day-to-day dreaminess hides an ongoing, underlying tension.

That tension was the centerpiece of what I saw, heard and felt at the Hero World Challenge. There’s more happening beneath the surface. In Tiger Woods’ presser. At Tuesday’s secret player meeting. On this continent and multiple others. Here are 10 things that stuck out, specific and general, from a few days at one of pro golf’s offseason outposts.

1. Tiger’s coming back.

I don’t know when or in what capacity. Woods himself insisted he has no idea, either. He’s just been cleared to chip and putt following his latest back procedure, and he did do some chipping and putting at Albany. But it didn’t take a body language expert to see the desire is still there. Although he ruled out a start with his son Charlie at the PNC Championship (“it wouldn’t be fair to my son and it wouldn’t be fair to another team that could play”) and he ruled out early-season TGL starts (“but I will be there at every match Jupiter Links competes in”) he laid a trail of bread crumbs that we could follow to another comeback.

“Hopefully I will be able to maybe play at the end of the season here and there, but I don’t know,” he said.

It’s impressive to pack “hopefully,” “maybe,” “here and there,” and “I don’t know” into a sentence that short, but if you’re a Tiger optimist, you’re used to it. He seemed to suggest he was thinking about a return before the end of the TGL season (mid-late March), which would also interestingly coincide with the Masters (early April).

Still, when Woods was asked specifically about another comeback, he offered this dose of reality:

“Come back — to what point? I’d like to come back to just playing golf again. I haven’t played golf in a long time. It’s been a tough year. I’ve had a lot of things happen on and off the golf course that’s been tough.

“And so my passion to just play, I haven’t done that in a long time. Just play. So I’ve had to sit on the sidelines for a number of months, and most of this year and quite frankly end of last year.”

Woods wants to play golf with his son Charlie. He wants to feel good enough to do so. But I think he wants to play in the Masters, too. That could be nostalgia talking, for me and for him. But any real comeback requires a heavy dose of optimism anyway.

2. Tiger’s quietly guiding golf’s future.

I wrote more about this here, but one thing is increasingly clear about the shape of pro golf’s future: Tiger Woods has the hammer and chisel.

In some ways, it seems counterintuitive. When you think “revolution” and “disruption” and “significant change” in basketball, you don’t exactly picture Michael Jordan on a Zoom call. Is he weighing in on the nuts and bolts of playoff schedules or seeding in the NBA Cup? Hopefully not.

But that’s Woods’ current role as chairman of the Future Competition Committee, which means he now uses words like “stakeholders” with regularity and says things like this:

“This is one of the reasons why we’ve talked to all of our partners, why we talked to all of the CMOs, CEOs, everyone who’s involved in the game to get their opinion on what they would like to see. It’s up to us at the committee level to try and figure that out.”

3. Tiger has his North Star. Everybody else should take note

The rest of professional golf should take note of the answer Woods gave when he was asked why, exactly, he cares about the future of the PGA Tour.

“Well, the PGA Tour gave me an opportunity to chase after a childhood dream,” Woods said. “I got a chance to hit my first ball in my first PGA Tour event when I was 16 years old. I know that’s what, 33 years ago, but I’ve been involved with the PGA Tour ever since then. A little kid from Cypress, California growing up on a par-3 course got a chance to play against the best players in the world and make it to World No. 1. I got a chance to be involved in a lot of different things on our Tour.”

If you’re cynical, maybe you found these words rehearsed or scripted, but sitting in the room with Woods, they felt genuine, especially the throughline: The PGA Tour is the dream. I’m not blind to the realities of the PGA Tour business — and it is big business! — but the Tour should hold itself accountable to a slightly higher standard than cash. It is the pinnacle of the sport, an aspirational, meaningful place to compete, and every one of its tournaments should be conducted accordingly. The more they care, the more we care. Here’s what Woods said motivates him to pay it forward:

“This is a different opportunity to make an impact on the Tour,” He said. “I did it with my golf clubs, I made a few putts here and there. Now I am able to make an impact in a different way for other generations to come. Not just generations that I played against, but for future generations like a 16-year-old looking for a place to play who maybe hopes of playing the PGA Tour.”

4. These guys like Brian Rolapp.

I was not around for the arrival of Jay Monahan as PGA Tour commissioner. I’m not sure what it’s like when other sports leagues adopt new leadership. And there are exceptions to what I’m about to say, particularly in the Tour’s midfield. But I will say, I was shocked by the level of optimism the Tour pros I spoke to expressed about new CEO Brian Rolapp.

I suspect some of that has to do with his NFL pedigree; everybody knows the NFL is king, especially these football-loving Tour pros. But Rolapp also makes a very distinct impression on people. He seems like the kind of guy who gets what he wants, takes everything in stride, and is always in control. Direct and impressive — those are the two words I kept hearing about Rolapp. Things could turn, of course. Don’t they for all commissioners, sooner or later? But so far, so good.

5. The latest “secret player meeting” went well.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that a Tuesday meeting of top PGA Tour players (plus Tiger and Rolapp) on the future of the PGA Tour went well. (Of course the future is bright for these top-ranked guys! It’d better be!) But I was more impressed by the audience than the substance. There’s something to be said for the fact that every player in this star-studded Hero field attended the meeting.

The PGA Tour has felt reactive over the last few years, but these meetings left me with the feeling that Rolapp and co. are playing offense. The players clearly believe change is coming, and they want to prepare for it before it arrives.

Woods is a good fit as an establishment figure because Rolapp is the opposite. Two more phrases that Rolapp and the people around him enjoy are “blank slate” or “clean sheet.”

6. The new schedule isn’t decided — but we’re getting hints.

A couple weeks ago, Harris English did some out-loud thinking at the microphone at the RSM Classic when he suggested the future PGA Tour could be 20-22 events between the Super Bowl and the end of August. There’s no need to take English’s statements as gospel; he emphasized that his words were merely a personal prediction. But considering the general reaction to English’s comments has been something to the effect of yeah, that could be about right, including from Rolapp, it’s safe to assume he’s onto something.

The specifics may not yet be clear, but the general outline seems to be the following: shorten the PGA Tour season, double down on the remaining tournaments, get some of those tournaments into bigger markets, and deemphasize everything else. So, which tournaments do you dump? Which do you move? How do you tweak the playoffs?

Can you start at the WM Phoenix Open? Can you move California’s marquee events to the summertime? Can you leave Hawaii behind altogether? Can you recategorize the lower-level PGA Tour events in a way that makes sense for both players and viewers? And can you actually give people fewer PGA Tour events and draw more viewers via scarcity?

These are the questions Woods’ “FCC” has been assembled to answer.

7. Still, nobody’s coming to save “pro golf.”

Where does the Australian Open fit into all of this? What does it mean for the DP World Tour, and LIV, and some unified theory of worldwide golf?

On one hand, the theoretical schedule would leave plenty of room for interested players to participate in tournaments during football season. Rory McIlroy has been the poster boy for international barnstorming this fall; he’s been to Ireland, England, India, Dubai and Australia in the three-plus months since the Tour Championship. Perhaps more players would join him, if given full latitude to do so.

McIlroy told Evin Priest that he sees real opportunity in the vision.

“Yeah, I think I understand what they’re [PGA Tour] doing,” McIlroy said. “They’re trying to get their domestic model right before focusing internationally, and they obviously don’t want to go up against football … So if the [PGA] Tour are really thinking about playing from February through to August, that leaves September through to January for here [Australia] and Europe and wherever else in the world to really be the shining light of golf for that five months. So I think people could really get behind that.”

But golf still needs some resolution. At the Hero, I watched the continuation of a new golf tradition: Chatter about which pros might be headed to LIV, as well as speculation on the future of LIV golfers competing on the DP World Tour. Brian Rolapp can do a lot as the CEO of the PGA Tour, but he’s not the CEO of Professional Golf.

8. Keegan Bradley’s in pain.

It’s easy to visit a tournament like the Hero and assume that everybody in the golf world is all good. They’re not. Keegan Bradley is still hurting after the American Ryder Cup loss at Bethpage, and I thought this was an incredibly vulnerable self-assessment from the losing U.S. Ryder Cup captain on his 2025.

“Well, that’s a complicated question because I’m really proud of the way I’ve played. I think in a lot of ways it’s the best year of my career. My rookie year I won twice with a major, so that’s going to be tough to beat. But with everything that was going on, I’m really proud of the way that I played.

“But when you factor in losing the Ryder Cup, I mean, it’s an F. You’ve got to go and win that, and this grade’s different. It’s really tough to grade.

“I was talking to my coach, he said, ‘Remember, you won this year.’ I was like, ‘No, I don’t remember that at all.’”

Bradley described recent weeks as “the darkest time of my life, probably. I mean, I don’t know how else to describe it. Certainly, definitely of my career.” And this part was particularly wrenching:

“I have this, like, gaping hole in my career now that I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to fill. This isn’t something that you lose the Masters, you lose a tournament, I’m going to work extra hard to get back and win.”

One thing’s guaranteed going forward: nobody will be harder on Keegan Bradley than he is on himself.

9. Akshay Bhatia has a fascinating new caddie.

The PGA Tour has big-time existential changes, but Hero week is a reminder that the daily changes of golf are incremental. Like Jordan Spieth working on a new swing feel and testing it out in competition for the first time — or Akshay Bhatia debuting his new caddie, veteran looper Joe Greiner.

Greiner’s appearance on Bhatia’s bag was a fitting way to cap off a wild year on the caddie carousel. He split with longtime boss Max Homa early in the season, then enjoyed a brief stretch as a fill-in for Justin Thomas. After a mid-season stint on Collin Morikawa’s bag, he bounced over to Jake Knapp before ultimately finishing the year with Bhatia. Homa has gone through multiple caddies since then, as has Morikawa. Other longtime partnerships are giving things another shot, like Webb Simpson and Paul Tesori. But Greiner is now on the bag of a rising star — and I found one detail of their partnership particularly interesting: They’re both lefties.

“I think certain golf courses, certain shots, certain cues that we have, he really understands that. And again, I think from the majority of lefties that I’ve met, Phil, Bubba, myself, very creative and I think being lefty has something to do with that, I believe. It’s an exciting thing for me for someone to see a shot the way I do.”

Bhatia said he’d pursued Greiner for a while; they grew up in the same California town and have vibed well thus far. As for Greiner? I’m sure he sees room for improvement after their 14th-place finish in the 20-player field. But I saw his eyes widen when his new boss hit a preposterous flop shot into the 9th green on Friday. The new partnership has no shortage of potential.

10. There is one place trying to make sense of it all.

The week finished with three champions across three golf tournaments in three regions of the world. For two of them — Australian Open champ Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen and Nedbank Golf Challenge winner Kristoffer Reitan — the wins guaranteed entry into the 2026 Masters. (Hero winner Hideki Matsuyama is a past Masters champ and therefore has a standing invitation.) In that ongoing quest to answer golf’s most elusive question — which tournaments matter? — Augusta National has taken a stand. Last summer, the club announced they’d award a spot in the Masters to the Australian Open champ as well as winners from the Scottish Open, Spanish Open, Japan Open, Hong Kong Open, and South African Open.

The R&A stands with Augusta National, providing Open Championship slots for top finishes in its Open Qualifying Series, which consists of 15 tournaments in 13 countries around the world, including the Australian Open, where three players punched their ticket to next year’s tournament.

Lowest score wins. That much remains true.

The rest feels up in the air.

Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.

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