US Edition
Keith Pelley clocks off this week as DP World Tour chief executive and it is fair to conclude it has been an eventful nine-year shift.
It featured a pandemic from which the circuit was never supposed to emerge, but actually came through intact boasting record prize money….
A Ryder Cup that he awarded to Italy and first forecasted to be a disaster but which turned out to be perhaps the most successful in the 97-year history of the biennial dust-up….
And a civil war at the start of which Wentworth sided with the PGA Tour instead of the Saudi disruptors and which only now has lasting peace in sight, with Pelley one of the leading lights in the potential truce.
Of course, it is the latter dispute that will colour many people’s assessment of Pelley. Fair enough. It is perfectly valid to see the merits of initially joining up with the £600bn Public Investment Fund.
But there are those of us who have reached the opinion that when PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan came calling to take on the American behemoth, Pelley had a board to convince and that these directors were understandably hesitant to gamble on what remains the whim of a couple of authoritarians at the head of a Kingdom.
The PGA Tour had offered its own ‘strategic alliance” with their European counterparts and that has guaranteed the existence of the previously precarious circuit for at least the next 10 years.
There is not another sport that uses hindsight as much as golf - “should have been a five iron”, “should have chipped it”, “should have picked Keegan Bradley” - but a choice had to be made and after Covid, the extraordinary spread of LIV established this era as the most turbulent in the history of the ancient game.
Even now, it is impossible to be certain that there was, or is, a correct answer.
Maybe Pelley’s legacy in future years will rest on what comes to pass in these negotiations, but what has been unnecessary are the personal attacks he has received. Naturally, most of the vitriol has been spouted via social media, but there have been moments when those who should have known better have weighed in against a character who deserved better.
Pelley is a good man and the overwhelming majority - even within the game - do not realise exactly how good. To me, the measure of his rectitude is measured in his family life.
Hope was born with spina bifida. Pelley and his wife, Joan, adopted her when she was four. They wanted to give the chance of a better life to a young girl who became the beloved sister of their son, Jason. Hope is now 16 and has loved her time in the UK.
A memory persists of Pelley on the first tee at the West Course of Wentworth in 2022 when Hope had her picture taken with One Direction Niall Horan. Hope was thrilled, as was her father. However, in the background, the LIV saga was becoming uglier by the day.
“It’s just business.” That’s how Pelley would react if this was put to him. But it is not business is it? It is golf and even though the game has many things to be ashamed about over the centuries - the sport has long completed the career grand slam of ‘isms’ - the pursuit’s soul is essentially based on family and in these last wretched last few years it has lost sight of this.
Whilst Pelley refused to use the moral argument against the Saudi investment, his PGA Tour counterpart, Jay Monahan, cynically used 9/11 survivors groups to assist his fight against the interlopers. And then he backtracked with barely a blush. Shame on him. Pelley would never have stooped so low. He is an honourable figure.
Granted, everybody and anybody is allowed an opinion of Pelley’s performance in a hotseat that - with deputy Guy Kinnings stepping up - has never been so hot. If they insist, they can continue to claim that under Pelleys’ watch the DP World Tour has become a feeder tour for the PGA Tour, although to my mind that makes little sense.
A central part of Pelley’s job description was to afford his members the opportunities to play their sport and make a living and so, each year, the top 10 players on the DP World Tour’s order or merit not already exempt will earn their PGA Tour cards. European pros have been realising their ambitions of gaining playing privileges on the game’s biggest circuit for decades.
As Rory McIlroy puts it, all Pelley has done is “formalise this pathway”. He has essentially guaranteed this rite of passage.
Many will not agree. They will slam the fact that there are only a few windows in the year - a couple of weeks in the Middle East in January, the Scottish Open in July, and the end-of-season run-in - when the big Euro names are on show. But in the all-enveloping shadow of the PGA Tour and, yes, recently of LIV as well, this has become a grim of inevitability.
The knockers might also venture that Pelley is leaving a sinking ship, except the vessel is water tight and he is going to his dream job in Toronto, where he will run the city’s four main sports franchises including his cherished Maple Leafs.
The Pelley detractors should look at the positives and applaud his calls for the PGA Tour to be more worldly and, at this vital juncture, help form a unified global calendar for the superstars. He has stood up to US insularity, when it would have been easy to acquiesce.
Yet whatever the critics holler about Pelley, nobody should assert that he is not a decent and principled individual who, together with his board, acted with what he believed at the time to be the best interests of the Tour at heart. Pelley shall be remembered in this quarter, at least, with affection and respect.
Keith Pelley is the leading light in the potential PGA Tour-LIV truce – he should be remembered fondly
History will be kind to Pelley who has coped with personal attacks and some of the most turbulent years golf has known