Pga Tour Tournament Players Club Introduction and Executive Summary

PGA Tour Tournament Players Club Introduction and Executive Summary

The Professional Golfers’ Association Tour, known by most as the PGA Tour, has a long and fruitful history of organizing men’s professional golf tournaments in the United States and North America. The origin of the PGA Tour is difficult to surmise, due to the many names the organization has carried and tournaments it and its predecessors have created over the past 80 years and beyond. The word “beyond” is used because beginning as early as the late 1800’s professional and amateur golfers have come together in tournaments to challenge their own, but more specifically each others skill on some of the finest golf courses in the world. The first of these competitions began in tournaments such as the U.S. Open and the Western Open. In as early as 1931 there was the formation of the PGA Tour Bureau, an organization created to add more structure and stability to the rapidly growing sport. This arrangement subsequently gave rise to the first “playing pros” organization in 1932, pre-dating the formation of the PGA Tour by almost four decades.

The beginning of the PGA Tour is distinguished by golf historians as the split between the Tournament Players Division and the Professional Golfers Association of America in 1968, upon which Joseph C. Dey became and held the commissioners position for just under six years. Dey’s succeeding commissioner, Deane R. Beman, turned the PGA Tour into the financial success that it is through projects such as the Tournament Players Club. By Beman’s leadership, the Tour’s revenues skyrocketed from $3.9 million in 1974 to $229 million in 1993. Today the PGA Tour is lead by Commissioner Timothy W. Finchem, who took over for Beman in 1994 and is known primarily for his restructuring program which aimed at strengthening the PGA Tour’s competitions and expanding its international scope.

The PGA Tour is not, as one might think, the governing body for golf in the U.S., which is instead a duty of the United States Golf Association (USGA) which currently organizes tournaments such as the U.S. Open. The PGA Tour, however, manages over 43 different tournaments every year. Today the courses which the Tour takes place on are managed by the Tournament Players Club, known commonly as the TPC, which is a subsidiary of the PGA Tour Golf Course Properties created by Commissioner Deane Beman. Through the TPC, the Tour has created courses that are increasingly spectator oriented and are prided as models for many courses throughout the world. By encompassing all forms of golf-related operations, such as resort facilities and private membership clubs, the TPC is able to match the geographic demands of each course with the economic markets in which the clubs operate.

An incredibly large, by most sporting standards, and crucial part of the PGA Tour is its charitable outlook and contributions which