Golf is on an unsustainable financial trajectory. Everyone involved in the sport at its highest levels knows this unassailable fact, and yet few are willing to confront it as directly as R&A CEO Martin Slumbers. The departing head of Europe’s golf oversight authority, Slumbers used this week’s Open Championship as a venue to air his extreme concerns about the direction of the game in 2024.
“I’ve expressed concern in recent years about financial sustainability in the men’s professional game,” Slumbers said on Wednesday. “If we take a wider perspective on the game for a second, golf is in many ways riding on the crest of a wave. The golf industry is benefitting from a surge in participation, and more and more people are experiencing golf in all its forms.”
Slumbers noted that more than 100 million people play golf around the world, and participation in the territories overseen by the R&A continues to rise year-over-year.
“These are very encouraging figures, but we have to maintain this momentum,” Slumbers said. “To do that, we must have a sustainable business model in the long term. If you look at golf as a pyramid, however strong the pyramid is at the top, it can only be sustained in the long term if the pyramid is equally strong at the base.”
The primary issue, Slumbers said, is the ever-escalating costs of professional tournaments. This year’s Open will offer a prize fund of $17 million, including $3 million for the winner an impressive sum by any measure, but in golf’s current over-inflated financial environment, literally dozens of tournaments offer more money.
While we will always offer a very competitive prize fund for the Open, our wider focus is on increasing participation and improving pathways in golf, Slumbers added. We have to make choices about how we allocate resources and make the resources we have go as far as they can. It takes financial resources to deliver projects of this kind, and we have to find ways to do more of this if we’re to accelerate and maintain the upward trajectory of golf’s participation curve.”
And all of this, Slumbers indicated, must include a reaffirmation of what he deems golf’s core principles. “Perhaps the most important component of all to golf’s future success is staying true to its values,” he said. “What sets golf apart from other sports is its ability to maintain a unique value set. It’s a value set defined by integrity, personal accountability, and respect. These are precisely the values that sponsors want their products or services to be associated with and that are fundamental to golf’s appeal. These values are golf’s secret weapon, and we cannot afford to let them be diminished.”
Another major season has passed without a resolution to the split in men’s professional golf, between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf’s Saudi financial backers. While LIV has sought a pathway to the majors for years, Slumbers indicated that there was not yet a plan to bring LIV players directly into the Open Championship.
We decided after last year’s event that we wanted to ensure that there was sufficient enough opportunities for all players, whichever tour they’re playing on, to get into the Open, he said. We used our Open qualifying series. We picked events that were available for all players. We used the Asian Tour, and we used final qualifying to create those opportunities. I think we have 18 players from LIV in the field, and I think we’ve got all the best players in the world. And that’s what we do want to have, all the best players in the world coming through. So I think we’ve created those opportunities.”
Translation: LIV players are going to need to play their way in, not count on exemptions. The Masters and the PGA Championship offered exemptions to certain LIV players; the U.S. Open did not.
The Open Championship at Troon tees off on Thursday morning and runs through the weekend. Brian Harman is the defending champion.