Welcome to Issue #47
“I’m probably the worst texter on the team easily. I don’t know how the other team text, but I’m probably worse than them too, and some of those guys, English is their second language.”
Scottie Scheffler
What’s on my mind this week
The US WAGs making sure Jackson Koivun didn't feel left out. J.J. Spaun responding to his Presidents Cup snub by winning Wentworth. Alejandro Tosti still waiting for his caddie to come back from the toilet. LeBron v Kevin Hart on YouTube, can't wait for this one. On is coming to golf, place your bets on who their first golf signing will be. Bryson's “I'm coming home” turning out to be surprisingly literal. DP World Tour accounts don't make for pretty reading. Bill Murray drinking from the President’s Cup, as you do. Justin Thomas finding out his 25-under at Medinah helped get the course ripped up.
In the news
Why it matters: The R&A and USGA have asked equipment manufacturers for feedback on three potential Model Local Rules covering golf balls, driver faces and club length. The proposals, requested by the PGA Tour and DP World Tour, would apply only where individual competitions choose to adopt them.
Our Take: Golf may be heading back towards something it spent years trying to avoid: different equipment rules for professionals and everyone else. The economics have changed, though. Equipment manufacturers have traditionally opposed bifurcation partly because one of golf's most powerful marketing propositions is that amateurs can play the same equipment as the best players in the world. The alternative is now a universal ball rollback from 2030, affecting every golfer and every ball sold. Keeping tighter restrictions inside elite competition may suddenly look more commercially attractive. There would still be complications. Manufacturers could end up developing, testing and servicing equipment specifically for a relatively small group of professionals, while selling something different to millions of consumers. If the equipment Rory McIlroy or Scottie Scheffler uses on Sunday is deliberately different from what's sitting on the shelf on Monday, how much does that change one of golf equipment's oldest sales pitches?
Why it matters: The Asian Tour has cancelled its 2027 Qualifying School after the end of LIV Golf's International Series significantly reduced the number of playing opportunities available to members. CEO Cho Minn Thant said the loss removed around $20 million from the Tour's remaining 2026 event budget, describing its impact as "devastating".
Our Take: One of the biggest consequences of LIV Golf's restructuring may be what happens to everything it funded around itself. The International Series allowed the Asian Tour to add tournaments, prize money and playing opportunities far more quickly than the Tour could otherwise have supported. Now that capital has disappeared, the Tour isn't simply cutting purses or cancelling an event. It is temporarily closing the door to new members because it doesn't have enough tournament inventory for the players it already has. Money can accelerate growth remarkably quickly, but the infrastructure built around it eventually starts to depend on that money remaining. What comes next is particularly interesting. Having spent several years positioned alongside LIV as an alternative pathway in professional golf, the Asian Tour is now rebuilding partly through a new relationship with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour. Golf's alliances can change remarkably quickly when the economics do.
Why it matters: Foresight Sports has launched Foresight+, combining its simulator and performance software into a single platform built around individual golfer accounts rather than individual devices. Paid memberships will cost up to $599 annually, with additional course packages costing up to $595 a year.
Our Take: The launch monitor may increasingly be the way into the business rather than the business itself. Foresight has spent years selling expensive hardware to golfers, coaches and simulator operators. Foresight+ changes that relationship. A golfer can now have an identity that moves between compatible devices, taking their shot data, club information and playing history with them. Add software subscriptions and annual course packages and a one-off equipment sale starts to look much more like a recurring customer relationship. As indoor golf grows, TrackMan, Foresight, Garmin, Golfzon and others will continue competing on hardware, accuracy and price, but the harder battle may eventually be over who owns the golfer's data and digital identity. Once years of practice sessions, simulated rounds and performance history sit inside one ecosystem, switching becomes considerably less appealing. Apple worked this out a long time ago. The device gets you through the door. The ecosystem gives you a reason to stay.
Pic from Foresight
Worth your time
Follow: @bizofsport. A very good follow for keeping tabs on where sport, money and business collide.
Listen: McLaren engineers are designing golf clubs and questioning whether shafts even need to be round. Now you have our attention.
Read: The Golf Business on how everything from a dark entrance to an awkward pro shop might be costing clubs money.
Feature Story
Introducing the Business in Golf 100
Golf has no shortage of ways to recognise success.
Players are ranked every week. Courses are ranked every year. Products win awards. Industry heavyweights appear on power lists. Companies are measured by revenue, investment and growth.
But plenty of the people shaping the golf industry don't fit neatly into any of those measures.
The founder building something from scratch. The executive changing one of the game's biggest organisations from the inside. The creator finding an audience golf wasn't reaching before. The operator making thousands of small decisions that nobody outside the business ever sees. Designers, investors, coaches, creatives, community builders and people whose job titles don't easily fit into any of those descriptions.
Some are already well known. Others aren't.
Today, we're launching something to recognise them.
The Business in Golf 100 will recognise 100 of the most inspiring individuals shaping the future of the global golf industry.
If that's you, or someone you know, we want to hear from you.
And nominations are now open.
Who are we looking for?
There isn't one type of person who belongs on the Business in Golf 100.
It could be the CEO of one of golf's largest companies or someone building their first.
A senior executive who has spent decades in the industry or someone only a few years into their career. A creator with millions of followers or someone whose work happens almost entirely behind the scenes. Someone working for a major Tour, governing body or global brand, or someone working in a business with five employees.
Previous recognition doesn't matter. Neither does a lack of it.
Someone who has appeared on other industry lists is every bit as welcome as someone who has never been recognised before.
The same applies to geography. Golf is a global industry and we want the nomination pool to reflect that.
The starting point is deliberately simple:
People, not positions. Impact, not profile. Contribution, not prominence.
The size or prestige of an organisation isn't a reason for recognition. A role at one of golf's biggest organisations doesn't guarantee it, just as working somewhere few people have heard of isn't a disadvantage.
What matters is the contribution itself.
One list of 100
The annual Business in Golf 100 will cover the breadth of the industry.
Founders. Executives. Operators. Investors & Dealmakers. Innovators. Designers & Creatives. Brand Builders. Creators. Catalysts. Rising Stars.
The ten categories help reflect that breadth. They aren't separate competitions and there are no quotas determining how many people from each category ultimately make the 100.
There won't be ten winners from each category or a predetermined formula for putting the final list together.
There will be one Business in Golf 100.
Some of the most interesting people in golf sit between those definitions anyway. A founder can also be a creator. An executive can be an innovator. We're interested in the contribution rather than finding the perfect box to put somebody in.
Who decides?
We knew from the beginning that we shouldn't decide the 100 ourselves.
So we've brought together a panel of eight judges from across the golf industry, chaired by Martin Slumbers OBE, former Chief Executive of The R&A.
He will be joined by:
Between them, the panel brings experience from across professional golf, technology, media, investment, operations, leadership and the wider business of the game.
As Martin Slumbers puts it:
“Our future depends on the people working across golf's ecosystem to keep the game evolving and broadening, and it is those people Business in Golf 100 sets out to recognise: the ones who will inspire golf's future.”
Every eligible nomination will be independently assessed by at least three of the judges against five published criteria: Impact on the business of golf · Innovation in golf · Inspiration to others in the game · Contribution to golf's future · Character & Values befitting the global game
Judges assess the evidence presented in the nomination. They may draw on relevant first-hand professional knowledge to add context, but they won't conduct independent research into nominees.
It's one of the reasons we want nominations to tell us what someone has actually done, rather than simply why the person nominating them thinks they're brilliant.
Conflicts will be declared and managed throughout the process, and no single judge decides who is recognised.
Commercial partners and sponsors of the programme have no role in, or influence over, nominations, judging or the final 100.
One nomination is enough
This isn't a public vote.
Receiving 50 nominations won't give somebody an advantage over someone who receives one. The 100 is decided on the strength of the case and the panel's assessment, not the number of nominations received.
One thoughtful nomination containing the evidence judges need is enough.
You can nominate somebody you work with, somebody you admire from elsewhere in the industry or yourself. Self-nominations are equally welcome and encouraged.
Some of the people doing the most interesting work in golf may not have a PR team or a large organisation around them making sure their name gets put forward.
If you believe the work deserves consideration, tell us about it.
Looking beyond our own network
One of the challenges with creating any global list is making sure it doesn't simply reflect the network of the people creating it.
Business in Golf has readers across the world, but there are parts of the industry we know better than others.
So we're working with association partners across golf to help take the nomination process into different communities, sectors and geographies.
For the inaugural Business in Golf 100, those partners include:
Their involvement isn't about deciding who makes the 100.
It's about helping us find the people who should be considered.
Because if the inaugural Business in Golf 100 simply contains 100 people we already know, we probably haven't looked hard enough.
That's one of the reasons we're opening the process rather than trying to construct the list ourselves.
We want the industry to tell us where to look.
Nominations are open until the 30th October 2026 with the inaugural Business in Golf 100 revealed in January 2027.
Before then, eight judges have a fairly difficult job ahead of them.
You can make it even harder.
Nominations for the Business in Golf 100 are now open.
Nominate here ⇾ https://www.businessingolf.com/the100list
One thing from history
The golf tournament that came back 18 years later
Pic from Golf Digest
In 1979, glass manufacturer Corning helped establish a new LPGA tournament in its hometown in upstate New York.
The Corning Classic was played at Corning Country Club. The company sponsored it, the community embraced it and, for 31 consecutive years, neither the venue nor the title sponsor changed. Along the way, it raised more than $5 million for local charities.
Then came the financial crisis.
In 2009, Corning announced it could no longer justify the expense while restructuring and cutting thousands of jobs. The tournament had also lost more than $500,000 in other sponsorship revenue. Yani Tseng won the final edition that May. The purse was $1.5 million. After 31 years, the LPGA left Corning.
This week, Corning officially launched the tournament's return. The Classic will be played at Corning Country Club in May 2027. Same town. Same course. Same company behind it. The return coincides with Corning Incorporated celebrating its 175th anniversary.
This time, the purse is $5 million.
In 2009, the numbers no longer worked at $1.5 million. Eighteen years later, they’re coming back at $5 million.
Have a good week. Until next Friday,
David