FORE! A Coup Incoming

Welcome back to the Bill Bradley Collective, where it is a Dollop-style bonus week, as Andrew presents the story of golf icon Jack Nicklaus’ failed endeavor at removing then-PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman in an attempted PGA Tour coup. As tour profits and assets sky-rocketed through much of the 70’s and early 80’s under Beman’s watch, golfers prospered in lock-step, competing for increasingly lucrative purses in-line with the tour’s respective growth. The explosion of competitive income was not enough for Nicklaus, nor was it for Arnold Palmer or Tom Watson, recruited by the old bear to combat what they perceived as over-reach on the part of Bemoan and the PGA Tour. The crux of Nicklaus’ case is that the Tour has grown to become a business adversary to his and notably Palmer’s own off-course interests: apparel, equipment, course design and assorted Madison Avenue dalliances. By way of venturing into these outlets, the PGA Tour and Beman, in Nicklaus’ mind, undercut his and other top players’ branding efforts and subsequent bottom lines. It all comes to a head in the summer of 1983, where Nicklaus’ star-power and omnipresence as the game’s top player and pitchman collides head on with Beman and the tour’s rank and file at the negotiating table. It is a story with some renewed relevance in 2022, as a few of golf’s veteran power brokers, namely Phil Mickelson and Greg Norman, have wed themselves to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in an attempt to launch a rival circuit to the PGA Tour in the name of craven economic greed. The efforts of Nicklaus (and Palmer and Watson) are something of a forerunner to the movement championed by Mickelson in the present in trying to wrest financial leverage away from the Tour. That story is this week on the Bill Bradley Collective.