Professional Golf League

[Club Rat]

Is golf ready for a Professional Golf League?
Would a Professional Golf League be good for the game?
Could enough revenue be generated to support teams?

While the PGA Tour is the elite stage for professional golfers, along with other tours, is there a viable market for sponsored golf teams?
With an abundance of great players IMO, would golf fans enjoy and support local professional team format competition?
Imagine a league where local country clubs or public courses hosted venues once or twice over the course of a season, what a financial benefit it would be.

What type of schedule would it require? Home, away events, end of season playoffs and a final championship.
Could tour players juggle schedules to compete in both?
While a Professional Golf League is probably a dream, IMO it would be very beneficial for the game of golf.
 

[bkuehn1952]

With the PGA Tour essentially running 12 months a year, the concept of a team-based series would be tough to implement.  Still, cable networks are starving for original content.  My guess is the founders of the league would need to "juice" the Rules and game format to make it appeal to non-golf fans.

[krupa]

 

2 hours ago, Club Rat said:

 

Is golf ready for a Professional Golf League?
Would a Professional Golf League be good for the game?
Could enough revenue be generated to support teams?

 

When my local course had a teaching PGA Pro who was always taking off for regional events.  How is that different from a Professional Golf League?  For that matter, isn't the PGA Tour a "professional golf league"?

Could enough revenue be generated to support teams?  Probably not.

What would be the team format?

I think in general, the market can't support another spectator-based version of golf.  Drop the Professional from all of this and you could probably do something.  For example, Central NY used to have a series of disc golf events called the Amateur Club Event Series (ACES).  Clubs from Rochester, Syracuse, Ithaca, and Corning would play a monthly tournament (one in each city) over the summer and somehow we accrued points based on how we finished and what our (rough) skill levels/handicaps were.  I say "somehow" because I wasn't involved in that aspect and wasn't too worried about how it all worked.

It was really fun because even though I wasn't very good I was still participating and contributing to the team's results.  Incidentally, every event had two brackets, one for "pros" (basically guys playing for money, and one for amateurs (people playing for free discs).

 

 

[Patch]

Several years ago I can remember watching golf co-ed teams from various parts of the country playing against each other. It was televised on one of the smaller known sports networks. Seemed like there were more teams from California involved. 

It was hard to follow, with all the commercials, and jumping around from player to player.

All the players had normal day jobs. I don't remember what the payouts were. Not sure if it's still going on, or if it fizzled out. 

[Club Rat]

6 hours ago, krupa said:

isn't the PGA Tour a "professional golf league"?

I was thinking more in terms of a professional golf team, like other sports, BB, FB.

Cities would each have a team, compete in a scheduled across the US, have standings and playoffs, etc.
Teams play for a W or L, in various formats each day.
Golf only has a few professional Team events, Ryder Cup, Presidents Cup and possibly other Euro events?
They are great events, which is why IMO, golf could possibly have Pro Teams someday.

Didn't Pro Tennis players have teams years ago but I believe it failed.

As an Example, if any of the top players were to sign a contract, it would most likely be equal pay to top baseball/football players.
They could play both PGA events and several Team events. Sort of like pitchers in BB, they only take the mound every fifth game.

The rest of the rosters would be players of lesser popularity, but good enough players to entertain an audience.
Fans support teams simply because they are pros. Granted, some teams have poor years and ticket sales fall off, yet they remain in the league.