Welcome to Issue #35
"There are two kinds of golf. There is golf - and there is tournament golf. And they are not at all alike, inside”
Bobby Jones
What’s on my mind this week
Garcia blames a dodgy lasagne for poor performance while Spieth blames poor fan behaviour on gambling, Djokovic challenging Rory for his green jacket, who told Michael Block his new cut was a good idea? Luke Donald and Justin Rose comparing golf swings on their day off, the John Deere Classic on the 4th of July weekend feels very on brand for America's 250th, I struggle to make birdie from the middle of the fairway - never mind from under a bin.
In the news
Why it matters: ESPN confirmed on 1 July that it will add 12 hours of live linear coverage of the FedExCup Playoffs across the FedEx St. Jude Championship, BMW Championship and Tour Championship in August, marking its first main-channel Tour coverage since 2006.
Our Take: The distribution shift is more revealing than the hour count. ESPN walked away from live PGA Tour coverage in 2006, ceding the space to Golf Channel and NBC, and has spent nearly two decades treating golf as a streaming complement to its NFL, NBA and college football priorities. Bringing FedExCup Playoff windows onto main ESPN is a reversal that likely reflects Brian Rolapp's arrival as much as any organic shift in the Tour's perceived value. Rolapp spent 22 years at the NFL and has the deepest media relationships of any Tour executive in a generation, and this is the first visible commercial dividend of that pipeline. The Farmers Insurance Open simulcast in January was the pilot. The Playoffs deal is the proof of concept. The Tour Championship's return to main ESPN after 20 years also positions the FedExCup finale as a genuine crossover sports property rather than a niche golf broadcast, which matters for how the 2028 restructured product gets sold into the next media rights cycle.