McEwan: How will golf remember Keith Pelley? It’s complicated.

If the first 11 days of 2024 are anything to go by, the remaining 355 could be very, very interesting.

Already this year, we’ve seen Tiger Woods and Nike go their separate ways, Martin Slumbers declare his intention to step down as chief executive of the R&A, and, in the last few hours, Keith Pelley has resigned from the equivalent position at the DP World Tour.

Today is Pelley’s 60th birthday. He should have been blowing out candles. Instead, he woke up with a different kind of fire to put out after news of his imminent return to Canada leaked on prominent Canadian sports news website TSN late last night. By the time the official announcement was made at lunchtime today, it was already old news.

The now-sexagenarian has taken what looks, on paper, like a dream job for somebody of his calibre, skillset and experience, becoming chief executive and president of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment. MLSE, for short, is a property management and sports conglomerate that operates several major sports franchises in Pelley’s native Toronto: the Maple Leafs ice hockey team, the Raptors NBA side, MLS team Toronto FC and several more besides.

It’s a business Pelley will already be familiar with. In the early-2000s, he spent four years as CEO of another of its franchises, the Toronto Argonauts football team, albeit before MLSE acquired it in 2017. It has the look of a job he could do in his sleep and, as he put it, is an opportunity he “simply could not resist”.

Whilst only the most naïve of idealists would expect the gig to come without any challenges, it’s not unreasonable to think it will give Pelley more security and fewer headaches than the position he is vacating. The uncertainty hanging over the DP World Tour amid its proposed and protracted merger with the PGA Tour and LIV Golf hardly needs re-documenting. Suffice to say, it’s cloudy with a chance of yikes.

All of which makes the timing of Pelley’s departure rather fascinating. Rightly or wrongly, it gives the impression of a captain abandoning the ship. At a time when the tour is in need of strong and stable leadership, its chief exec has handed in his notice. That’s his prerogative, of course – but the optics ain’t great, there will be disappointment, and that’s a criticism he has no option but to swallow.

The question of legacy always gets posed whenever anybody of influence steps aside and, in Pelley’s case, it’s likely to be an interesting point of debate. There’s no question he has been a transformative figure for the tour but, at times, he has stood accused of pursuing change either for change’s sake or down inopportune rabbit holes.

Take the Shot Clock Masters, for example. An attempt at improving the pace of play on tour, it was doomed to fail by one simple truth that everybody appeared oblivious to: that no slow player in their right mind was ever going to commit to playing in it.

Then there was GolfSixes, a 32-player, six-hole, greensomes competition, contested by 16 teams of two, each representing a nation. When it failed to return to the tour’s schedule following the COVID-19 pandemic, hardly anybody noticed, which says it all.

Speaking of the pandemic, the extraordinary job done by Pelley and his team in salvaging a schedule – indeed, salvaging the business, if that’s not putting too melodramatic a point on it – will go down as the single biggest success of his eight-and-a-half year tenure. Under immense pressure and bound by unprecedented constraints, the tour pivoted with gymnastic dexterity, replacing the 20 (twenty!) events it was forced to cancel with a string of hastily-arranged opportunities for its members.

If it feels like not enough gets said about what a spectacular achievement that was – and it really was – it’s probably because events of the last three years have overtaken them.

In November 2021, the European Tour rebranded in return for the support (read: investment) of Dubai-based logistics firm DP World. It was a move that disappointed many, angered plenty, and was compared, not without some justification, to selling the stadium rights. Change, however, is the price of survival.

Would you look at that? We’re now over 700 words in and we haven’t even touched on the existential crisis posed by the emergence of LIV.

It is no secret that it was Pelley who first invited Golf Saudi into the golf ecosystem, partnering with them to deliver the first Saudi International in 2019. It is also no secret that the tour was presented with the opportunity to work with them in the embryonic stages of what has become the LIV Golf League (for further context, read all about the ‘Malta Meeting’ here or the full backstory of LIV here).

In the end, Pelley and the DP World Tour opted to align with the PGA Tour and they have subsequently stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Jay Monahan & Co. throughout a civil war that has turned the garden-variety world of men’s professional golf into an unedifying, toxic wildfire.

From open conflict with some card-holders that escalated all the way to arbitration panel hearings, to the shock of last June’s intention to cease fire, Pelley has had to negotiate a wild, unpredictable, unfamiliar path. His predecessor George O’Grady never had to face such challenges, nor Ken Schofield before him, so it’s perhaps unfair to judge Pelley’s tenure against theirs. Still, it is also true to say that not every member of the tour will be sad to see him go.

With his energetic predisposition and passion for innovation – not to mention an admirable willingness to listen first, speak second – Pelley leaves the DP World Tour in a much different place than he found it. A better place? That’s a matter of opinion. Some will point to the fact that the circuit is still here as proof of the great job he has done. Others will argue it is a pale imitation of its former self, and lay the blame for that squarely at one man’s feet.

Some might even be inclined to wonder what kind of future the tour has – if, indeed, it has one at all – in these unpredictable, uncertain times.

Whatever the consensus, Pelley will watch what happens next through blue-rimmed specs and from afar. Soon, none of this will be his problem, nor his business.

The winds of change are indeed beginning to billow. Brace yourself.

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Michael McEwan is the 2023 PPA Scotland ‘Columnist of the Year’ and ‘Writer of the Year’

Michael McEwan is the Deputy Editor of bunkered and has been part of the team since 2004. In that time, he has interviewed almost every major figure within the sport, from Jack Nicklaus, to Rory McIlroy, to Donald Trump. The host of the multi award-winning bunkered Podcast and a member of Balfron Golfing Society, Michael is the author of three books and is the 2023 PPA Scotland 'Writer of the Year' and 'Columnist of the Year'. Dislikes white belts, yellow balls and iron headcovers. Likes being drawn out of the media ballot to play Augusta National.

Deputy Editor