KS: I love Joe taking this role. I was involved in recommending him when I was on the Governance Committee. When we were designing that whole structure of having a player liaison director he was the first person I had in mind for that role. He’s smart and he cares. He’s a player first but also has a business mindset. I’ve been friends with him for 25 years. 

KS: I don’t know. Decisions were made, things were signed a year ago and we’re just trying to clarify some things. I’m 45, I care deeply about the Tour but I didn’t get elected as the next PAC chairman so it’s like I’ve gotta just try to keep my job. It’s one of those structures where the Tour is supposed to have our backs and you’re supposed to trust them and they kind of did some things where they lost some of that and now what more can we do except show up and play the next week. A tournament begins and we’re trying to win. We’re like rabbits in that sense. This other stuff is pretty far down the list. It’s been disheartening to a degree. 

The way the Tour has pivoted to appease the highest talent levels – and I understand that they need to be taken care of — but what makes the PGA Tour special is the accessibility for young superstars to have access to see how good they can do. We know how good the top players are. We want to see how good the next generation of superstars are when they get a chance to play the best of the best. So, seeing a onesome on a Thursday and Friday at a signature event is comical. Bring in the next ranked player in the FedEx standings. There’s some things that need to get ironed out now but part of us are like, yeah, if it’s at the cost of our careers, we’re going to try to figure it out. 

I don’t know where it falls. I sincerely hope our fans, our tournaments, our sponsors, our volunteers know that we really care about them. It’s what makes our sport great, it’s what makes our sport different. There are no guarantees of a job. You can have that magical week and it changes your life forever. You can miss 10 cuts in a row and have that magical week; there’s something beautiful about that. In baseball, your team can be out of it by June and it’s so depressing.

KS: If we’re going to make separate tours, which is pretty much what we have now. As soon as you make the points different it’s hard to hang your hat on one tour. That being said, if they want those superstar big events, maybe you do it as a separate ultra-tour events and you pump up bigger boards and cut the access where you have players falling in, falling out. It could be exciting. I just don’t agree with 50-60 player fields. It’s not exciting to me. If that’s what our fans want, then that’s what our fans want.

KS: I understand both sides. Cuts are a part of the Tour and professional golf. Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods wanted them. If any of the guys have a problem with them, they should talk to them. There’s a reason they wanted them.

KS: Last year’s signature events were 100-120 and they were awesome, right?

KS: We’ve got to do a better job of getting the Korn Ferry Tour and rookies in as soon as possible.

GWK: Do you like that they expanded fields for Valspar, Houston and Valero?

KS: Do I like it? No. But do they deserve starts? Yes. We’re not going to make a cut until Saturday at Valspar and then have to play threesomes on the weekend. It’s something we fought against for years. Is there a magical answer? No. I hope we’re investing to make as many events like this (the Players) as possible. I think our product is fricking awesome. I think the talent we have and our product should speak for itself. The competition needs to be healthy. 

KS: It’s probably lessened over time. At first, if you believe what Jay said, if you left you’d never play a PGA Tour event again. I think what they will probably do is say (to the Tour loyalists who stayed), look, you’ve got some equity and if we bring the top guys back the value of your equity in PGA Tour Enterprises is going to go up. I don’t think a lot of the LIV guys will want to come back. My friends that are out there they like playing for $4 million purses against about 40 guys versus grinding and playing against these 20-year-old studs. 

KS: I think Yasir is interested in access to as many western sports leagues as possible. He just got into tennis with the ATP Tour. He’s going to probably want an MLB team, an NFL team. A deal with SSG provides them with more access to those type of ownership communities. It’s very smart but I don’t think their passion is golf; I think their passion is Saudi Arabia. So they continue to invest for what’s good for Saudi Arabia. It’s naive to think they care about growing the game. 

Editor’s Note: The conversation picked up about a week later via phone in Tampa, where Streelman held a share of the 36-hole lead.

KS: We tried to go into it with a very open mind. We dove into our constitution and bylaws and looked at some things that were archaic and needed to be changed and ratified and then came up with some of our own opinions and ideas to better represent the entire player body not only for the PGA Tour policy board but also for the PGA Tour Enterprises board going forward. 

GWK: Anything specific that you were able to achieve?

KS: It was an interesting process. There were some commonsense implications and changes that were made such as independent directors being more visible to the players and coming to a few more events. For the most part, the membership doesn’t understand how the governance had been set up, how the independent directors are chosen, how the commissioner is chosen and how it’s done in most modern board settings. It was our belief that the players should have more of a say, more of an influence on who and how they are put into office. 

KS: Probably somewhere in the middle. I said this from Day One, historically our voting percentage was in the 30s and 40s percent. I found that disappointing. I just encouraged the Tour to make the voting as simple and easy as possible. They did answer that request and added a link in registration where guys could go on and vote. I think 72 percent of the body voted. Unfortunately for me, I was injured during the tournaments when most of the voting went on. I’m good friends with Camillo. I think he will do a great job. He hasn’t served as many posts as I have – from board to PAC to governance committee – but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’d do a better job than him. I’d just say I have a little more hands-on experience. It’s something I enjoy, it’s something I could possibly see myself doing in the future on the business side of golf. All that being said, I didn’t get elected and I didn’t lose any sleep over it and I’m sure he’ll do a good job.

KS: We’re getting these informational portals sent to us of how they view the equity program working. No one still knows where they fall in those equity buckets. My hope is that it goes to investing in the PGA Tour, into our tournaments, our fan experience and our player experience week in, week out. I think if you build the best product, the best play and the fans will follow. I believe our product is superior and if you make that that much better then our fans should be content with the product we put in front of them. That was my hope all along, that any sort of influx of money would be invested into our product and I really hope that we don’t just have to pay players that decided not to go and keep them as happy as possible. I don’t think that’s the point of an investment into our company. We’ll have to see how this pans out. Very smart people have been brought into the fray and given us some really good past experience with people who have led in big sports leagues, bigger than golf, and what works and doesn’t work for them, and hopefully we can make golf that much stronger.

KS: The obvious answer is the split. You want to see the best players playing together in historical tournaments. My dream as a kid was to play at Copperhead to Harbour Town and even John Deere. I drove around the country trying to Monday Qualify into these tournaments. I did it for the competition. The money took care of itself with great golf. It wasn’t look what I’ve done and I deserve this. This false market narrative has been established of what people think their value is and it’s upended the true Western market of how things have historically worked and that’s what being dealt with now. 

KS: I hope not. I wasn’t privy to that meeting with Yasir and what his vision with professional golf is but clearly there are discussions that want him involved to some degree. When you hold the cards that he has, it’s hard to deny or ignore anymore. It seems like it will have to somehow run through him if we can find some sort of continuity going forward. We will have to see how as time progresses here.

KS: I don’t know what guys will have to be forced to do. I think a number of them won’t want to come back. I think a fair answer to that question would be guys that want to come back and lost their status would have to go through some sort of qualifying, whether that’s Korn Ferry Tour or Q-School. You shouldn’t be guaranteed starts to come back. The tricky question is the guys who still have exempt status. Should they come right back and play in Signature events? I don’t believe so nor do I think that will be allowed. They come back and get some sort of status to play in I guess you call them standard PGA Tour events and play their way in, that would be more seen as more practical and fair from the rest of the body. It depends who you ask on that situation.

KS: That’s a good question. They haven’t even released it to us yet. I guess it would be still chasing that 125 number but whether the Tour wants to make that number smaller or not, I bet that will be a question that gets asked. What the exempt number of cards should be if we’re going to go with the Signature events idea for a long time. 

There are some great tournaments in the fall. I love going to Napa, I love the people in Jackson (Mississippi) and the course is incredible and Vegas is near and dear to my heart. It would be tough to lose tournaments that are willing to sponsor the PGA Tour.

KS: If you ask players, if you ask sponsors, if you ask fans, you probably get different answers. For me, someone who has been out here for almost 20 years, it’s a tough pill to swallow. Events like Pebble Beach that I played 16 times in a row, I’m top 5 on the all-time money list, Hartford, where I’ve played 16 years in a row and a past champion, Hilton Head, where I’m probably top 10 in all-time money, events that have been my bread and butter and have been part of my year schedule are now taken away. I understand why they’ve done it as well. It has made top players happy. They have smaller fields and bigger purses without cuts. It also makes other events stronger, you know you’re going to get everyone from 51 to 150 and there are big names in that bracket also. We’re seeing that who gets left out are the rookies and the Korn Ferry guys coming up. That’s why we’re adding to these fields to accommodate those guys, which I understand.

If you want to talk about a fair factor, I’d say it’s a little unfair playing Signature events short, playing a one-some at Bay Hill on Thursday and Friday rubbed me the wrong way, and then playing our normal events long. That to me from a competitive fairness factor doesn’t seem right. That’s the bed that’s been made. We’re working through the kinks now but it’s just a shame that it’s coming at the expense of people’s careers. 

KS: It would be a busy day. I would sit down with our sponsors and make them a priority. I would sit down with top players and mid-level and veteran players too and get to some sort of vision of what we want to build going forward. I think it’s tough to go too far backwards once you’ve created these Signature events.

My outside-the-box idea that I’d talk to guys about that I think could have some legs is I’d say if this is what you want to do, I’ll give you 15-16 100-120 field events with the top players and the majors and all of a sudden you have 20 events to choose from. Then you have an elevated Korn Ferry Tour or PGA Tour smaller deal and you have 144 players consisting of the best KFT and all the PGA Tour players who didn’t finish high enough and you set those purses in the $4 million-$8 million area. Then you have some relegation. So, 20-25 guys moving up and moving down to those two tours. At that price point, you’d have a lot more accessibility to different markets in different cities and I think you could put on a great tour on that secondary tour but then the top guys can get their smaller fields, their smaller schedule, and you make it global and maybe 4-5 of those tournament you give to LIV and make those massive for those guys.

But you have to have hope as a professional golfer. You have to be able to move in or out. If you don’t perform, you have to fall out and if you do perform you have to have hope you can move forward. A lot of these rookies now don’t have a ton of hope. They have five spots in these swings and they’re not even getting into many events. I had a thought something like this could give guys enough drive to get to those big events but make a nice enough living where they can feel like they are still playing big professional events that mean things and also put things at a price point where our markets and our sponsors can afford it. 

KS: I haven’t thought much about it. It’s not really my thing. I like either getting the glory or having the pain and I want it all on my shoulders. Even in college, if the team did well and I played badly, I didn’t feel much better about myself. To me, golf is an individual sport.