Hey, I love golf, and I can still play it even though I’m not as young as I once was. No sane person would pay to watch me play, any company that would sponsor me to play… never mind, let’s not go there.
But I’m not one dimensional nor am I a golf fanatic. Well, maybe.
I love basketball, too, having played scant minutes in the Massachusetts Junior College Conference (another story) back when there was such a thing. And I was a church league softball player in Massachusetts and Richmond Virginia. Being from the Boston area, I love the Red Sox, Celtics and Patriots. The Bruins are OK too, but I’m less interested in hockey.
But right now it’s NBA playoff time, and the Celtics are matched up with the Orlando Magic, which creates a friendly rivalry between my son and I, who has spent most of his life in Central Florida and is a big Magic fan.
But that’s not the point.
The point is that during TV coverage of NBA games there almost always is some video about players of a local team doing charity work or appearing at a charity event. Now, I could be wrong, but the NBA seems to promote these things more than I can remember seeing the other pro sports doing.
The PGA is involved with charities, too. According to an article in Golf.com, they have donated an average of $20
million per year for the last 70 years. That’s pretty significant, isn’t it? That’s just the Tour itself; it doesn’t include what individual players have done, and the Tour wants to change that.
The PGA Tour will begin publicizing the involvement of individual players in addition to what the Tour is doing. If you’re like me, you’re pretty impressed (spelled e-n-v-i-o-u-s, no, no, envy is a sin) with the amount of money that some of the pros make. But we only know what their published earnings are, and we can speculate on their expenses. It’s a pretty safe bet, though, that there are no top-level professional golfers living in my neighborhood. For some of them, contracts with sponsors provide them with more income than their actual winnings, but that’s another story.
The purpose of making these things known is both philanthropic and self serving. Philanthropy often attracts good publicity. Good publicity, the PGA hopes, often attracts companies who want to capitalize on the good publicity. After all, believe it or not, events like these are a bargain for the sponsor, whose costs, despite what we hear about the players’ winnings, are considerably lower than paying for similar exposure strictly through advertising campaigns.
The PGA always seeks more sponsors, and more tournaments and more fans will result. And more opportunities for more golfers, right? That’s got to be a good thing.
Of course, I could be wrong, too.
Dave's Divots 