New PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp isn’t making any promises about brokering a peace deal with LIV Golf, but he is staying open-minded.
“My view is I come in with a pretty clean sheet of paper,” Rolapp said at the Travelers Championship on Tuesday after his hire was officially announced earlier in the morning.
Rolapp will be the PGA Tour’s top executive, as commissioner Jay Monahan will hand off his day-to-day responsibilities and step down from his role after his contract expires following the 2026 season.
Rolapp, who went to Harvard Business School with LIV CEO Scott O’Neil, said the existence of a rival league is a “complex situation that’s probably something I should learn more about before I speak.” He said he is “not close enough to any of those discussions” to break down in depth yet.
However, Rolapp agrees that a solution is needed. “The fans have been pretty clear,” he said. “They want to see the best golfers competing against each other.”
Cash Flow
Rolapp is becoming CEO of both the PGA Tour, which will continue to operate as a 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization, and the for-profit entity PGA Tour Enterprises, which in 2024 received a $1.5 billion investment (that could be doubled to $3 billion) from the Strategic Sports Group—a conglomeration of professional sports franchise owners.
That initial investment led to players receiving $930 million worth of equity stakes in PGA Tour Enterprises, but there’s more money to go around. “Where we deploy that capital, I have ideas,” Rolapp said. “I don’t think I want to share them now, but that’s going to be part of the job.”
Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, who is part of SSG, led the PGA Tour CEO search committee. “I think they saw what I saw, which is a great opportunity—getting the right alignment and the right capital to do that, that’s what really drew me to it,” Rolapp said. “It’s an investor group that is experienced in sports. They’re smart.”
Goodell Succession Rumors
Rolapp, 52, joins the PGA Tour from the NFL, where he was seen as a potential successor to commissioner Roger Goodell, most recently serving as chief media and business officer.
“I loved working at the NFL,” Rolapp said. “I’ve learned a ton from Roger. He’s been my boss for a long time and a mentor for a long time.”
But Rolapp isn’t worried about the NFL’s future anymore. “A lot of people focus on who the next commissioner is,” he said. “I don’t. I focus on the job I have. I was just really drawn to the opportunity here.”
For now, at least, Rolapp is all in on the PGA Tour. “When you’re in the seat I’ve been in for a while, you get to look at a lot of different opportunities, and they don’t come up—unique ones don’t come up—very often,” he said. “This one did, and it was a chance to really do something different and help grow a game and a sport that I love.”
