the complete history of the PGA Tour, i guess

yup, this is exactly what you think it is.

Video Idea, Thumbnail, Title… pretty much everything is inspired by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuCn8ux2gbs&t=165s

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The History of Golf would’ve been way too much to talk about, so let’s just start easy, with the complete and entire history of the pga tour (this took way too long to make)

men have been playing with balls and sticks for a very long time they’ve also been playing golf since about here but it was unorganized and the rulers didn’t like it so they organized and then got banned income rich white people to create rules and golf the gentleman’s game began let’s set up a professional season said no one who continued to play random opens for only gentleman amers for another hundred years before the professionals took over and set up the PGA tour leave it to the Americans to monetize and unionize as prestigious golf tournaments from around the country banded together to offer the most elite competition exciting matches and money as well while men like Harry ven publicized professional golf in England Walter Hagen brought the real excitement and money across the pond the gentleman’s game was now ruled by workingclass men like Jean sarzen who grew up working at courses becoming the best there and teaching people how to play doing so to to them out of contention for amateur events the biggest tournaments at the time except for opens but thanks to the PGA and their tour or circuit at the time more and more tournaments for pros popped up around the country and golf was beginning to be ruled by professionals pretty much every area in the US wanted to get in on the financial action the new money fill sport introduced so State opens popped up all over the map hoping to display the best golfers in the country to as many fans as possible in line their pockets the American Way by underpaying their athletes but players still came from all over to win get some money but more importantly some exposure so they could grow their teaching business because outside of relatively small purses that’s the only way they could earn money at the time there were Majors but nothing like today and the pros couldn’t even technically compete in all four of them at the time to win a grand slam like Bobby Jones did the legendary Amer in 1930 because two of the biggest tournaments were still amateur events and the PGA Tour was really just the circuit for these men but slowly golf grew the Masters popped up as an invite only Pro and amateur event and the way of the amateur slowly disappeared or at least took a backseat to Pro Golf the stupid stickball game that was scored the exact opposite of pretty much every game ever created was now coolish but the money for most was average is Ben Hogan one of the most Legend legendary early Pros went broke several times chasing the tour unless you won you could not make a living which he ended up doing winning 63 professional tournaments between 1938 and 1959 while also serving in World War II as an Air Force pilot but it wasn’t anywhere near lucrative yet however that doesn’t mean the sport wasn’t rich in other things namely morale boosting World War II was terrible for everyone but all over the world golf persisted just check out these rules from a club in London in 1941 rule number one players are asked to collect the bomb and shrapnel splinters to save these from causing damage to the mowing machines and get this rule number seven a Players whose stroke is affected by the simultaneous explosion of a bomb may play another ball penalty one stroke there are even reports of American PS in Germany in 1942 playing golf with boot Rubber and rudimentary clubs as German soldiers allowed them to build simp holes inside the walls of the camp but the fact is at home most of the PGA run tournaments ceased during the war except primarily one the 1944 PGA Championship at the time PGA tournament manager Fred corkran noticed British citizen rushing to St Andrews to get their round in the moment an air raid had finished he realized golf could raise spirits in the UK clearly there was something to it if they risked their lives to play so he said let’s give it a try in the US despite many pro golfers being away on military duty primarily Sam sne Byron Nelson who had a rare blood disorder that caused his blood to clot four times slower than normal led the entire tournament until a completely unknown character before and after the match stole it away from him in the last moment to be fair it was allegedly in thanks to some classy unsportsmanlike conduct that really got those record crowds going Bob was coughing and sneezing whenever Byron Nelson lined up to make a putt we don’t really know why it happened but we do know that Bob had been drafted and was to report for Duty just a week after the round and probably needed the $3,500 you got from first place $60,000 today to help his family while he was away he had nothing to lose sorry Byron Nelson tough guess you’ll just have to win the next one but the crazy turnout at this Championship proved to the PGA Tour that the boys at home could still rally the country behind this silly Sport and give people something to be excited about and distract them from their work during the week and the Terrible War news that would come on the weekend the PGA Tour showed that golf was more than just a game and quickly catapulted it to one of the most popular sports in the country after the war but the money wasn’t lucrative for most that is until the 1960s yeah yeah a lot happened in the 1960s but for golfers the money was really heating up in 1968 Bob 11-time PGA Tour winner including that Year’s Masters became the first golfer to accept a sponsorship when he put an appliance manufacturers logo on his hat for $50 a week and health insurance at the time this probably seemed silly to a lot of people and I’m sure some pretentious golf fans thought of it as a desperate shill for money just as the so-called gentleman amers had looked down upon the professionals 70 years earlier but these silly contracts and advertisements gave the game of golf the ability to boom in popularity sponsorships changed the dynamic of golf for so many making the career viable for not only the 10 or 15 best players but also those that were fighting to get to the top but were just not there yet so with the increased accessibility of the game came more talent and perhaps one of the greatest duels the PGA Tour has and ever will see Jack Nicholas first Arnold Palmer Arnold was charismatic and is probably the biggest reason golf became as televised as it was during the 1960s he was handsome from a reasonable background not that big money gentleman crap we had seen before and was one of the main reasons the British Open now the Open Championship became such a staple and a major on the PGA tour before him Ben Hogan had won it already but few made the journey over there to compete due to travel requirements and relatively small purses they wanted the American money baby and again without sponsorships just yet they really couldn’t afford to do it however with Palmer going abroad and then eventually winning the Open Championship in 61 and 62 well European Golf fans were turned on to the American Golf World and the PGA Tour became worldwide with Arnold Palmer seemingly like it’s King that is until 22-year-old Jack Nicholas stole the 1962 US Open away from him in an 18-hole Sunday playoff that was not any normal loss because with it went Palmer’s chances to match B Hogan with his own Triple Crown having already won the Masters and going on to win the Open Championship a month later which would have cemented Palmer has achieving something few golfers ever had and something Jack Nicholas would never do but it was clear Jack would rule the golf world and with it the PGA tour for the next few decades prior to the 1962 US Open Nicholas had been the best Amer in the country but now he was ready to take the best pro title from Arie and with that a lot of money as well with these two dueling at the top of golf alongside the likes of Gary Player came expanded TV coverage allowing the game to grow those sexy purses and bring in more fans than anyone could have ever imagined these golfers didn’t need to teach anymore to be considered professional but rather the PGA Tour gave them the ability to become professional just from the money they could win at the tournaments and the sponsorships they wore at the tournaments in just 50 years the term professional golfer had completely evolved in definition with now teaching Pros and tour Pros but with more money came a lot more problems the PJ tour was now bringing in significantly more money than ever before and Tor Pros wanted to take that money for themselves in larger purses after all they were the ones everyone wanted to see but the association wanted to distribute all the money to fund growing the game at a local level AKA probably keeping the money for themselves so the pros left and formed their own thing before eventually making up and crawling back back to their toxic X like nothing ever happened but now the game was bigger than ever African-Americans were allowed to play after Charlie cifford broke the race barrier in 1961 and the LPGA Tour was created in 1968 so the game was now ballooning to an unbelievable height so high that the original gentleman probably would have passed out if you told them who regularly played golf nowadays but in 1975 a child was born who would blow the entire PGA Tour and the game of golf completely out of the water now lots of things did happen in golf from 1975 to 1990 Jack Nicholas won his 18th major at 46 years old seevi by athetos became world number one Jan Stephenson brought sex to the game of golf opening up the door for Paige spanic and the average driving distance went from 256 yards in 1980 to 262 yard in 1990 but then came Tiger Mania this kid was being groomed to be the best golfer in the world from basically the point he could breathe from being on the Mike Douglas show with his clubs at 2 years old to ruling junior golf in the country for the next decade the kid had it and brought excitement to the game and eventually the PGA Tour that it had never seen Not only was he Elite but there was something different about him Jack Nicholas had been a big Prospect when he was going through the ranks as a young golfer but tiger man men were obsessed with this child in probably almost certainly actually an unhealthy way but I also get get it from his six Pat in the junior Amer and US Amer championships to his low am victory in the 1995 Masters At 19 he wasn’t just a great golfer but was one of those few human beings that excites people that don’t give a sh about the game they are playing so he brought unparalleled attention to the PGA Tour when he turned Pro in 1996 there’s only a few characters in the history of sports that are able to grow larger than the game itself there’s Babe Ruth Michael Jordan and Now Tiger Woods the minute he went pro he also signed a sponsor contract with Nike reportedly worth 40 million that’s quite the jump from the $50 air conditioning manufacturing sponsorship that started everything just about 30 years earlier on top of all of that more and more people came into the game that diverged from the traditional sportsmanlike gentleman the game had presented for us for decades John Daly made waves for his drinking escapades and wild Antics with women that upset a lot of people but was exciting to a lot more he also led the tour driving distance basically non-stop for 12 years the game was continuing to evolve and the type of person golfing continued to look more and more different than the game’s Founders could have ever imagined plus now a brown skinny kid from Southern California named Tiger Woods ruled the tour interest in the PGA and golf as a whole peaked and troughed with the wins and losses of tiger most people wanted to to see him succeed a lot of people hate watched him waiting for him to fall but he was Far and Away the biggest golf spectacle the game had seen in a century when tiger wasn’t playing people didn’t watch but when he was and when he had his game on Spectators simply could not take their eyes off of him from the largest margin of Victory ever in a masters in 1997 being perfect at Pebble in the 2000 US Open to help earn the tiger slam to his consistent comebacks and revivals after making swing changes that most goers never really understood the reasoning behind mind he inspired kids for years which would change the game today but he wasn’t perfect and it definitely affected the tour when tiger slipped up and made big mistakes in his personal life well it wasn’t personal for very long and that inevitably looked poorly for the tour but after all tiger was aging and the PGA Tour was still around so they continued kicking however without tiger for many it really wouldn’t be the same if you listen to the start of almost almost all golfers today they tell you about how tiger inspired him this way or that way but for a while the PJ tour didn’t have anybody to really Inspire kids there would be a new Wonder guy every few years that would Peak the hopes of fans and probably the tour that he would fill the whole tiger left like Rory in 2013 Jordan spe in 2015 and Dustin Johnson in 2018 and and so on and maybe not so surprisingly Beautiful Moments still happened fresh Feud sparked the interest of fans Phil Mickelson became the oldest major winner in 20211 and pro golfers finally began taking advantage of social media to build their following and increased interest in the game overall not to mention Tiger’s 2019 victory in the Masters but also golf influencers came along who at one point probably did more to grow the game than the PGA Tour was doing and amidst that weird struggle came the first competition basically in the tour’s entire history they live golf tour live golf live golf live golfers live golf is the game in Full Throttle in 2019 reports came out of a rival tour becoming public soon so PGA Tour officials came out threatening to ban any golfer who joined they clearly felt very much so threatened and the sport that had been so comfortable so exciting but also so dated was going to be moved by some real way it’s been an unfortunate week that was created by some unfortunate decisions uh those decisions being players uh choosing to violate our tournament regulations in 2022 the race between live and the PGA Tour finally began for real with the inaugural Tournament being played at the Centurion club with many X PGA Tour faces in that field Dustin Johnson was reportedly paid $150 million to join and was Far and Away the biggest name on the board along with him came Lou usas and Lee Westwood Sergio Garcia and many more all likely being offered at least eight figures to join money they probably never imagined they would see again in their career on the PGA tour with the public investment fund these golfers had access to Crazy money and more golfers including Bryson Kea and even Phil Mickelson joined the ranks chasing that money some came up with other excuses and said it had nothing to do with the money yeah right but a lot of PGA Tour golfers absolutely slammed them for betraying the tour namely Rory mroy and Tiger Woods they argued that none of these golfers would be where they were without the tour and so they were disrespecting what helped make them who they are but eventually the PGA Tour reversed their claims and live golfers were allowed to play in certain events namely the majors if they could qualify the tour would have lost so much excitement as the field was significantly weaker without John Ram Brooks kepa Bryon Kemp Smith and more the competition was so Fierce before Liv on the tour and it kept most people excited for most tournaments because these FedEx points mattered and we all wanted to see which one of these 10 to 15 insanely talented golfers would actually come out on top however with so many great golfers going to live the PGA Tours events were diluted and filled with a lot of competitors that fans just didn’t know a lot of them were very talented but golf fans viewers got behind events and golfers when they know the story of those golfers and they can create a narrative about out the competition like Bryson versus Brooks Phil versus tiger or Jack versus Arnold the PGA Tour doesn’t have that in the same way it did for a long time and now it’s kind of the PGA Tour versus live golf and the next few years are going to be much different to what we’ve been so used to for so long the future likely holds some sort of compromise between the two organizations holding co- events so they can both share the stage and give fans what they want the most competitive competition possible but that means a likely less substantial position for the PGA Tour one that it’s been building for well over a 100 years now it’s not the best note to end on but that’s basically where we are today but if you enjoyed this story check out my patreon in the description below to help me out as I can’t necessarily monetize all these videos due to false copyright claims but if you enjoyed this video check out this other video all about the tiger slam the greatest achievement n PGA tour history thank you again for watching I’ll see you in the next one peace