I recently played with the CEO of the United States Golf Association, Mike Whan. We rode in a cart at Hominy Hills Golf Course in Colts Neck, New Jersey, and I drove. It was too nice a day for fall golf, so we kept the conversation light, watched any loose shots that skittered toward downed leaves like hawks, and just had fun. The following conversation took place after the round and lasted about an hour, and so has been significantly edited for concision.
Max Adler: The scouting report on you is you don’t hold back giving the needle. But you were nice to me, so should I be insulted?
Mike Whan: You got a first day pass.
We’re still playing golf in the northeast, but as far as USGA Championships, the season is over. How do you assess 2024?
In my four years in this job this was our best. And I’m not just talking about Bryson and his bunker shot on the last hole at the U.S. Open. We had record numbers of entrants trying to get into our championships, which is a great signal. We had one that was impacted by heat and another by rain, but for the most part the weather was supportive. Generally, we got to play these venues in the way in which the designer and the club wanted to showcase them. As for the U.S. Open at Pinehurst, it was its first year as our anchor site. I remember saying to my team, “I don’t want to add pressure, but you’ve got to get this right because we’re coming back here every five year.” Which, of course, added the pressure I was trying to avoid..
With the PGA Tour versus LIV saga dragging on, the U.S. Open and the other majors have risen in importance. But are you concerned all the ugliness has hurt the game at large?
I’m a kid who grew up watching all sports, so I’ve seen my share of strikes and things that made fans say, “I’m never coming back.” But I don’t think the NFL is reeling from its strike decades ago. I’m not sure I understand anything more than anybody else, but the two parties are talking. The game’s big enough to host all kinds of tours and all kinds of formats, and we’re proving that on the amateur side. Whenever I walk into a room these days, the first three or four questions I get are always about [professional infighting], and that’s OK. But if we weren’t talking about this, we’d have to be talking about the greatest swing in golf in history.
C’mon. You fly in high circles. Any inkling as to how the Department of Justice will rule?
This is conjecture, as my guess wouldn’t be any better than yours or anyone who has kept up with their reading. But I do think it’s different today. With the SSG (Strategic Sports Group), you have a significant body of U.S.-led organizations. The DOJ worries about who is going to be the decision-maker. As long as the decision-maker continues to be the PGA Tour and the players on that tour, I think there will be less made of who represents a minority portion of the income. Again, if all you follow is golf, you might think this is unique stuff. But if you follow global sports, you know that ship sailed a long time ago.
Sorry, and so what do you mean by ‘the greatest swing’?
Forty-six million people playing golf in the United States, and the growth being driven by demographics that didn’t used to be considered a big part of this game: juniors and people of colour. Men’s golf is only up a little bit. There are a thousand more girls’ golf teams today in high schools in America than there were 10 years ago. Golf is almost equal with soccer. In terms of business, I joined this game when I was 29, and it’s never been righter than it is right now. (Editor’s note: Mike Whan is 59).
Bryson DeChambeau – U.S. Open 2024 – Sean M. Haffey
Handicapping is a tool golf has over other sports for encouraging play at all levels, but a lot of these new golfers are approaching the game differently. Could that affect your plans to grow GHIN?
In 2020, we had 2.6 million Americans with a handicap and by the end of 2024 that number will be 3.4 million. A major reason for that growth is we’ve finally made it easy to get a handicap. Three years ago, if you weren’t a member of a state golf association and you went to the USGA website to register for a handicap, you probably would’ve gotten frustrated. We finally fixed that about a year ago. Now we’re ready to put our national media message behind it.
Ball rollback. The PGA Tour and PGA of America have yet to confirm they will go along with it. How worried are you they won’t?
Both entities were very involved and vocal in the process, and what we heard loudest from them was, don’t bifurcate. If you’re going to [limit distance], have the guts to make it a rule [for everyone]. If we made it their choice, their preference would be to not go along. So we’re making it a rule and I feel confident everyone will play by the rules of the game. A change that I would’ve liked to implement in 2026 will now happen in 2028 and 2030. A difference that I wish would’ve been 22 yards for the longest hitter will probably be more like 12 yards. Of course, those 12 yards will be gone in 20 years. The goal isn’t to set us back, but to slow the pace by which we’re obsoleting courses from hosting championships and qualifiers. This is governance in action. The USGA had to be the body that does this for the long-term health of the game because we’re not tied to sponsors and equipment manufacturers. Many of these same stakeholders have said to me in a quiet room, “I’m glad this is your decision and not ours.” In the end, we reduced the impact of this change so that the overwhelming majority of amateurs won’t know the difference or experience the difference. Would I have liked the difference to be larger? I would have, but I wasn’t willing to upset the amateur game to do it.
Speaking of amateurs, or at least elite amateurs, there’s a lot of new money flowing into junior and college golf through NIL (name, image and likeness) endorsements. How far apart is the USGA ideal of amateur status versus where NIL is pushing it?
We saw it coming and changed our rules of amateur status before the O’Bannon v. NCAA case. I can speak better to the women’s game because of the experience of my previous career (Whan served as commissioner of the LPGA Tour from 2010 to 2021). It’s helped golfers stay in college longer rather than chase the pro dream so young. You’re not going to get rich, but you won’t feel the pressure as much. There are a lot of real positives, as more golfers can get their degree, mature their game and get more of that time hanging with friends because the pro game can be a lonely existence. Not every college coach would agree with me, and there are certainly places we don’t want NIL to get to, but if I’ve learned anything, whenever you try to put a cage around an athlete and say this is how you have to live, there’s an expiration date. Will there come a time when a golfer collects a paycheck for winning an amateur event? I think yes. It’s not tomorrow, but it’s becoming a more athlete-centric situation.
A lot of my golf buddies grouse about reinstated amateurs who tend to beat them at state events and USGA qualifiers. Are these guys whiners or do they have a point?
The bottom line is if somebody transitions out of the professional game and can reinstate their amateur status, you’ve got to beat them. I could give you a long list of golfers that have done that with the hopes of owning the U.S. Amateur, and they’ve never made the finals. Anybody who plays this game at a high level knows that changing the tag that comes after your name doesn’t change how many strokes it takes to put the ball in the hole.
But would you agree the lines are getting blurrier and a big part of your job going forward is maintaining the distinction between professional and amateur?
Luckily, the people who work for me are smarter about this and I trust their perspective more than mine. But yes, what we’re proud of at the USGA is giving you goals and dreams no matter where you are in your golf journey. Whether you’re 18 or 81, professional or amateur, male or female, handicapped or full-bodied, we make sure there’s something that you can strive for. It took us a while to launch the U.S. Adaptive, but since we have, there are 33 new adaptive championships throughout the country. We can lead that trickle-down effect. As a former college quarterback, it’s been a long time since I can dream about my football skills, but if you’re a 51-year-old golfer on your way to 55, you can think about tuning up your game for a chance to compete in a national championship. That’s a cool thing that makes golf different. It’s our job to maintain those standards and so, yes, I do feel a responsibility to protect that.
Asterisk Talley – David Cannon
Is that why endowing the Walker and Curtis Cups was so front-burner?
(‘The Keepers of the Cups” campaign raised $10 million from donors in 2023 and was matched by the USGA). As a business, we’re in good shape right now. But if you look at our 130-year history, we’ve gone through some big ups and downs. What can we do during good times to make sure the bad times are less painful for the people that count on us? This might get me in trouble, but what couldn’t we endow? Why not our U.S. Amateur and our U.S. Women’s Amateur and the Senior Amateur and the Women’s Senior Amateur? We could raise enough money between us and the people who play the game to put those things on ice forever and just know that if there are swings in the economy those incredible gold standards of the game won’t be affected.
Everybody knows the men’s U.S. Open is the moneymaker. Fox and NBC combine to pay the USGA more than $90 million a year in rights fees, but NBC’s portion is less than $40 million. NBC keeps saying $40 million is what it’s worth, but the USGA projection is $115 million. How do you see closing the gap?
TV rights are like houses. They’re whatever somebody’s willing to pay. Look at our TV ratings over the last five years and you’ll have no concern whether we can generate an audience that you can sell. Fox’s deal with NBC was worked out without the USGA, so who pays what on that is irrelevant to us. I will tell you that when the USGA went with Fox (the deal was announced in 2013 for broadcasting to begin in 2015), there was an alternative offer from NBC that was pretty close to Fox. I get it. Like home prices, nobody likes what they’re paying for TV rights. But whether you’re talking Major League Soccer, U.S. Open tennis, golf or anything else, nothing’s delivering for TV like live sports right now. And nothing delivers like a major on Father’s Day weekend.
Back in the day, players like Ben Hogan and Jack Nicklaus regarded the U.S. Open as the No. 1 major championship. Now, the Masters probably holds that distinction and it’s possible the Open Championship worldwide is second. What will you do to increase the stature of the USGA’s most important asset?
If that’s true, that bums me out. We must have a philosophy of how we’re going to run a championship and be unwavering. We’ve made the mistake at times of listening to too many points of view. What I’ve said to our team is, let’s build the strategy we believe in and commit, no matter where we are or what the score is. We shouldn’t chase the experience of other majors. You can use your phone at the U.S. Open and we have an app we want you to use to make your experience better, whether that’s finding your favourite player or figuring out where to eat or park. How people rank the majors will ultimately be up to them, but I want to make sure that when we finish, like we did this year at Pinehurst, we can say if we had to do it over again, there isn’t much we’d do different.
You make a point of standing on the range at the U.S. Open to make yourself available to players. No need to name names, but what’s the most important thing a player told you?
I do it on Saturday and Sunday. I probably should start doing it on Thursday and Friday as the golfers who miss the cut might have more to say, but the meeting schedule is crazy. I get a lot of comparatives. If you want to see what’s really good for a gym or food, players will say, look at this tournament. A player at Los Angeles Country Club asked me why the fairways are so wide. I said, because this is the way the course was designed. We try to pick the venues that will separate the best from the best, and if we must fundamentally change a course, we shouldn’t go there. At Pinehurst, if you missed a fairway the outcome of your lie was very 50/50. That anxiety walking to your ball was part of the original design and part of the U.S. Open experience. That player at LACC said, I get it now.
Alright, let’s get really serious. Why can’t I use the slope function on my rangefinder in competition? Isn’t the idea that all golfers should have access to getting an accurate yardage promptly, or what tour pros and rich guys who hire caddies get?
The conversation about whether rangefinders should be more broadly used at USGA Championships is happening. Remember, I was the guy that started rangefinders on the LPGA. But I can tell you that slope is not part of that conversation yet. That’s another meeting for another day. We want thinking your way around a USGA national championship to be as important as playing your way around. We’re not telling you on the first tee that the wind is blowing 14 miles-per-hour and that’s 1.4 clubs of difference. Everybody should factor their sense of their own ball-flight and everything else. We haven’t come to any new decisions as a group yet. These are all off-season things that happen for us in the December, January, February timeframe.
Any other important questions keeping you up at night that I failed to ask about?
Obviously, there’s a significant arms race with money. When I took this job our women’s U.S. Open purse was $5.5 million and now it’s $12 million. Our men’s purse was $12 million and now it’s $21.5 million. Those massive chunks of difference speak to your earlier point about TV rights. If those are going in different directions, we’ve got tough choices ahead. If that doesn’t keep you awake as a CEO, you’re not spending time on the right stuff. The hardest thing we must deal with at the USGA is knowing the boundaries of what to work on. This isn’t a Mike Whan problem, this has been a problem for 130 years at the USGA. I’m a guy who likes to be fixing things, but it’s a problem if too often I find myself working on things that can be delivered by Friday. So when I came up with Unify, Showcase, Govern and Advance, it was to raise some out-of-bounds stakes and say, if it’s within those four things, you have my attention. If it’s out of those four things, let’s be comfortable as an organization to say somebody else will have to address those. So now we’ve got big initiatives. Sustainability, building a national junior development program, endowing the cups, launching the Adaptive Open—these are 80-year ideas, not eight-month ideas.
Main Image: Rob Carr
