Martin Slumbers will officially vacate his office on December 13, bringing an end to a 10-year reign where he helped the game navigate choppy waters and in one of his final interviews at the head of the Royal and Ancient, he urged leading golfers in the men’s professional ranks to place an emphasis on history and values instead of focusing on the depth of their pockets.
Speaking to Martin Dempster of The Scotsman, Slumbers admitted that he feels that fans are becoming more and more disillusioned with professional golf and that the top tier of the sport is in a “bad place”.
Since LIV’s arrival in 2022, big-money moves have dominated much of the narrative, and the PGA Tour’s response was to throw money at the problem, elevating prize funds to unsustainable levels, forcing them to the negotiating table with the Saudi Public Investment Fund and, as of yet, no agreements have been reached as each side continues to levy their own interests.
“I’m not at the table, so I’m not part of the ongoing discussions,” Slumbers, who is due to hand over the reigns to former Northampton Saints chief executive Mark Darbon, told The Scotsman. “I don’t know exactly what is going on. But I do think we are in a bad place.
“I feel very passionately that for the future of the game and to keep the professional game not becoming de-linked with the amateur game, we need stability. I don’t really mind what the outcome is. We just need stability and move on.
“A lot of talk is about one tour, but, if we end up with two tours, then fine. To me, I don’t mind that. I grew up when the European Tour was absolutely pari-passu with Seve [Ballesteros], [Nick] Faldo and others. But we need stability.
“I have expressed this multiple times and not just with the media but other parties as well, we need professional golf to be financially stable. I don’t believe it is at the moment and we need to have to absolutely focus on making sure it is. That’s how you get long-term progress. If it’s not, it will eventually fall apart.”
With the game’s top talent diluted primarily across two tours with occasional appearances on the third, TV viewers are voting with their remote controls and switching off as evidenced by drastically reduced viewing figures for the game as a whole, but primarily for PGA Tour events.
The big outlier was at the U.S. Open in June where Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau – two of the undisputed top players in the game but players who only get to lock horns a few times a year – went head-to-head at Pinehurst, and Slumbers is adamant that we need to see that more often or at least to give it the chance of happening.
“Irrespective of how stability works out, the best players in the world have to play against each other more than four times per year,” added Slumbers. “I have learned a lot in the past ten years, but, in professional golf, the biggest thing I have learned is that actually the most important and most compelling golf is the best players playing on great venues. Venues really matter.
“It doesn’t just have to be the historical courses, but they need to be great golf courses that allow the best players in the world to differentiate themselves. If they are too easy, it is kind of not very interesting to watch.
“Finally, I absolutely hope that we stop talking about money leading everything and we start talking about the values of the game. We start talking about the history of the game, the venues and the characters who are playing it.
“People are saying that in large amounts of golf tournaments no one is watching. I think people are kind of being turned off by this constant divisiveness and money. If you look at the best businesses in the world, it’s all about the product. The money happens.”
Slumbers was present at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship where PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan were paired together with their professional partners for one of the three rounds, but despite conversing with Al-Rumayyan, he confirmed that there are no negotiations in place to have Saudi investment into the main championship run by the R&A.
“Not into The Open, no,” he insisted. “But the world has changed and I take a view now that the Saudis have made a significant investment into golf and they are going to be part of golf for the future. They want to invest more money into the game and we should be finding the right ways for them to be able to do it for the future of the game.”
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