You could never accuse Padraig Harrington of under thinking anything, and in the wake of Rory McIlroy’s decision to resign from the PGA Tour Policy Board, the now 52-year-old three-time major winner has his views on who would be an ideal replacement for his fellow countryman.
An in true Harrington fashion, it’s not a candidate you’d typically expect. But with more than 20 years of experience as a PGA Tour member, and almost 30 years as a regular competitor on the marquee stages in golf, he’s crossed paths with a wide-variety of players and Harrington suggested that Joe Ogilvie would be an ideal candidate.
“The time I’ve spent with Joe over the years, he’s a very measured guy, he thinks his way through things, he sees both sides,” Harrington told Golfweek’s Adam Schupak. “You need someone to champion the journeyman pro and someone to champion the elite pro. There’s no one size fits all. You need balance so everything gets discussed.”
Ogilvie, a former Tour Policy Board Player Director who resigned his PGA Tour membership in 2024 and now manages an investment portfolio for Wallace Capital Management, recently penned an open letter to the PGA Tour membership with suggestions as to how best to navigate the current climate that sees various investment offers coming in from a wide range of angles.
Nicknamed ‘The Lil Commish’ for the pro-active role he played during his Board tenure, Ogilvie was also named ‘Brightest man on Tour’ in a 2009 survey and started his own investment company before being headhunted to join Wallace.
But Harrington doesn’t want to see Ogilvie just given a seat on the board, instead, the left-field thinking Dubliner has other ideas in store.
“The problem with committees is you can end up with the lowest common denominator,” he said. “I personally prefer a benevolent dictatorship. If someone told me tomorrow and said that Joe Ogilvie had been named the head of the board – I wouldn’t give it to him for life but say for two years – I would be very happy to let him run with it and in two years if I didn’t like him, put someone else in.”
Having resigned his membership, for Ogilvie to be re-appointed to the board, never mind handed the advanced role that Harrington champions would take a change in the PGA Tour bylaws, but given the positive response to the open letter, were Ogilvie to be appointed as McIlroy’s successor, the decision would be welcomed with open arms by a strong section of the PGA Tour membership.
“He’s very reasoned and he seems to have a very good knowledge,” Harrington added. “I think the board needs player representation but it doesn’t have to be active ones. We need independent business people, especially when you’re dealing with professional golfers who because we’re good at one thing, we think we’re good at everything.”
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