Peter Jacobsen sounds off on PGA Tour pros who chose Saudi International over Pebble Beach
Peter Jacobsen is “disheartened” that some of the best players in golf asked for permission to skip the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in favor of receiving appearance money.
Jacobsen, 67, who retired from competitive golf this week and spends most of his time as a golf analyst for NBC Sports, had some choice words for the 20-odd PGA Tour pros, including Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Phil Mickelson, who elected to take guaranteed money and play the Asian Tour’s Saudi International instead of a staple of the Tour.
Jacobsen made his PGA Tour debut at Pebble Beach Golf Links in 1977 when the tournament was still known as Bing Crosby’s Clambake. Speaking from Pebble where he competed in the AT&T for the 32nd time, Jacobsen said, “This is the most important tournament on the PGA Tour and I think some of the players are a bit short-sighted when they don’t understand that.”
AT&T has sponsored the event since 1986 and is the Tour’s second-longest running sponsor behind only Honda’s backing of the Honda Classic. AT&T also underwrites a second Tour event, the AT&T Byron Nelson in Dallas, and Jacobsen noted that the Pebble Beach pro-am is chock full of all the leading executives who sign off on the sponsor dollars that are the backbone of the Tour.
“What better place than Pebble Beach to spend time with and thank these corporations for sponsoring this Tour and giving all these players the opportunity to seek fortune and fame,” he said. “I understand getting appearance fee money. I’ve done that myself. But I think this is the one tournament that is extremely important to the success of the PGA Tour and it’s disheartening for me to see so many miss this tournament, so many of the stars, because I think the best players on the PGA Tour should be here and playing with the top people in business, the top people in entertainment and sports. It’s disheartening for me just to see this and I would have loved to have seen the best players in the world playing here this week.”
Jacobsen played the AT&T consecutively from 1979 to 2008 and he’s long been a proponent of the pro-am as the lifeblood of the Tour.
“This event is a microcosm of what the PGA Tour is, what it should be and what it has become,” Jacobsen said to the Associated Press in 2018. “If some players don’t recognize that? That’s fine. I understand that. Those who do, I admire. I’ve said to a lot of guys, ‘How much money did you make last year?’ They say, ‘$5 million.’ I say, ‘Would you sacrifice one week a year to continue to make $5 million? Go play the AT&T.’ ”
Jacobsen also blamed the managers and agents of players, who typically receive a cut of deals negotiated on a player’s behalf such as show-up money, for giving advice that may have been self-serving.
“The players have gotten to where the only people they listen to are the agents. That’s a real bad direction for the game of golf to go,” Jacobsen said. “I hope someday that somebody realizes how important this event is to the past, present and future of the PGA Tour.”
Article originally appeared on: Golfweek.usatoday.com
Its all about those that see money is more important to them than supporting a tournament that helped so many
Its all about choice & freedom. PGA Tour is becoming suffocating, no more room for criticism. Whats the alternative to PGA Tour, it has no competition & it does whatever it wants & wants the players to do whatever it wants. People like Peter Jacobsen literally survive due to PGA Tour, so how can he say anything different? If he did, he would be fired already. And Why support these woke corporations that are banning everybody who does not live woke? Mandated vaccines & tragically forced thousands of people all over USA.
Perhaps it is time for the PGA Tour to become a FOR PROFIT entity. Let the players go where they wish. Twentyyears from now, the top 20 players will be trying to find places to play or retired and the NEW generation will not have so much money in earning and have to find places to play. BUT without having made and spent the money and time they will no have the fame. The PGA Tour can survive in similar fashion to the European Tour which offers purses as low as $2-3 million versus $8-10 million.
The Tour will be more profitable and the players less financially rewarded. Also, with less tv time, the equipment and clothing sponsors will pay less.
KUDOS to you Peter Jacobsen, You understand the value of loyalty and integrity upon which the PGA TOUR grew. As well, you understand the value of “giving back”.
I’m with Peter Jacobson’s comments. All so know better especially Mickelson!!
Players are independent contractors. They should be able to decide where and when the decide to play. Also, they are obligated to play the pro-am once in the next 2 years if they decide to skip one year, so it’s not like they aren’t going to ever play the AT&T pro-am. I don’t know what the Saudi organizers paid the players, but would Jacobsenneeds to ask himself, would he have turned down $2-3 million (or whatever it is) if he had the choice when he was playing?
Let the best players leave and allow the golfers on the horizon to become the next ‘great players’ on the PGA Tour. Great Golf is not restricted to those handful who have already secured enough $$$$ for several generations.
He’s been a real Yank. As in, he’s just protecting “American interests.” In the end, golf is NOT an American sport, even though, at least in the 20th century, due to the Northern European Caucasian world-domination rhetoric the game became American-centric with 3 “majors” being played in the US that became the norm – it’s time to dismantle that and consider the future, where the game is a truly global sport, where the players can decide where he or she wants to play and make a living, globe-trotting while doing it. Who cares about Pebble Beach. If the Yanks cared about it so much, it would have been made a national monument 70 years ago and never been allowed to be “sold” like every other piece of property in the country. But nah – they went for the money at that time as well. In the end, what is “property” in the US? Somebody OWNS the land, supposedly. It’s just a piece of paper.
Golf needs to be extricated from its own US-trappings, and the majors need to be dismantled and shifted into global ones like in tennis.
Amen Jack. If everybody listened to ESSM this world and the PGA tour would be going to hell .
There are two very viable arguments to this issue. Peter is right in that loyalty is a concept, and there is an amount of merit to it, and it does factor into this conversation, and the PGA is what has traditionally enabled these players to be multi millionaires… but business waits for nobody. The fact that there’s a new shiny object that is pulling new interest from the players is simply the way of the business world. This new wealth infusion to the game may be short lived, and it may even go down as a giant fireball, and maybe those who participated have an asterisk beside their names for rest of days, but maybe it doesn’t. It’s down to risk/reward, and how much that potential reward means to anyone at any given time and how much loyalty does or doesn’t factor into their decision process. Peter J. has Lexus and Netjets on his shirt but should he exclusively sign with companies to adorn his shirt that have been around and supporting the tour since the dawn of his career? It’s the same thing but on a smaller scale.
actually everything is run by Greed and power and those who have it.