Speaking to Doug Ferguson of the Associated Press, McIlroy relayed that Woods has repeated as PIP champ.

“Hey, I gave him a pretty good run,” McIlroy said.

The PIP bonus pool was instituted in 2021 to reward players who boosted engagement and publicity for the tour. Ostensibly a response to some of the lucrative deals rumoured to be coming from the then-Premier Golf League, the inaugural programme somewhat backfired; five of the 10 winners in 2021 — Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Bubba Watson — ultimately left the tour for LIV Golf. However, improvements to the PIP were announced at this year’s Tour Championship to broaden its scope.

After spreading out $40 million to those on last year’s list, the 2022 PIP pool has increased to $100 million in payouts. The list has also doubled from 10 players to 20. Perhaps the most consequential alteration is what making the PIP list does for a player going forward. In 2023, the tour is moving to a new schedule, one in which will feature 12 elevated events, in addition the majors and the Players Championship, and a commitment from the game’s “top players” to compete in at least 20 tournaments. A “top player” will now be defined by the tour as an individual who finishes in the top 20 in the PIP, meaning make the list grants invites into the tour’s biggest events featuring the biggest purses.

Woods played just nine rounds in 2022, although his return at the Masters and possible goodbye to St Andrews at the Open were among the stories of the year. Woods was also instrumental in leading a group of players that enacted sweeping reforms to the tour in response to the ongoing threat from LIV Golf.

According to the AP, McIlroy — who won three times this year and returned to No. 1 in the World Ranking — finished second on the list. The entire list is expected to be released by the tour in the upcoming weeks.

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The post Tiger Woods wins Player Impact Programme again, according to Rory McIlroy appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Dan Rapaport
Despite not playing a single round on the PGA Tour in 2021, Tiger Woods won the inaugural Player Impact Program and its $8 million first prize.

Players were notified Wednesday morning of the results from the first year of the program, enacted at the beginning of 2021 to reward the 10 players who bring the most positive attention to the sport. Phil Mickelson claimed to have finished first in December, but tour officials insisted at the time that the competition ran through the end of the year and that no results were official until an audit from accounting and consluting firm Grant Thornton. In early December, Woods make his first public appearance, at the Hero World Challenge, since his February 2021 car accident. Two weeks later, he played alongside his son in the PNC Challenge. Both events garned plenty of attention as 2021 wound down.

Mickelson, who is currently taking time away from golf after intense fallout from his comments about the Saudi-backed golf league to biographer Alan Shipnuck, finished second in the program and earned $6 million. Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, Bryson DeChambeau, Justin Thomas, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Jon Rahm and Bubba Watson rounded out the top 10, with places 3 through 6 receiving $3.5 million each and 7 through 10 getting $3 million.

The PGA Tour combined five criteria to rank each member by their PIP score: Google searches; meltwater mentions, which track how often a player is mentioned across global media; MVP index, a measure of a player’s reach on social media; Nielsen score, which measures how much a player is featured on televisoin broadcasts; and Q-score, a decades-old measure of an entity’s familiarity and appeal.

Any PGA Tour member who played five or more events last season, or five or more events in at least one of the preceding five seasons, was eligible for the controversial program. The PIP was largely seen as a response to rival golf leagues, which have sought to lure players away from the PGA Tour through massive guaranteed paydays. The PIP, then, gave the PGA Tour a mechanism to reward its top stars for something not directly reliant on their on-course performance. Case-in-point: the top two finishers in this year’s PIP combined for one top-10 finish in 2021 (Mickelson’s victory at the PGA Championship in May). Woods has not played in a PGA Tour event since the Masters in November 2020, though he is expected to return to competition sometime later this year.

Players will be paid in two parts, but only after satisfying two requirements. The first half will be delivered after a player attends a mutually agreed upon “sponsor function.” This can take the form of media interviews, a dinner party, a Q&A, a golf outing, etc. The second half comes after the player competes in a mutually agreed upon tournament on the PGA Tour schedule. The tour could use this rule to drive interest in a lagging tournament or to help a player satisfy his requirement to play at least one new event (defined as a tournament he has not played in the last four seasons) each year.

Shortly after claiming victory, Mickelson tweeted that he was playing the Sentry Tournament of Champions for the first time in more than 20 years to satisfy part of his PIP obligation.

The PIP fund will increase to $50 million for 2022, with the winner collecting $10 million.

The post Tiger Woods beats out Phil Mickelson to win inaugural Player Impact Program, claims $8 million first prize appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Dan Rapaport
Since news of its existence went public in April, the PGA Tour’s $40 million Player Impact Program has been something of a punching bag. Its detractors bemoan PIP, as it has come to be known, as concrete evidence of professional golf’s impending shift away from meritocracy and toward guaranteed money. It has been labelled a thinly veiled attempt by the tour to appease superstars in the face of legitimate competition. And, perhaps the most damning accusation of all: It’s what unnecessarily perpetuated the Brooks Koepka-Bryson DeChambeau feud throughout the summer and fall.

The PGA Tour has stayed silent on its controversial new program. Until now, that is. To better understand how the PIP works, Golf Digest spoke with Andy Pazder, the PGA Tour’s Chief Tournaments and Competitions Officer, who helped spearhead the project. While he would not divulge who will be taking home the $8 million grand prize—smart money says it’s a man who did not play a single PGA Tour event this year—Pazder did provide details on the program: who’s eligible, what the payment structure looks like and how it fits into the tour’s larger aims.

Here, then, are answers for your PIP FAQs.

What is the PIP, anyway?

Simply stated, it’s “a program designed to reward the players who have the biggest positive impact on our business,” according to Pazder. Literally speaking, it is a $40 million fund of money earmarked for the top 10 finishers of an internal PIP points list, which uses five criteria to rank tour players based on how much attention they bring to the game. It was ratified by the tour’s board in March 2020 and went into effect on Jan. 1, 2021. The list will refresh at the beginning of each calendar year and it is not tied to the tour’s wraparound tournament schedule.

Why now?

It’s a great question, and the timing’s hard to ignore. While Pazder said the tour had held internal discussions about creating a program like PIP for years, its start in 2021 coincides with discussion surrounding the potential rise of two upstart leagues—one surfacing from the Greg Norman-led LIV Golf Investments (which is pumping money into the Asian Tour), the other known as the Premier Golf League, which hopes to team-ify golf under the PGA Tour umbrella.

While it is not clear what the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Investments’ ultimate vision is, Norman confirmed to Golf Digest that a significant portion of its $200 million investment will go toward player appearance fees, which are prohibited on the PGA Tour. A number of stars including Bryson DeChambeau, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Xander Schauffele committed to February’s Saudi Invitational and are surely being paid handsomely to do so. The PGL has discussed a payment structure that does indeed reward higher finishes but pays all participants. This, then, would seem to be a mechanism for guaranteeing the very biggest names in the game a hefty payday even if their on-course form takes a dip.

How are the PIP rankings determined?

Pazder emphasized the objective nature of the ranking—suggesting that, given the subjective nature of popularity, the tour felt strongly about creating a system that filters out bias, is trackable in real-time and relatively easy to understand. A player’s score is determined by five total components that are all worth 20 percent of the overall mark. They are as follows:

• Google searches: How many times a player’s name is searched for. Players will only receive credit for searches related to them, so Adam Scott won’t benefit simply from having the same name as the actor.

• Meltwater mentions: Tracks how often a player is mentioned across global media

• MVP Index: A measure of a player’s reach on social media

• Nielsen score: How often a player is featured on the television broadcast

• Q-Score: A decades-old measure of an entity’s familiarity and appeal

Notably, none of the five criteria are directly related to a player’s on-course performance—although an in-form player will certainly be featured more often on broadcasts and in Google searches.

David Becker
Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka’s year-long social-media exchange would likely help their PIP score.

Who is eligible?

Any PGA Tour member who has played five or more events in the current season, or five or more events in at least one of the preceding five seasons. Tiger Woods, then, is eligible to win the 2021 grand prize and will be eligible through 2024 even if he never plays a tour event again.

“From the point when a player retires or isn’t physically eligible to play,” Pazder said, “there is a trailing period of five years when they can still benefit from this program. And that’s by design. It’s a reward for being a great ambassador of the game and remaining visible.”

How is the money distributed?

The $40 million fund for 2021 will be split as follows:

Winner: $8 million
Second: $6 million
3-6: $3.5 million
7-10: $3 million

The 11th-place finisher will receive no money from the pool. The overall prize fund will increase to $50 million for 2022, with the winner taking home $10 million.

When will we know who wins?

The tour plans to distribute a list of the top 10 winners to its membership in mid-to-late February. And while that list will not be made public, there is little doubt the information eventually will find its way to the media.

Does the money come in a lump sum?

Players will be paid in two parts, but only after satisfying two requirements. The first half will be delivered after a player attends a mutually agreed upon “sponsor function.” This can take the form of media interviews, a dinner party, a Q&A, a golf outing, etc. The second half comes after the player plays in a mutually agreed upon tournament on the PGA Tour schedule. The tour could use this rule to drive interest in a lagging tournament or to help a player satisfy his requirement to play at least one new event (defined as a tournament he has not played in the last four seasons) each year. “It can be a number of things,” Pazder said. “Could be sponsor-related, or we’re running a campaign and it makes sense for us to have a specific player there.”

Is this a step on the road toward appearance fees in tour events?

As previously noted, the PGA Tour does not currently permit a tournament to pay players an appearance fee, and Pazder said that is not likely to change any time soon.

“We still want the vast majority of our player earnings to be based on performance,” Pazder says. “We think that’s a unique aspect of our sport. It’s a differentiator for us. Is there ever a day where we allow appearance fees? I don’t see it happening. The way our business model works, we’re a very sponsor-centric sport. We rely heavily on our title sponsor base, our official marketing partner base and our media revenue, which is our largest source of revenue. We want all those constituents investing in the tour, which allows us to provide $838 million in player allocations for next season … as opposed to the tournaments themselves or the title sponsor doing side deals with players.”

Can a player check where he stands in the PIP race?

Yes, players can receive a detailed breakdown of their standing throughout the year. They will not, however, be able to obtain information on where any other player ranks.

Does the tour care whether a player’s coverage/attention is positive in nature?

Yes and no. Pazder said fears that a player might purposely act out to drive up his PIP score are unwarranted. The tour does hold the authority, however, to nullify a player’s score in a certain category for extreme cases.

Seems like the tour is helping its richest players get richer. What about the other guys?

According to Pazder, the PIP is part of the tour’s growing efforts to aid its membership in off-course business opportunities. The tour recently launched a Player Partnerships program, headed by Dan Glod, that seeks to help players market themselves to potential sponsors and, in some cases, to connect sponsors with potential ambassadors. The tour has accumulated data on how much players are paid for a varying number of agreements—how much does a 30-year-old with X number of PGA Tour wins and X number of social-media followers charge for the logo on his hat; his bag; his left sleeve—that it intends to share with members. The tour also will provide players with dollar-amount values for the exposure they receive through the tour’s media channels, including broadcast and digital media content.

“We have no desire to replace what agents do. We view [the program] as complementary or supplementary to what a player’s representative is doing. … And if a company comes to us and says we’re interested in sponsoring professional golfers, we can customize a program for them—do they want one headliner, or do they want eight mid-level people? We have the data now to filter by age, by availability on a player’s shirt or sleeve or golf bag. And if a player is doing any contract negotiation, we can aid them and their representatives by giving them this data.”

These types of services—industry-wide comparisons and analysis of earning opportunities—have previously been available to players, but they’ve been provided by for-hire consulting/media/marketing companies. The PGA Tour will provide this service to its membership free of charge.

“I’ve personally viewed in our sport, and this is always an interesting debate at the breakfast table with our players, their off-course income as their ‘guaranteed income.’ Jon Rahm knows what he’s going to make from Callaway in 2022. The counter to that would be yeah, I had to play my tail off to earn those dollars and that’s a reward for my play. I wouldn’t call it guaranteed money, per se, but my mentality thinks of it in that fashion.”

The post The PIP explained: PGA Tour reveals details on its controversial new program appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.