PGA Tour Is Looking For — A Few Good Kardashians

Once upon a time (and this is from a great source) Butch Harmon wasn’t real pleased with Rickie Fowler during one of their sessions back when Butch was coaching Rickie.

Now Butch will pretty much tell it like it is when he’s not happy with a player and said to Rickie:

“Do you want to be a player or do you want to be a Kardashian?”

Yes, we all know as Butch knew then that Rickie is a social media butterfly and the sweetheart of countless television commercials.

This week, the report from Golfweek came out and apparently the PGA Tour is looking for a Few Good Kardashians among its players.

It seems that in some back room up there at Ponte Vedra Beach deep within the bowels of the swanky PGA Tour Headquarters, one of the Sheriff Of Nottingham’s (aka Tour commish Jay Monhan) Henchmen came up with a simply marvelous idea:

Hey, let’s reward our own Kardashians for dominating social media!  Let’s make it worth their while!

To which The Sheriff may have responded:  “How much to make it worth their while?”

The Henchman:  “How about $30 million?”

The Sheriff:  “Let’s make it $40 million, we need to incentivize these guys!”

Voila!  The PGA Tour’s new “Player Impact Program” was hatched.

It will seek to identify the 10 biggest “Kardashians” on Tour, regardless of how poorly they might play, and reward them from that $40 million bonus pool.  The No. 1 PGA Tour “Kardashian” will pocket a nifty $8 million — that’s like winning six or seven tournaments!

Such a deal!

Notice how easy it is for the cash-laden PGA Tour to toss out a cool $40 million.

Now exactly how will they put together this “Player Impact Score?”  It will be based on a combination of:  Popularity, Appeal (Q-Rating), Engagement on social and digital channels (MVP Index), Frequency of coverage across media platforms (Meltwater Mentions), Google Searches, and a player’s Nielsen Brand Exposure.  It will all be computed by some cockamamie algorithm to determine who pockets the $8 million.  We’ll ask Bryson DeChambeau to explain the algorithm sometime down the road.

With all that in mind, Tiger Woods can probably blow everything up and dominate by releasing pictures of his broken leg — talk about moving the needle!  Then if he really wants to blow this Impact Program off the charts and pocket the $8 million that goes to “Mr. Popularity,” he can invite the Kardashians over to his palatial Jupiter pad for a “Let’s Help Tiger Get Well” party.  They can probably bag some major sponsors.

If that’s not enough, Tiger can host a new Bravo channel show:  “The Housewives Of Jupiter Island.”

But wait!  Here’s a great idea:

Brooks Koepka can get in on the action by challenging Bryson DeChambeau to an arm-wrestling competition — hey, they might even put that one on Pay Per View, but only if the PGA Tour gets a piece of the action.

As for the Tour’s commercial darling — Rickie Fowler — well there are all kinds of avenues open for Rickie.  More Farmer’s commercials, more Rocket Mortgage commercials, more Puma commercials, more commercials on EVERYTHING.

Here’s Rickie, in his own words, on how he manages those:

“There’s a lot that goes into it, and like I said, it’s learning how to manage everything, when to do it, how to do it. Like I said, figuring out how many weeks in a row you want to play. If you do play three, four, five weeks in a row, which I don’t play more than three, then is it one week off or two weeks off, then you add in workdays as far as shoots with sponsors, whether they’re still or commercial stuff. I do about 25 to 30 days a year, so those obviously aren’t in a row. You’ve got to pick and choose are those Monday and Tuesday when you get back from a tournament or mid-week, or if you’re fitting them into one week off, it kind of interrupts your preparation or your rest, so then you have to take two weeks off to fit shoot days in. So there’s a lot that goes into just picking which tournaments you want to play.”

Twenty-five to thirty days a year?  That’s like taking an entire month to shoot nothing but commercials!  Now, not only will Rickie get paid by those sponsors, he’ll also get paid by the PGA Tour!  Talk about “double-dipping?”

Good work if you can get it.

How about a guy like Patrick Cantlay, who basically has the personality of a wet wash-rag?  He’ll have to settle for simply making money on the golf course.

Now, about that Brooks Koepka-Bryson DeChambeau Arm Wrestling Extravaganza — there’s no truth to the rumor that the soon-to-be established PGA Tour/Draft Kings Sports Book at TPC Scottsdale is already setting some odds for that one.

Hey, Commish!  It will certainly “Drive The Needle” AND, the Kardashians might even show up to watch!