New PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp has players' attention and open field ahead

CROMWELL, Conn. – Mandatory player meetings on the PGA Tour are traditionally anything but mandatory, with most players happily bypassing the politics of the moment and the business of golf for an extra hour on the range or a bit more sleep.

Tuesday’s gathering at TPC River Highlands was the historic exception. While not all 72 players huddled into the second-floor meeting room – with the notable exception of J.J. Spaun, who was making the most of his U.S. Open victory with a barnstorming media tour in New York City – it was as close to full participation as you get at these gatherings.

The interest was understandable, given the nature of Tuesday’s meeting with the Tour introducing Brian Rolapp as the circuit’s first CEO.

The longtime NFL executive will succeed commissioner Jay Monahan later this summer in leading the Tour’s day-to-day operations, and he painted a picture of innovation and growth in a 90-minute player meeting that, according to various sources, featured a lot more questions than answers.

“You have to change,” Rolapp told reporters after the meeting. “We’re going to honor tradition, but we’re not going to be unnecessarily bound by it, and where it makes sense to change, we’re going to do that. I think that’s something to take from my previous experience that I’m excited to apply here.”

In other sports, it’s always a race to conclude if the new coach or general manager “won” the opening press conference. By every measure, Rolapp prevailed in his opening presser.

“I normally leave those [player] meetings pretty bored and not very inspired,” mused one player, “but after that one I was like, ‘Heck yeah!’ I was fired up.”

Rolapp’s resume is beyond impressive. Since joining the NFL in 2003, he’s held a variety of jobs, and most recently was the league’s chief media and business officer. He was also widely considered a possible successor to commissioner Roger Goodell, and by some accounts, he could still end up taking over at the world’s biggest sports league.

During his tenure, the NFL media rights partners ballooned, including an agreement with Amazon that set the standard for the streaming of live sports. He also led the league’s 32 Equity, an entity that makes investments on behalf of the league and its 32 owners. The latter makes him uniquely prepared to move the Tour forward with $1.5 billion in equity investment from Strategic Sports Group.

“The investment of capital and the pledge of future capital has been one of the things that have strengthened the Tour. I think it’s a huge opportunity,” Rolapp said. “Where we deploy that capital, I have ideas. I don’t think I want to share them now, but that’s going to be part of the job to get in there and talk about it.”

Perhaps the most impressive part of Rolapp’s rollout was how he thoroughly embraced what he did not know. He is not a golf guy and, many have suggested, that’s not a bad thing.

“No one hired me for my golf game, here. That’s not my job. My job is to do other things. But I’m a big fan of the sport,” he said.

Rolapp has played golf since he was young and worked the halfway house at Congressional Country Club for “gas money,” and he admitted that while he was in college at Brigham Young University, he skipped a few classes to enjoy the ancient game. But he is not a blue-blazer-wearing student of the golf.

Conquering the nuances of golf – pace of play, Tour Championship format and mud balls – are not atop his “to do” list. Instead, he will spend the next few months alongside Monahan, who will remain on both the PGA Tour Enterprises and PGA Tour boards until his current contract expires at the end of 2026, learning the ropes.

The one topic everyone hoped Rolapp would have a plan for on Day 1 was the ongoing divide in the professional game and the stalled negotiations between the Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which owns the rival LIV Golf league.

“When it comes to the situation with LIV, I think that’s a complex situation that’s probably something I should learn more about before I speak,” he wisely sidestepped. “I will say my focus is on growing the Tour, making it better, and really moving on from the position of strength that it has.”

But what he lacked in answers, he made up for in messaging.

“He has a picture in his office of a high school football game and behind the stadium, a building is on fire. Everyone is watching the game,” said Maverick McNealy, who will work alongside Rolapp next year as a member of the Tour’s policy board. “The point was, it’s always about the game.”

For over two decades, the “game” had been football. But now Rolapp turns his talents and ambitions to golf with, as he explained, “a clean sheet of paper.”