like The PGA Tour prepares to enact massive changes in the coming years, including a reduction in the number of completely banned players, ex-Tour pro and television analyst Gary McCord one remembers a time in the distant past when the Tour went in the opposite direction.
In the 80s, the Tour greatly increased the number of fully exempt players eligible for the tour, and McCord wasn’t just there to experience it, he was the man who drove the transformation.
In the last episode of Kostis & McCord: Off Their RockersMcCord revealed the complicated story of how as a little-known professional he became the face of a dramatic change on the golf course.
The story begins in the early 1980s, when the existing rules allowed 60 fully exempt players who automatically qualified for all tournament events. Special exceptions would make up most of the rest of the field. This meant that every regular professional outside the top 60 was required to qualify for the tournament each week on Monday, with around 40 players fighting for 15 spots.
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It was a system that offered little security for anyone outside the most successful Tour pros. At the Doral Tour event in 1983, McCord had completed his qualifying round when problems with the existing disqualification system began to crystallize.
“I was at the Doral qualifiers, we’re sitting there and they’re posting the results, and I’m looking and I’m starting to look at the names that are out there,” McCord began.
In those names McCord saw many proven tour winners, identifying Miller Barber, owner of 11 PGA Tour victories, and 10-time winner Don January as two examples.
“I started putting them together and there were 54 tournament wins from guys qualifying on Monday for Doral. And I went, ‘This is a terrible system,’” McCord explained. “You literally have a bunch of guys, I mean 200 guys, traveling every week with nowhere to go but trying to get into this. And not making a penny. what are we doing Why not expand this?”
McCord then recounted how he looked up the list of NFL players at the time and found that there were 1,078 players.
“I got into the top 60 my sophomore year, 1975, and I made $58,000 — I had to spend 100 to get 58,” McCord continued. “We just weren’t going anywhere as a sport.”
With that McCord decided things had to change, so he headed home and took four weeks off. In that time, he took a deep dive into all the various exemptions used by the Tour to create 144-player fields.
From his research, he determined that the Tour and its players would be much better off if they increased the number of fully exempt venues each year. So what next? He decided that the first group of people he should coach were the players outside the top 60 who were forced to qualify every week.
“I want to do this as a union uprising,” McCord joked. “I want to go to the guys who are going to leave the tournament and if they like it, then bring it in bulk.”
So McCord traveled to a backfield tournament in Tallahassee and called a meeting in the banquet room of the Holiday Inn where many of the players were staying, putting up posters in the area to try and get the players to come. He was hoping to get 30 players to participate, but he was away. More than a hundred professionals showed up.
He got up in front of the big crowd and sold his idea.
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“Guys look, I think we need a change, expansion, give everybody a chance to plan a living and try to make a living in the 80s,” McCord said. “Here’s the deal. We have 105 boys. If I get 50 or more saying ‘yes,’ I’m going to go to the Tour and say ‘hey, I’ve got this program here that we think needs to be looked at in order for the PGA Tour to work down.'”
He ended up getting 80 players who supported his plan. “More than most, much more.” Two weeks after he had laid out his plan for the PGA Tour circuit, then-commissioner Dean Beaman called him and asked McCord to meet with him at PGA Tour headquarters in Ponte Vedra, Fla.
When he got there, McCord gave Beaman his game, before sitting back and waiting to receive a punishment, even a suspension, for his player’s “rebellion.” Instead, he was surprised to find that the commissioner was already on the same page.
“(Beaman) says, ‘We need a change, and you’re the person who can make it happen,'” McCord said.
Beaman then opened a vault and presented McCord with a massive Tour overhaul they were already considering. In short, it involved splitting the Tournament into a National and American League, having a draft to fill each league, then holding separate 15-event seasons for each league. The following year, the players would switch leagues so that each player would visit a certain tournament every two years.
The commissioner then asked McCord to go to a future board meeting and present to the board members the idea of the American National league and his plan of a completely exempt tournament, including such famous people as Jack Nicklaus.
When he did this, a major issue arose with the duel-league concept, one raised by Lanny Wadkins. If a player had a hometown Tour event, they would have to skip it every other year. This ruined the plan.
Instead, they all voted and approved McCord’s concept of a tournament featuring 125 players outright, a huge increase from the existing system of 60 players outright.
To hear McCord’s full story from the horse’s mouth, watch the video at the top of the page. You can watch the entire episode of Kostis & McCord: Off Their Rockers on YouTube here.
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