RBC invests in younger wave of PGA Tour golf stars

Bites, Bites and Barbs from around the world of golf:

Bites

Mike Weir will be announced Wednesday as captain of the International Team for the 2024 Presidents Cup. This will come as a surprise to exactly nobody since those matches will take place in Montreal where Weir famously beat Tiger Woods in 2007 when the Presidents Cup was last held there. Also: Weir has been an International assistant at the last three Cups. The International Team has assumed more of an identity in recent years, but here’s hoping the host country plays a massive role in the next event. It’s one thing for the Internationals, losers of all but two Presidents Cups over the event’s history, to play for a fabricated crest; it would be quite another if all its members felt as though they were playing for the same nation. Make all the guys feel like adopted Canadians that week, I say … Can’t wait for Weir to make his captain’s picks ahead of that event, assuming there are one or two (or more) Canadians hovering just outside the automatic cut- off target. Remember that Weir didn’t make the 2007 team on merit and probably wouldn’t have been a wild-card selection of Gary Player’s if the event wasn’t in Canada. He was then the International Team’s best player by far with a 3-1-1 record … A memory that sticks out from that Presidents Cup was the incredulous look on Stuart Appleby’s face when he ventured into a grandstand with an Australian flag to try to rally who he assumed were International Team supporters only to get very little reaction. Most people were there primarily to see Woods and Phil Mickelson in person and not so much to cheer vociferously for the Internationals. That shouldn’t be the case in 2024 with no US player close to the level of popularity that Woods and Mickelson were at that time.

Bites

Of the three players signed by RBC last week — more on that below — I was most intrigued by Sahith Theegala. Sam Burns was long rumored to be a target of the bank and Cameron Young is the PGA Tour’s reigning rookie of the year. But Theegala, although extremely successful as a college golfer, really burst onto the scene out of nowhere for most golf fans last season. Speaking from Las Vegas on Monday night, Theegala said he definitely exceeded his own expectations in 2022 and was taken back by the tremendous amount of support he received every week as he enjoyed more success and became a regular presence on leaderboards. He became quite the phenomenon. Part of that was his backstory — an American of Indian descent who grew up playing municipal courses in California while dealing with scoliosis. And part of it was him sobbing on his mother’s shoulder after fading down the stretch Sunday at the WM Phoenix Open, in which he finished third. By the time he got to Canada, which he said he loved, all golf fans knew who Theegala was. He’s also an extremely nice and humble young man and completely cognizant of his role as one of the few golfers of color on the PGA Tour. He’d seem a perfect fit for RBC’s Community Junior Golf Program, which Harold Varner III, since gone to LIV Golf, was originally tapped to be the face of. In any event, Theegala may become the biggest star on Team RBC in rather short order … First Rory McIlroy and now Woods publicly stating that Greg Norman needs to go as LIV Golf’s frontman if there is any hope for the PGA Tour and LIV to reconcile and coexist. That’s likely the scenario that will play out. I’ve always thought Norman was more of a hindrance for LIV than a help given how many star players don’t like him, even if they don’t always say so publicly like McIlroy and Woods have. Still, who is running that tour isn’t its biggest fault. That it is owned and controlled by a regime with a horrible human rights record is, even if, sadly, that’s no longer the main topic in LIV conversations.

Barbs

It had holes to fill on its roster of tour players because Dustin Johnson, Graeme McDowell and Harold Varner III were dismissed after they departed the PGA Tour for LIV Golf, but RBC’s signings of Sam Burns, Cameron Young and Theegala last week represented a philosophical shift by the bank. Previously, RBC’s habit was to sign more established winners (beyond Canadians on the PGA and LPGA tours). That meant players such as Matt Kuchar, Brandt Snedeker and Webb Simpson — all of whom are still on the roster — plus previous ambassadors Jim Furyk, Fred Couples, Luke Donald, Ernie Els, Jason Day and Ryan Palmer. Burns, Young and Theegala, on the other hand, are among golf’s new wave of tour stars with Burns winning three times last year and Young and Theegala the tour’s top-two rookies in 2022. All three are 26 or younger and hearken back to the first non-Canadian that the bank partnered with in 2009 — Anthony Kim. Kim was 24 at the time and coming off a breakout, two-win season in 2008. He was also gone from the golf scene three years later. “It’s wonderful to see that so early in the arc of their long careers to come they are already showing some really strong promise,” said Mary DePaoli, RBC’s chief marketing officer, of Burns, Young and Theegala. In addition to partnering with on-the-rise players who have a good chance to be mainstays in the top 20 of the PGA Tour’s Player Impact Program, therefore putting them in the fields of all of the tour’s elevated events, one can surmise RBC’s attraction to younger players is also a reaction to LIV, which, for the most part, has lured players who are long in the tooth. RBC was burned by Johnson, McDowell and Varner and you can bet steps were taken with these new signings to make sure that doesn’t happen again. “At the end of the day, you create relationships with ambassadors in any sport, in any sector. We’ve got ambassadors in our Olympics portfolio, in our music portfolio, in our golf portfolio, and ultimately, it just comes down to shared value and trust because anything can happen,” said DePaoli. “In the case of golf we certainly have this additional dimension of LIV. We’ve had direct conversations with each of these ambassadors and with the ambassadors that are still in scope because we are always looking. We feel comfortable that we all have a shared objective here and ultimately it does come down to trust.” If there are more RBC signings, as DePaoli hinted, expect them also to be in the young star mold.

Obscure thought of the week: Is there any word that divides kids and parents more than “leftovers”? Such a disappointment to the former and such a nice fallback for the latter.

Jason Logan is the editor of SCOREGolf magazine, which is co-owned by Torstar, Star’s parent company. He is based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @jasonSCOREGolf

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