When then-Commissioner Deane Beman moved the PGA Tour headquarters to Ponte Vedra Beach in 1979, it didn’t have a big need for office space.
“When I started we only had about 12 employees,” Beman said March 10 during an interview at The Players Championship tournament at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach.
“The PGA Tour is a much different organization today,” he said.
With more than 800 employees now working among 17 buildings, the PGA Tour is building a 187,000-square-foot headquarters along County Road 210 at the entrance to the TPC Sawgrass course.
During a news conference March 10, current Commissioner Jay Monahan said the organization expects to move into the new facility Jan. 1.
“You think of the moment that Deane came down here,” Monahan said.
“They started in a condo, which led to three condos, and now that three condos has gone to 17 different locations in Ponte Vedra,” he said.
“When you think of a global organization with all the resources that we have, everybody being in the same building,” he said. “It's something we can't wait to get to.”
When the PGA Tour announced plans for the new headquarters two years ago, it promised to add 300 jobs when the building is complete.
Monahan said the organization already has been growing since it announced those plans, with new jobs in areas including technology and tournament support.
“We're going to continue to do that as we go forward, and we feel very confident that the commitments that we made to the community will be honored,” he said.
Monahan also was asked about the future of the World Golf Hall of Fame, which opened in St. Augustine in 1998.
“We are committed to being in that building through 2021,” he said.
“I think that building has served the Hall of Fame exceedingly well in St. Augustine and may continue to be the case but with the world changing and the way people consume media, consume content, we want to make certain that we come out the back end of this and we've done everything we can to celebrate the incredible accomplishments of everybody that's in that Hall of Fame,” he said.
“We're looking at a lot of different options, and we haven't settled on where we're going to be at this point,” Monahan said.
Monahan also addressed the impact of the coronavirus on the PGA Tour.
A report this week in a San Francisco newspaper said the PGA Championship tournament scheduled at a San Francisco course in May could be moved to TPC Sawgrass because of health concerns.
Monahan said no plans to move or cancel any tournament has been made, but the PGA Tour has a group of people monitoring the impact of the virus.
“I would tell you that it started out as a task force. It's now essentially a business unit,” he said.
“Suffice it to say it's a very dynamic situation.”
Monahan expressed confidence that the PGA Tour will be able to handle any economic downturn that results from coronavirus fears.
He wasn’t with the organization during the 2008-09 recession but said the PGA Tour handled that well.
Beman, who retired as commissioner in 1994, also said the experience of the last recession gives him confidence in the tour’s prospects. He said sponsors stuck with the tour and continued to benefit from their spending on gold tournaments.
“Everything went to crap” in 2009, he said. “The PGA Tour did not go to crap.”
