During a lengthy wait for our clubs at the airport, a former club pro I ran into asked me what I thought of the new "Bin Laden LIV Tour". The guy is a known comedian and I hadn't heard the new tour referred that way before, so I was caught off guard. When I figured it out, I said that a little competition might actually make the PGA Tour more responsive to its members' needs, and though he disapproved of the disruption, he acknowledged that maybe something good could come out of it.
Apparently he knew quite a bit about the pension system, because when I mentioned that I was aware of a former member (Pat Burke) who made 76 cuts on the Tour and received no pension, he noted that the cut-off was 100. He also stated that he knew of a fairly well-known former member who had his fairly modest pension cut-off after passing 90 years of age.
I am a big supporter of the PGA Tour, but I think it should be an organization which represents all of its members first, with a fairly intense focus on providing value to its fans, volunteers, corporate partners, and suppliers, not necessarily in that order. As a non-profit organization with many very special privileges, its accounting/financial reporting is rather oblique, and it seems to have adopted an approach which is the opposite of what is known in government as regulatory capture. From my admittedly limited understanding of its legal structure and finances, the Tour bureaucracy appears to be more interested in fiercely defending the status quo and its very privileged position than to improve the well-being of its current and past players. If I had upwards $1 Billion in uncommitted assets, I would certainly explore ways to keep the competition at bay; it is not that the powers-that-be didn't know that Norman and company were openly trying to find a gap in their wall.
For competitive purposes and more direct ways to join The Show, I wonder if a return to a much smaller exempt list- was it 60 players at one time?- and more qualifying opportunities might elevate the level of play and bring more interest. I lived-scored for Nito Pereira's group last year at the local Korn Ferry event and always look to see how he is doing. I have heard that there is a lot of complacency among the bottom half of the exempt list and a competitive threat just might be a good antidote.