Why Martin Slumbers and Keith Pelley depart R&A and DP World Tour with heads held high despite criticism

Outing chiefs deserve credit for respective jobs with The R&A and DP World Tour

So much for a quiet start to a new year in the golfing world. Before the dust had even settled from Jon Rahm’s sensational switch to LIV Golf at the end of last year, 2024 has started with an equally big bang following a double whammy.

After eight-and-a-half years in the post, Martin Slumbers is set to step down as The R&A CEO later in the year while a similar spell for Keith Pelley as the DP World Tour’s chief executive is ending in April as he returns to his native Canada to take up a dream job as president and CEO of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Ltd.

From outside the two respective organisations, both announcements came totally out of the blue and certainly merit some scrutiny, especially when you see some cynics coming out with claims of people “jumping ship” and expressing opinions that, quite frankly, are not based on facts. Purely based on his announcement being delivered ahead of Pelley’s, let’s look at Slumbers first and, boy, does he deserve credit for a wonderful job as head of the St Andrews-based governing body after succeeding Peter Dawson in the role.

DP World Tour chief executive Keith Pelley, left, chats with agent Mark Steinberg, centre, and The R&A's CEO Martin Slumbers, right, during The Masters last year. Picture: Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images.

Perhaps because I’m old school and always want the golf side more than anything else to shine through, I’ll hold my hands up and admit that I was a tad sceptical about his credentials for the job, but, in addition to bringing huge business experience, it quickly became apparent that Slumbers is as passionate about the game as anyone you are likely to come across. In his time at the helm, The R&A has grown quite considerably as an organisation as it has strived to make the game more “accessible, appealing and inclusive”. The fact every one of those boxes is being ticked is down to Slumbers being the main driving force.

For a spell, he hosted an annual roundtable chat with a group of golf writers in his office that overlooks the first tee on the Old Course at St Andrews and, on more than one occasion, I remember being impressed by the fact he had a real handle about how golf could be grown and this, I hasten to add, was before golf’s unexpected boom from the Covid pandemic. He talked about how facilities like Wellsgreen Golf Centre, which is located between Kirkcaldy and Leven, were “family friendly” and, in some respects, they provided the template for the creation of Golf It!, The R&A’s community-based golf facility that opened last year on the outskirts of Glasgow and will form part of the 63-year-old’s legacy, as will the growth, particularly in terms of prize-money, of the AIG Women’s Open.

Taking part in something called The R&A Reputation Monitor for the second year running, I openly expressed my personal concern about The Open becoming “too big” purely in terms of spectator numbers and that having an effect on the overall experience of attending the game’s oldest major. But, at the same time, there can be no denying that the ante has been upped in terms of how it is now marketed and also from a visual perspective in terms of the infrastructure. Just about everything, in fact. Whether or not Saudi Arabia’s much-publicised Public Investment Fund is soon part of The R&A’s revenue income stream remains to be seen while we’ve not heard the last about a move strongly supported by him to roll back the golf ball, but there can be no denying surely that having Slumbers as one of the chief administrators has been very good indeed for the game and, as a result, he’ll be a hard act to follow.

It would be wrong, of course, to try and compare the jobs carried out by Slumbers and Pelley over those same periods of time because, first and foremost, the DP World Tour is a members’ organisation and, secondly, it was more directly impacted by the Covid pandemic than The R&A. Like Slumbers, though, Pelley deserves credit for being both bold and innovative, shaking things up a bit with new events like GolfSixes and Shot Clock Masters, being the visionary of the Rolex Series and also the G4D Tour for Golfers with a Disability. Oh, and two of the most successful Ryder Cups to be played on European soil – in Paris in 2018 and Rome in 2013 – also took place under his leadership.

Martin Slumbers, The R&A's CEO, and DP World Tour chief executive Martin Slumbers pictured together in St Andrews at an announcement of the venue for the 2018 Senior Open Championship. Picture: Mark Runnacles/Getty Images.

All of a sudden, lots of people out there seem to have become experts about how the DP World Tour is run and appear to feel strongly about so-called ‘mistakes’ being made about not striking a deal with the Saudis before LIV Golf was launched then entering a Strategic Alliance with the PGA Tour yet now finding itself sitting around the same table again with the PIF chief, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, as talks continue about the framework agreement struck last June. It’s a bare-faced insult, though, to Pelley to claim that he’s not had the DP World Tour’s best interests at heart during his tenure and, for starters, lots of players should be eternally grateful for the leadership qualities he displayed during that global pandemic, which, with all due respect, proved a far bigger challenge to the DP World Tour in terms of pure logistics than the PGA Tour.

He was also faced with a hugely-challenging situation as big names in Lee Westwood, Sergio Garcia, Henrik Stenson, Martin Kaymer, Graeme McDowell and Ian Poulter all found the LIV lure too hard to turn down and, let’s face it, Pelley was always going to find himself in a no-win situation as far as that one was concerned. As a result of that issue alone, there will be some people out there glad he’s heading back across the Atlantic. Definitely not everyone, though, and that’s because the people who actually have a bit knowledge of everything that has been going on in the background over the last four or five years know that the man at the helm of the Wentworth-based organisation has been pivotal in putting the building blocks in place for the DP World Tour to keep growing through its partnership with the PGA Tour – important partnerships have also been struck with the Sunshine Tour and PGA Tour of Australasia – as evidenced by a new-look 2024 global schedule that boasts around 45 events with a prize pot in the region of $150 million.

Pelley’s shoes will be filled by Guy Kinnings, his current deputy and one of the most experienced individuals in the game. This means the impact of the current chief executive’s sudden departure may not be a major problem as far as those ongoing talks about a new landscape are concerned and, coming from someone who actually attends DP World Tour events, I can confidently say that rumours of the circuit’s demise continue to be way off the mark.

As for what else is to come in 2024, well, the mind boggles!