Yours truly covering The Ryder Cup 2006 at The K Club
Chubby Chandler is respected for – among other reasons – having paid his dues. Retiring from the professional game in 1989 he gambled in true Frontier style with a 10 grand overdraft on setting himself up in sports player management. Hats off to him… balls of steel… all of that.
Our paths cross once or twice a year at various European Tour events, and while he never portrays himself as either the Big I Am or as a party animal, he’s always unfailingly polite and is demonstrably working the interests of his players in the media centre. His stable of golf stars is unparalleled in number and calibre.
It’s due to the fact that there are relatively few management companies at this level that when a player moves from one to another it makes headlines. When I say relative, I mean in relation to golf equipment brands. These brands have a comparable stake in the careers of Tour players, via equipment usage contracts, logo-ed apparel etc., but these brands are greater in number than management firms; making the scrabble to grab the best players very keen.
That said, there’s a sort of febrile tolerance on the part of golf Tours (and often on the part of the big brands too, but not always by choice) that at least makes it possible for up and coming equipment innovators to get a foot in the door. After representing Yes! Golf on the European Tour from 2006 to 2010 I saw many of golf’s commercial and sporting giants react variously with admiring wonder to naked hostility to Yes! Golf’s Tour success and sheer brass neck at mixing it with the likes of Callaway, Titleist, Ping and TaylorMade. While it is true that the major brands contribute vital revenue for the industry, this kind of commercial stranglehold inevitably leads to damaging sclerosis.
With McIlroy’s move to Horizon, it was inevitable that the media would look for signs of a deep rift between Rory and ISM – or better still, a deeply personal flare-up with Chubby (isn’t Tall Poppy syndrome what the British are best at?) but the real value of the move is a commensurate reward for Conor Ridge’s own gamble in setting up Horizon Sports Management in 2005, and having paid dues of his own.
A kind of re-balancing has been achieved. Chubby and ISM will not starve. And McIlroy is genuine when he says he believes he and Chubby will remain friends. The Tour is too small and confined a space to tolerate grudges, and both men are big enough to be mature and move on.
I have to disagree with Peter Dixon’s opinion piece in The Times today, therefore, because although it IS likely McIlroy will likely wield the whip hand in the relationship with his new management company as the biggest fish in a smaller pond, it can justly be seen as a new and key stage in Rory’s maturing. However, for Dixon to rue the motivation behind the development as ‘bland’ is to degrade what is a small but very hopeful realignment in the commercial side of professional golf.