Stay in one job long enough and you acquire tenure. People know what you can do, or what you have done, and give you the benefit of the doubt. You can have an unproductive week, miss a deadline, or turn in something less than your best work without being called to account. Your employer has seen you perform under pressure. You've accumulated a little grace.
No one should have to prove his worth anew every morning. Experience, judgment and institutional memory count for something. But there's a point at which the presumption of competence becomes an exemption from having to demonstrate it. Yesterday's accomplishments are accepted as sufficient evidence of today's abilities, and a job that was once earned begins to look like a possession.
A lawyer who stops winning cases, a salesman who stops selling, a surgeon whose hands are no longer steady--all eventually discover that previous accomplishment provides only so much cover against present shortcomings. Some get more rope than others; some have friends in the right places. Others get discarded despite doing good work. The system is hardly fair, but its underlying proposition is difficult to dispute: Whatever we've done, we have to go on doing something worth paying us to do.
Which brings me to golf.
The PGA Tour is preparing to reorganize professional golf along lines familiar to anyone who watched "Ted Lasso." Beginning in 2028, it will operate two divisions, a Championship Series and a Challenger Series, with players moving between them according to performance. The 2027 season will determine who qualifies. Under the new arrangement, the top 90 in the Championship Series will keep their places for the following season, while at least 20 from the Challenger Series will earn promotion. Others can reclaim their status through a fall competition.
Play well and stay among the elite. Play poorly and risk being sent down, with the chance to earn your way back. The Tour has always had qualifying standards, but this will draw a sharper line between its richest events and the rest. Championship purses will be at least $20 million. The Challenger tournaments will pay less, though not so little that anyone need organize a crowdfunding site for the contestants.
Joe House and Nathan Hubbard discussed the implications on their "Fairway Rollin'" podcast the other day, particularly the crop of young golfers arriving on the professional scene and the uncomfortable prospect they present for veterans whose best golf may be behind them. A former major champion might discover that the next great thing is a teenager who hits it 20 yards longer, putts better and has no particular regard for reputations. They discussed Brooks Koepka, whose present standing hardly reflects his formidable past, and 19-year-old Blades Brown, who has earned his way on to the Tour. Neither man can hit his next shot with his résumé.
House and Hubbard welcome this, and they're right. Relegation supplies something golf has been missing: consequences for players who aren't winning tournaments. A fellow finishing 70th in an event could have more at stake than the fellow holding the trophy. His place in the professional hierarchy might depend on a four-foot putt.
Golf is peculiar this way. In most team sports, an aging star can become a reserve, a mentor or a specialist. In golf, there's no bench. You either qualify to compete or you don't. You eat what you kill. Miss a cut and go home empty-handed.
Yet professional golf has increasingly been organized around recognizable stars who enjoy privileges less celebrated players do not. The commercial logic is obvious: More people will watch a familiar major champion struggling with his game than an unknown player playing considerably better. Television executives and sponsors know this. But a sport organized to protect its celebrities eventually begins to resemble an exhibition. The competition loses something when the competitors are insulated from failure.
Relegation means no one owns a permanent place at the top.
Golf is a maddeningly inconsistent game. A player can be among the world's best in April and unable to find a fairway in September. Injury, a misguided swing change or the mysterious disappearance of confidence can turn a successful career into an extended humiliation. There's a difference between complacency and a body that no longer cooperates.
The same is true at work. People get sick, lose loved ones, endure bad years for reasons having little to do with their character. And meritocracy is an especially slippery concept outside a game with agreed-upon rules and a scoreboard. Favoritism, office politics, luck and the ability to convince somebody important that you're indispensable can count for more than the quality of your work. In journalism, what constitutes merit? Page views? Compliments? Complaints? A columnist who makes everybody comfortable may be failing at the job, while one who annoys people may be doing something useful. Good editors recognize the distinction; not all editors are good. Those with authority also tend to have a hand in deciding how their own work will be judged. Subordinates have quotas and deadlines; executives have explanations. The golfers, at least, know where the cut line is.
There is also a fundamental difference between relegation and dismissal. A relegated soccer club isn't abolished. It continues to play and can earn its way back. The golf system acknowledges something the working world often overlooks: Someone who isn't among the best today may still have plenty of ability, and may improve. A temporary decline needn't become a permanent sentence.
What appeals to me is not the prospect of watching some comfortable millionaire lose his privileges. I have no appetite for anybody's humiliation, and don't consider success evidence of undeserved advantage. It's the opportunity for somebody else that makes relegation defensible. If the door closes behind the veteran, it must open for the newcomer. Otherwise, the new divisions could become another arrangement for keeping established players rich and ambitious ones out. A fair route upward is as important as a credible threat of being sent down.
How many of us would welcome relegation in our own professions? How many executives would be comfortable defending their positions against younger, more capable candidates? How many politicians would submit their records to an impartial examination of what they've actually accomplished? It's easy to applaud meritocracy when we imagine ourselves among the deserving. The proposition becomes less appealing when we consider that someone else may be better at our jobs.
I have sympathy for the aging golfer threatened by a teenager with a beautiful swing. Experience has its uses; youthful confidence sometimes exceeds youthful judgment. But there's a temptation, particularly after years of doing something reasonably well, to mistake experience for entitlement.
House and Hubbard are making a commercial argument too. Golf has spent years trying to solve its problems by making wealthy players wealthier, creating enormous purses, and ever more exclusive opportunities for familiar names. The result hasn't necessarily been more interesting competition. A prize can grow so large that we forget to ask what else, besides money, the players stand to lose.
Golf doesn't need more millionaires playing for bigger checks. It needs more players playing for something they might actually lose.
Most of us would prefer to keep the positions we've earned, and a bad year shouldn't wipe out a good career. But there's a difference between giving experience its due and treating a job as permanent property. As every investment prospectus warns, past performance is no guarantee of future results. It should earn you the benefit of the doubt, not the right to keep somebody better out.