Whoa: Pelley Charging Hard In The Bloated Golf Salaries Race!

The Daily Mail’s Charles Sale reports on European Tour Chief Keith Pelley raking in a significantly larger salary than his predecessor George O’Grady.

It has emerged on the eve of the Ryder Cup that European Tour chief executive Keith Pelley earned an extraordinary financial package of £2.78million last year.

Pelley's pay is far in excess of that earned by the previous CEO of the European Tour, George O'Grady, who was on £610,717 when Canadian businessman Pelley succeeded him in 2015.

Sale is pretty tough in his assessment of no new “bumper” sponsors, yet Pelley’s biggest achievement is the current Rolex series of lucrative events. There have been buzz-creating new formats and strong use of social media to market players and events to his team’s credit as well.

Not so hot has been an attempted website reboot, the at times blatant milking of the Ryder Cup for revenue and an inability to strengthen ties with the PGA Tour, leading to several more young player defections to the PGA Tour.