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Jan 31, 2024

BenFred: As golf's greed shows, Ragone remains determined to use St. Louis' place in game for good

Pádraig Harrington holds the Ascension Charity Classic trophy on Sunday, Sept.

Pádraig Harrington holds the Ascension Charity Classic trophy on Sunday, Sept. 11, 2022, at Norwood Hills Country Club in Jennings. Harrington won the tournament, finishing 14 under par.

Ben Frederickson is a sports columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. You can follow him on Twitter (Ben_Fred), Instagram (benfredpd) and Facebook (BenFredPD).

Nick Ragone's reaction was probably pretty similar to your own.

Wait, what?

Ascension's executive vice president and spearhead of the annual Ascension Charity Classic PGA Tour Champions stop at Norwood Hills Country Club is rarely caught off guard. He tends to see things coming, especially things in the golf world, before the rest of us. But considering Tiger Woods and plenty of golf's heaviest hitters had no clue PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan had cut a secret merger with Saudi Arabia's LIV Golf venture and all of its baggage, Ragone found out like the rest of us.

He read it on his cellphone after the breaking news alerts, social media updates and text messages stared pouring in Tuesday morning.

"I was stunned," Ragone said.

Golf fans have some soul searching to do, don't they?

They must decide if they can and will support a PGA Tour that went from shaming its LIV defectors for accepting big Saudi paydays, to accepting a massive payday from the same Public Investment Fund that has connections to terrorism and human rights abuses. Some fans swore off the LIV crew. Others cheered for the offshoot, calling out PGA hypocrisy. The PGA, for example, didn't drop its color barrier until 1961.

Meanwhile individual golfers, like Woods and Rory McIlroy, who stiff-armed stunning LIV paydays to defend the PGA Tour from what they deemed a dishonorable threat, got played for fools and must now decide if they are going to simply accept that reality or react in another way.

Debates will continue to rage as fine print is finalized.

Ragone hears and understands the noise, but he has other top priorities to figure out, and he's wasting no time getting started.

A theme quickly emerged in the text messages and phone calls he has received since the headlines arrived. People want to know how this stunning shift will affect a St. Louis professional golf scene that has been steadily improving in recent years. Good question.

The 2018 PGA Championship at Bellerive was a big win. Victories have continued to come since then. Much of the forward momentum can be traced back to Ragone's work with the Ascension Charity Classic, which has quickly become one of the PGA Tour Champions most charitable stops, raising close to $2.5 million for north St. Louis County charities since its 2021 launch.

First, Ragone wanted assurance the PGA Tour Champions series would remain under a nonprofit umbrella, even with more for-profit PGA Tour subsidiaries now likely to emerge. He was encouraged by Monahan's initial comments on that matter. The PGA Tour commissioner has stressed that will be the case. (Insert a joke about Monahan's willingness to lie here, if you like.)

"From a sponsor's perspective, the Charity Classic was created to be an investment vehicle for North St. Louis County," Ragone said. "It was created to give back to charities that serve that community. That is the raison d’etre for the event itself, and that has to be the nucleus of what the PGA Tour stands for going forward. That's a table stake. That's the reason why most companies get involved in the PGA Tour. They want to transform their community. They want to bring a great sporting event to their community. They want it to be sustainable and lasting. They want to make a difference. That was the first thing I listened for. And I heard that. But I want to see more details."

On the backburner, but still very much in his mind, is how the 2024 and future tournaments could be affected if the brick wall that had been built between PGA and LIV crumbles. Nothing will change for this year's event, but LIV adopters like Phil Mickelson and Lee Westwood could potentially be in St. Louis for the 2024 tournament. And fields for the upcoming 2026 BMW Championship and the 2030 Presidents Cup at Bellerive also could be impacted and improved. Again, that's if this merger actually works.

"The game of golf has suffered over the past 18 months with this schism," Ragone said. "It's never good for a sport to have fractured tours. And it's hurt the game of golf. In that sense, what Commissioner Monahan is trying to do in bringing the global game of golf back together, is good. But there are still a lot of details that need to be seen. I want to see the commitment."

I think we can all agree on one thing. The more money big golf pumps into St. Louis communities in need, the better. Ragone is determined to keep things that way, and keep things growing.

At a time where the game's greed can feel pretty gross, he remains determined to make the money generated here work for good.

After rebranding Ascension, Nick Ragone has an idea about selling St. Louis to the rest of the world.

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Ben Frederickson is a sports columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. You can follow him on Twitter (Ben_Fred), Instagram (benfredpd) and Facebook (BenFredPD).

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