The PGA of America won’t name their 2016 Ryder Cup Captain until next Tuesday but Tim Rosaforte has already let the cat out of the bag.
The PGA has gone back to the future with their selection of former 2012 captain Davis Love III. Love will be given the chance to redeem himself for his team’s Sunday meltdown that squandered a 10-6 lead and lost the cup to the Europeans.
Things at the PGA were shaken up a bit when Phil Mickelson lambasted 2014 Captain Tom Watson at the post tournament press conference. But truth be told, changes at the PGA started long before then.
Many golf fans can’t distinguish between the PGA Tour and the PGA of America but some of that confusion was removed by former PGA President Ted Bishop whose penchant for publicity brought more focus to the PGA.
While the camera loving Bishop was busy promoting all things PGA (before he was axed) the real deal making was being handled by the PGA’s Chief Executive Officer, Pete Bevacgua. 
Bishop may have been the face of the PGA the past two years but Bevacqua has been busy changing the way business was done at the PGA while brokering new deals and moving the PGA into a new position of strength in the golf world.
After law school and a stint in corporate law Bevacqua came back to the game at the USGA and was a rising star there before he joined the PGA.
Bevacqua is faced with a difficult task of working for the 28,000 PGA Professionals and at the same time dealing with a volunteer board of directors that each has their own agenda. So far he has worked miracles.
From Shipnucks’s article: He noted some of the biggest wins of the last year-plus: the creation of the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, a reconstituted major that will debut in June; the PGA’s principled refusal to support the USGA and the R&A in the ban on anchored putting, citing the many recreational golfers who would be disenfranchised; extending and expanding through 2030 a programming relationship with NBC; getting the PGA Championship back to the West Coast for the first time this century (Harding Park in 2020); and muscling in on one of the USGA’s signature venues (Bethpage Black, which will host the ’19 PGA and the ’24 Ryder Cup).
Bishop loved being out in front to take credit for these big ideas, but Bevacqua was the savvy backroom operator who got the deals done. More important than any of the above line items, however, is that Bevacqua has become the public face of an organization that has always lacked a clear identity. Organizationally, the PGA has always been a multiheaded leviathan, with the CEO, the president and the 14-member board of directors all competing for power. From the outside looking in, it has never been clear who’s in charge, if anyone. But make no mistake, the PGA of America is now Bevacqua’s baby. His commanding performance at the annual meeting made that clear enough. But then in January he was elected chairman of the board of the World Golf Foundation, a position one PGA Tour executive likens to being anointed godfather. (Bevacqua, it turns out, loves to quote Corleone maxims, and not for nothing is his dog named Fredo.)
Bevacqua also is co-chair of the newly formed Ryder Cup Committee and it’s not too hard to imagine that he has brought his straightforwardness and passion to the task of constructing a new formula for the captaincy selection process.
Shipnuck’s piece gives us an inside look at one of the most powerful men in golf but few fans couldn’t pick him out of a Sunday foursome. That won’t be the case for long.
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