“Confidence is the most important single factor in this game,” goes the worn golfing aphorism. But when it comes to the United States Golf Association (USGA), “confidence men” appear to play a very large role, too.
“Confidence men”? We suppose many of several younger generations have no idea what the phrase means. It’s whence the more familiar “con man” moniker originated in the late 19th century to describe a common swindler.
Which is exactly what the USGA is attempting to do to taxpayers in seeking $5 million in public money to help it, and Oakmont Country Club, to cover nearly half the cost of a new bridge across the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The turnpike bisects the golf course.
The USGA and Oakmont, home to many U.S. Opens, has been hinting about such a request for the past four years. It now has formally requested the money, in the form of a grant (a freebie) in an application to the Pennsylvania Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program (RACP).
In that grant application, the USGA defends bellying up to the taxpayer trough by noting the economic boost the men’s and women’s golf championships bring to the region.
“According to the USGA, the U.S. Open can generate around $77.4 million in direct consumer spending,” the Tribune-Review reports. It adds that the new span would allow vehicle and construction traffic to be separated from spectators.
But as Jake Haulk, president-emeritus of the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy, admonished a few years back (in Policy Brief Vol. 21, No. 34), neither a financial nor moral (and certainly not a “good-government”) case can be made for using taxpayer dollars to subsidize the extremely well-off sport of professional golf at Oakmont.
“In short, why should Pennsylvania even consider funding a new bridge … for the very rare USGA events?” Haulk asked four years ago. “The true beneficiaries will be the members and guests of the club.”
And the Ph.D. economist reminds that exclusive golf clubs are just that — exclusive. As Golf Monthly reported this past summer, “(B)ecause of its prestigious history, a membership reportedly starts at $200,000 with annual dues of $10,000.”
Thus, Haulk says there is “no need to use public funds to subsidize those members and guests who can easily afford to budget an updating of the bridge.”
“Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on new sports venues in Pittsburgh based on the argument they would spur job growth in the city and county,” Haulk recounted in 2021. “Based on the population losses in the city and the very small gains in employment in the city and region over the last 20 years, the claims of a major economic payoff from the taxpayer dollars used ring very hollow.”
Haulk’s bottom line then was that since “benefits of any construction at the clubs would accrue primarily to the host club and the USGA and are thus private, the associated costs of holding future USGA championships at Pennsylvania courses should also be borne privately.”
And that bottom line has not changed in 2025.
“If these tournaments are so lucrative, why doesn’t Oakmont and the USGA pony up the cost for a new bridge?”
Because yet another group of barons of sport – confidence men incarnate — can con public officials into using taxpayer dollars to cover improvements that they alone should, and clearly can, bear.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
