Mike Whan as the USGA’s next CEO? To hear Whan tell it, the odds, as he saw them, were “overwhelmingly” stacked against him. What seemed like such an obvious next step to so many for the outgoing LPGA commissioner wasn’t a slam-dunk to the man himself.

That is, until Whan made a few quiet phone calls to other leaders in the industry – Jay Monahan (PGA Tour), Keith Pelley (European Tour), David Abeles (TaylorMade) and the man he would replace at the USGA, Mike Davis.

“Their reaction was the game-over point for me,” said Whan. “Their reaction of ‘Please do this, this should be good for all of us. Let’s continue to do what we’re building together.’ It mattered to me that it mattered to them. Those are all the people that we’re going to have to pull together to make real change.”

One week ago, Whan signed on to join the USGA later this summer as CEO, becoming the eighth top executive in the organization’s history. The USGA’s announcement on Wednesday comes six weeks after Whan announced his decision to step down as LPGA commissioner after 11 years at the helm.

USGA President Stu Francis, who oversaw the CEO search process, said he’d wake up at 3 a.m. worrying about whether or not Whan would take the job. They’d interviewed a number of promising candidates, Francis said, but Whan was the shining light, the man who checked every box and could come in ready to move at 100 mph. (At this point during his video chat with Golfweek, Whan raised his Coke Zero bottle, a nod to the fuel behind his blistering pace.)

As one executive committee member put it on a recent call, “Shame on us if we don’t get this done,” Francis noted.

“The USGA has a unique role in golf in terms of we need to lead the way,” said Francis, “but we need to get people to come along with us.”

Particularly in the case of the ongoing distance debate, which as the USGA moves to the solution phase of its Distance Insights Report, there continues to be strong feelings on both sides of the aisle.

Rory McIlroy, a measured and respected voice in the game, recently called the report a “huge waste of time and money.”

Whan acknowledged that the distance problem won’t be solved in a team meeting in a board room at USGA headquarters. It will instead take an “industry huddle” to get to the finish line.

Much of Whan’s success at the LPGA – building the tour up from near ashes when he took on the job in 2010 and then passing the ultimate stress test by seeing the tour through a global pandemic – has been the strength of his partnerships. He knew what it was like to sit on the other side of a table as a check writer and used that experience to grow the tour from only 24 tournaments and official prize money of $41.4 million to the record $76.45 million and 34 official events that’s on the 2021 calendar.

As a former vice president of marketing at TaylorMade and vice president and general manager at the Wilson Sporting Goods Company, Whan brings instant credibility and can relate to equipment manufacturers and tour leaders from first-hand experience.

Whan said TaylorMade CEO Abeles was the first person to call and ask if he was thinking about the USGA job.

“I just got off the phone with a recruiter and I gave him your name,” Whan replied.

“I know that in this role I’ll spend a lot of time with David Abeles, or John Solheim or Bob Parsons or the whole team from Acushnet. All people that I would spend time with if I retired.”

The distance debate is a 100-year-old problem, Whan said, and he’s impressed that the USGA and R&A have committed to making changes that will be good for the game for the next 100 years.

“We understand that we have to protect the game enough to make sure we don’t obsolete ourselves,” said Whan, “but at the same time were not trying to stick R&D in a box.

“The people on the manufacturing side know me well enough to know I’m a marketing guy at heart. I love the innovation and we want to keep seeing innovation. We just have to make sure that the out of bounds stakes aren’t so far out that we wake up without the sport.”

The fast-talking Whan is quick to admit that there are plenty of areas within the USGA in which he is no expert. When asked about the rules, he said he’ll have a fast-forwarding system set up to send all rules questions directly to Thomas Pagel, senior managing director of governance. He wouldn’t dream of faking it but also requested to get signed up for the next virtual rules seminar so that “I won’t embarrass you probably more than I already will.”

LPGA players consistently praised Whan’s transparent approach. He often went off-script with reporters, apologizing to executives in the back of the room.

Whan, who has admitted that he might not be a great fit culturally for the USGA, will no doubt change the culture of the organization as it will inevitably change him. Hopefully there’s something powerful in the middle, he said.

Just as he recruited the rest of the industry to commit to growing girls golf on a larger scale, Whan sees the USGA’s role in capitalizing on the game’s recent participation boom as part of an industry-wide effort.

As Whan moves into a broader role in golf, his passion for the women’s game isn’t going anywhere. In fact, now that he oversees the biggest championship in women’s golf, the subject of equal purses at the U.S. and U.S. Women’s Open seems especially relevant.

Whan said it’s been on his list since 2010.

When asked last month what he’d miss the most about the LPGA, Whan said the front-row seat he had to watching young women achieve their biggest dream in real time ­– whether that was earning a tour card or winning a tournament.

“That’s going to be hanging on some plaque in my office,” he said, “so that every time I turn the lights off I remember to ask, am I doing enough to make sure that young girls all around the world, when I’m going to bed, are putting somewhere saying this one is for the U.S. Women’s Open.”

When asked if he had any ideas jotted down on cocktail napkins yet, a classic Whan-ism, he held up a legal pad with seven bullet points.

At the top of that list: invest in the best.

“The first thing we’re going to invest in is to make sure we’re the best championships in the world,” he said. “You don’t get there by historical relevance alone. You’ve got to invest in them.”

He’ll no doubt reveal the rest of that list in one of his many upcoming conference calls with his new staff. Francis said Whan will start full-time with the USGA in the middle of the year and that Davis will help with the transition.

As the governing body strives to connect with a growing and evolving golf culture, Whan’s dynamic personality and effective communication skills will be paramount to an organization that has had its fair share of PR struggles in recent years. There will be no shortage of bridge-building.

More than anything though, he’ll strive to be golf’s champion.

“I can promise you this, however long I’m head of the USGA,” he said, “there will be no louder promoter of the game, no matter what portion of the game we’re talking about. Of course I want to preserve the game, but only after I promote it.”

SAN DIEGO – As Englishman Richard Bland walked from one media stop to the next after shooting a second-round 67 at the 121^st U.S. Open, he smiled and said, “Rory has to do this week in, week out, huh?”

That would be Rory McIlroy, the former World No. 1 and four-time major winner who is one of the faces of golf and usually in demand for the post-round car wash of media obligations. But this week he’s looking up at Bland, a 48-year-old journeyman pro playing in the U.S. for just the second time and his fourth major championship. All of this was new to Bland, who made 478 starts on the European Tour before becoming the oldest first-time winner on the circuit last month at the Betfred British Masters.

That victory combined with a third-place finish in Denmark helped book a spot in the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines and Bland is taking advantage, following up a 1-under 70 on Thursday by carding seven birdies in a round of 67 on the South Course and becoming the surprise clubhouse leader by one stroke over South African Louis Oosthuizen. If it holds up, he will be the oldest 36-hole leader in U.S. Open history.

Confirmed by the @USGA historian staff – at age 48, Richard Bland would be the oldest 36-hole leader in U.S. Open history.

— Justin Ray (@JustinRayGolf) June 18, 2021

But Bland didn’t sound surprised to be in the trophy hunt. “When I saw this place on Monday, it kind of set up to my eye,” he said. “It’s all there just straight in front of me, and that’s the kind of golf course I like. I thought, I can play around here.”

In his Twitter bio, Bland states that he is a European Tour professional golfer during the week, the joke being that he’s taken a few too many weekends off over the year. It was just two years ago, at age 46, that Bland missed so many 36-hole cuts that he was demoted to the Challenge Tour, the minor league circuit of the European Tour. But he never gave up and ignored the signs that he might be washed up. He still believed that he could regain his form and eventually win, and he did just that.

U.S. Open: Leaderboard | Photo gallery

“What am I going to do, go and get an office job? I’m not that intelligent, I’m afraid,” he said. “The old saying is you get knocked down seven times, you get up eight. I’ve always had that kind of attitude that you just keep going. You never know in this game, you just keep going.”

His joy after beating Italy’s Guido Migliozzi with a par on the first playoff hole was something to behold and it became one of the feel-good stories of the year. Only Malcolm MacKenzie had played more European Tour events (509) before winning his maiden title. The response on social media, with the likes of Fred Couples and Lee Westwood sending congratulations, overwhelmed Bland.

“I’m just a guy who’s won a golf tournament really, when you boil it down,” he said. “But as it all sunk in, I think it was just more satisfaction than anything that I kind of got what I’ve always wanted. I want more. Every golfer wants more. Hopefully I can do it again.”

Perhaps his caddie, Australian Kyle Roadley, summarized his bosses perseverance best.

“A lot of tenacity, a lot of hard work, there’s a lot of guys that come and go in this game and to stick at it for as long as he has, hats off to him,” he said.

A spot in the U.S. Open – just his fourth major in his career, one per decade beginning with the 1998 British Open – was among the spoils of victory but he still floated in under the radar. He doesn’t even have a sponsor for his ball cap, sporting the logo of his home club, The Wisley Club in Woking, England, which gave him 10 hats to wear this week.

“So, if anyone is offering,” he said with a smile.

Don’t be surprised if he shows up with a sponsor by his Saturday tee time. His rhinoceros headcover also is telling, part of a charitable commitment in which he donates money for every birdie he makes to an organization called Birdies4Rhinos.

“Two things I can’t stand is three-putting and animal cruelty,” he said.

The putter behaved on Friday. Starting his round on hole No. 10, Bland carded birdies on five of his first eleven holes and climbed to 6 under for the championship before giving a stroke back at No. 8. It made for an easy day on the bag for the man nicknamed Roach.

“He knows what he’s doing,” Roadley said. “I’m just out there peeling bananas and telling him where the wind is, pretty much.”

Roadley is 53 and was on the bag last year when Finland’s Sami Valimaki, 22, won the European Tour’s Oman Open. But he got canned because Valimaki wanted a caddie more his age that he could relate to. Roadley began working for Bland in December during the tour’s South African swing and said they were just a pair of graybeards giving it their best.

“Rolling back the years, baby, that’s what it is all about,” Roadley said.

In a year where Stewart Cink won at 48 and Phil Mickelson became the first 50-year-old to claim a major, Bland said he was going to “give those gym-goers a run for their money.”

His confidence is high and he’s finding fairways, something that he’s been doing with regularity since a driver change last month. Bland spent some time last week with his golf coach, longtime Sky Sport TV reporter Tim Barter, who he calls the best coach in the game.

“In golfing terms, we just kind of speak the same language,” Bland said. “He’s part of the furniture. Just took me 20 years to listen to him.”

Listen up, golf fans, it took Bland 478 events to win the first time. Who says it can’t take just four to win a major?