Unscripted Drama

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan (left) and DP World Tour CEO Keith Pelley talk Wednesday during the BMW PGA Championship Pro-Am at Wentworth Golf Club. Photo: Ross Kinnaird, Getty Images

VIRGINIA WATER, ENGLAND | When Keith Pelley forsook Toronto in 2015 to become the fourth chief executive officer of the DP World Tour based at Wentworth Golf Club, west of London, the Canadian brought with him several striking idiosyncrasies.

As he has demonstrated many times since, he could talk with great enthusiasm and seemed completely comfortable in the presence of journalists. It soon became clear Pelley had a love of Britain’s romantic poets of the late 18th and early 19th century, notably John Keats, William Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Most striking of all was his penchant for coloured spectacles. In a corporate world in which dark jackets and trousers and plain shirts generally were de rigueur, even if ties had been dropped from sartorial requirements, Pelley’s specs caused quite a stir. He had as many as 12 pairs. Though not...