On Wednesday, while the PGA Tour geared up for the first round of the McGladrey Classic at Sea Island Golf Club’s Seaside Course on St. Simon’s Island, Ga., the Tour and the PGA of America made a number of announcements of programs aimed primarily at further broadening and deepening golf’s influence across the country.

The centerpiece of that list of programs was the announcement that the purse of the PGA Championship would increase by an impressive 25 percent for 2014, from $8 million to $10 million. This purse increase vaults the PGA into a tie for the honor of richest single PGA Tour event with The Players Championship, whose purse has been increased by $500,000 for its 2014 edition.

Now, the PGA Championship, the only major that has struggled over the decades to carve out an indelible identity, has a massive dollar figure to lean on, which is sure to help it prestige-wise. This move builds further momentum for the image of the event in the wake of speculation that the PGA Championship may start looking to introduce some venues outside the United States in future years.

Though the announcement of purse increases for the PGA Championship and The Players constituted the main “wow” factor of the announcement, the other three key aspects contain most of the meat of what appears to be a closer partnership between the Tour and the PGA. First of all, both organizations announced that a number of PSA-style ads will air during Tour events—on television and on the Sirius/XM PGA Tour Network Radio’s golf coverage—that will foreground PGA professionals as instrumental factors in the growth of golf.

Members of the PGA of America will also take a more visible position on the Golf Channel show “Inside the PGA Tour.” Each week will highlight the ranking PGA rofessional at the next Tour venue, with the goal of providing the audience extra insight into the host golf course.

Lastly, the PGA Tour will facilitate increased interaction between fans at events and PGA professionals in attendance. Special emphasis will be placed in The Players, the three World Golf Championships held in the United States (the Accenture Match Play, the Cadillac Championship and the Bridgestone Invitational), The Barclays, the Tour Championship, the Northern Trust Open and the Presidents Cup.

This move is significant in both overt and subtle ways. In the first case, it is a positive step to see the two organizations take a bit more mutually snug stance, especially given their light disagreements with regard to the USGA and R&A’s impending tournament ban on anchored methods of putting. And given that the PGA Tour is the primary driver of casual viewing interest in the game, for Tim Finchem and the rest of the Ponte Vedra crowd to give an promotional platform to the PGA of America constitutes a show of confidence that should make those of us on the outside who yearn for golf’s further growth more hopeful.

The subtlety that one might draw from this announcement is the omission of the likes of the USGA and the R&A. Does the PGA of America and the Tour drawing somewhat closer necessarily mean that both bodies are marginalizing the game’s main amateur organizations? If so, is this intentional? There is no clear answer to either of these questions at the moment, but those who follow the politics and business of high-level golf might want to monitor the situation going forward. The economic downturn of recent years has certainly caused those who care for the game to reassess key aspects of their philosophies, and it a chess game of sorts may be starting to play out before the golf world.