LIV Golf is in “live conversations” with “four different networks” to televise the rival tour, CEO Greg Norman told Chicago’s ESPN1000.
“All I can tell you is that the interest coming across our plate right now is enormous,” Norman said last week before LIV Golf’s tournament at Rich Harvest Farms in Sugar Grove, Illinois.
In its inaugural season, the Saudi-funded LIV Golf has attracted minuscule audiences because of the lack of a network deal, with tournaments available only via streaming on LIVGolf.com or the tour’s YouTube and Facebook channels or DAZN, plus various streaming outlets overseas.
According to a report by Front Office Sports, Fox has emerged as the leading candidate. Many golf observers will recall Fox’s short and checkered history in televising golf, and also in its dealings with Norman. In 2015, Fox began a 12-year, $1.1 billion deal to televise USGA events, but that agreement ended prematurely when the USGA returned its signature U.S. Open to NBC in 2020. Norman was hired by Fox as its lead golf analyst, but he lasted only one year next to Joe Buck in the booth.
What might be different this time for Fox and Norman?
For one, Fox has a big golf vacancy in its sports lineup compared with CBS, NBC and ESPN, which are under contract with the PGA Tour, and LIV Golf could deliver some star power. Australian Rupert Murdoch and his family control Fox, and Norman could use his Aussie connections to help heal the emotional wounds from the past decade. Besides, LIV Golf needs network exposure, and both sides know it (READ MORE).
Cameron Smith, the only top-10-ranked player to defect to LIV Golf, was lured to the rival tour with fellow Australian Marc Leishman by the promise of a 25-percent stake in a franchise Down Under, LIV CEO Greg Norman told The Sydney Morning Herald. “You’ve got to think about it from Cam’s perspective,” Norman said. “He completely understood one thing that other people are struggling to understand: the value LIV Golf brings, and that new value is the franchise.” (READ MORE)
Hit piece or exposé? It depends on your perspective, but there’s no question that The Wall Street Journal found some questionable uses by PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan of the tour’s private jet.
Monahan blurred the lines between personal and business trips, according to the report, which cited information gleaned from jet-tracking and other sources. Among the trips were 17 excursions since early 2017 to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where a property is registered in his wife’s name. There also were stops in Montana, Nantucket, St. Lucia and the Turks and Caicos. None hosts an annual PGA Tour stop, though the Turks and Caicos, an archipelago north of Hispaniola in the Atlantic Ocean, was the site of the tour’s version of a royal wedding: the nuptials of Brooks Koepka and Jena Sims in early June. By the end of the month, Koepka had bolted for LIV Golf, WSJ noted.
The report acknowledged that the commissioner is required by the tour’s Policy Board to use the jet, a Cessna Citation X, for personal and business trips for the “necessary level of efficiency, privacy, and security” but that the travel policy is not disclosed in the nonprofit tour’s annual tax filings.
The report, which comes amid the backdrop of LIV Golf’s antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour, spotlights the tour’s new $81 million headquarters, Monahan’s $14.2 million salary during the pandemic year of 2020 and other multimillion-dollar payments to retired executives as examples of profligate spending at the nonprofit organization (READ MORE).
Jimmy Walker is taking another shot at the PGA Tour, and he has LIV Golf, at least in part, to thank.
Walker, 43, whose six tour victories include the 2016 PGA Championship, quietly left the game last spring after a missed cut at the Valero Texas Open near his home in San Antonio. He had endured a few years of poor play amid the lingering effects of Lyme disease.
As more and more players defected to the Saudi riches of LIV Golf and were suspended indefinitely by the PGA Tour, Walker got a surprise call recently from a tour official: he had moved into the top 50 on the tour’s all-time earnings list. That made him eligible for a one-time season exemption. Walker used that exemption to begin the 2022-23 season at the Fortinet Championship in Napa, California.
“I had no plans to play, and I didn’t know when I would play again,” Walker told Associated Press golf writer Doug Ferguson while en route to Napa. “I might have been done. Is it fate that this is happening? I don’t know. I had mixed emotions leaving. I know what it entails, the hard work and all that. I’m nervous. Honestly, I don’t feel super prepared. But there’s not a better way than to jump right back into it. It could be amazing, or it could be a disaster.”
If one week is any indication, it certainly was no disaster. Walker shot four rounds under par and finished tied for 25th (READ MORE).
Annika Sörenstam will have her name on the LPGA Tour’s annual stop in the Tampa Bay area beginning next year.
Sörenstam, the World Golf Hall of Fame member and 72-time LPGA winner, will be the host of The Annika driven by Gainbridge at Pelican next fall. The penultimate event on the LPGA schedule will return to Pelican Golf Club in Belleair, Florida, with the date and prize fund to be announced.
The PGA Tour has the names of two of its late all-time greats – Arnold Palmer and Byron Nelson – on tournaments.
The LPGA will play the Pelican Women’s Championship on Nov. 10-13 at Pelican Golf Club (READ MORE).
TAP-INS
The DP World Tour’s Dubai Desert Classic lost Slync as its title sponsor just one year into a multiyear deal amid CEO Chris Kirchner’s ouster at the U.S. logistics company, London’s Guardian newspaper reported. Nonetheless, the tournament, which offered an $8 million purse this year and was won by Viktor Hovland, was expected to retain its Rolex Series status, according to the report (READ MORE).
Jin Young Ko, the top-ranked women’s golfer in the world, will be out for a month with an injury to her left wrist, according to Golf Digest. Ko is not expected to return until late October, when the LPGA Tour visits her native South Korea and she will be the defending champion at the BMW Ladies Championship (READ MORE).
An injury to her right shoulder will keep Sophia Popov off of the LPGA Tour for the rest of the season, she disclosed in a post to her Instagram account. Popov, who will turn 30 on Oct. 2, won the 2020 AIG Women’s Open for her first major championship and lone victory on the LPGA Tour (READ MORE).
Desert Mountain Club in Scottsdale, Arizona, will host two USGA championships this decade: the 2026 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball and the 2029 U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball. The dates will be May 16-20 for the 2026 men’s four-ball and May 12-16 for the 2029 women’s four-ball. Tournament sites were not disclosed among Desert Mountain’s six Jack Nicklaus-designed tracks (READ MORE).
Peter Millar was named the official outfitter of the USGA and its Open Championship, the USGA announced. Polo was the official USGA outfitter for 12 years. It will continue to sell merchandise onsite at the U.S. Open (READ MORE).
The final day of the Junior Ryder Cup will be held at the Ryder Cup host venue for the first time, officials announced. The Junior Ryder Cup, which pits the top male and female juniors from Europe against the U.S., will play its foursomes and four-balls matches on Tuesday and Wednesday, Sept. 26-27 next year, at Golf Nazionale in Rome, Italy. The next day, the singles matches will be staged at Marco Simone Golf and Country Club, site of the weekend’s 44th Ryder Cup (READ MORE).
The Live and Work in Maine Open, a Korn Ferry Tour event held for the past two years at Falmouth Country Club, has been discontinued, officials of the parent PGA Tour told tournament operators in Maine, according to published reports (READ MORE).
Staff and Wire Reports