PACIFIC PALISADES, CALIFORNIA | With a short statement that arrived with Sunday’s sunrise, Dustin Johnson pushed the ongoing cloak-and-dagger dance between the promised-but-not-yet-delivered, Saudi-backed golf league and the PGA Tour to a tipping point.
By sundown, it seemed as if it was all tumbling down.
In what felt like a bruising blow to the new league, Johnson – the highest-ranked player rumored to be seriously considering the new league – announced Sunday morning that despite persistent rumors that he would join Greg Norman’s group, he isn’t going anywhere.
“I am fully committed to the PGA Tour,” Johnson said in a statement.
A few hours later, Bryson DeChambeau dropped his own message on social media.
“While there has been a lot of speculation surrounding my support for another tour, I want to make it very clear that as long as the best players in the world are playing the PGA Tour, so will I,” DeChambeau posted.
Johnson and DeChambeau were two more voices in a chorus of players who publicly lined up to express their allegiance to the PGA Tour last week, joining Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas and Tiger Woods in pledging their support to a tour that has made it clear that anyone who jumps ship should not expect to be invited back in the future.
Find a player in the top 10 of the world rankings who has committed to the new tour.
We’ll wait.
Assuming Mickelson returns to the PGA Tour – or if he returns to the tour – it will be interesting to see the reaction he gets from his peers, his bosses and particularly his legion of fans who likely feel betrayed by both his arrogance and his greed
The statements by Johnson and DeChambeau punctuated an otherwise spectacular week at the Genesis Invitational at ageless and timeless Riviera Country Club where what happened on the golf course seemed secondary at times to both the noise and the silence that accompanied the latest round of “he’s-in, he’s-out” and Phil Mickelson popping off again.
It’s an audacious plan that Norman and his Saudi backers have created. With the money being offered and the promise of 14 events with $20 million purses, it’s no wonder players are listening and some have said yes.
Other than C-suite executives, the new league hasn’t announced anything. No players. No venues.
“I knew the way these guys have operated and it’s all been smoke and mirrors,” McIlroy said. “And they’ve created rumors and spread rumors and tried to play one guy off another and said one thing to one manager and said a different thing to another manager and just sort of created this chaos and confusion around that group. And everyone’s questioning everyone else’s motives so they’re just kind of playing everyone off one another.
“I think it’s nice now that we all can sit down and say, ‘Look, we’re all on the same page here.’ ”
Like anything else, the tour can be better but it has what more money can’t buy – history, relevance and a bloodline that runs through it like one running through a family.
Contributing to the noise last week was the absent Mickelson, who was away skiing but whose incendiary comments from November to writer Alan Shipnuck – regarding both his disdain for how the PGA Tour operates and his role in crafting the new Saudi-backed league he hopes ultimately fails – landed like an anvil.
Perhaps Mickelson could hear the silence of his peers from a mountaintop someplace.
Then McIlroy, the voice of golf today, unloaded.
“I don’t want to kick someone while he’s down obviously, but I thought (Mickelson’s comments) were naïve, selfish, egotistical, ignorant,” McIlroy said. “A lot of words to describe that interaction he had with Shipnuck.
“It was just very surprising and disappointing, sad. I’m sure he's sitting at home sort of rethinking his position and where he goes from here.”
Mickelson’s sponsors may be doing the same thing.
Assuming Mickelson returns to the PGA Tour – or if he returns to the tour – it will be interesting to see the reaction he gets from his peers, his bosses and particularly his legion of fans who likely feel betrayed by both his arrogance and his greed.
As a player, Mickelson is an all-time great. Let’s leave it at that.
If PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan wants to suspend Mickelson, he has more than enough ammunition.
He may not have to.
If Monahan follows through on his vow to ban any PGA Tour player who signs with the Norman-run league – if there are any now – it seems likely that Mickelson will be at the front of that line. Expect Monahan to hammer home his message to players again this week at the Honda Classic, which is short on stars but long on spring break-type fun for fans.
Mickelson aside, reticence is suddenly in vogue among some players, at least those who aren’t ready to publicly commit, either because they haven’t decided what to do or they are already bound by a non-disclosure agreement.
“I don’t want to say anything about it. I just wait,” Joaquin Niemann, a wire-to-wire winner at Riviera, said when pushed on his position regarding the Saudi league.
It has become a game of sorts, trying to determine who’s staying and who may be going.
DeChambeau and Johnson were thought to be critical building blocks for the new league, as was Brooks Koepka until he said no thanks a while ago.
Other names have been out there for a while – Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood, Jason Kokrak and Adam Scott.
“I think the schedule is very appealing. From that side of things, I would consider doing that, for sure,” said Scott, who is 41 with two young children and perhaps the tug to spend more time at home in Switzerland now.
A wild card in all of this is how the major championships will respond to players leaving the PGA and DP World Tours. The Norman group believes their players will be eligible for the majors but there have been no definitive declarations either way.
If players want to jump for the money, then do it. If they play just for the money and they aren’t bothered by the Saudi shadow, then they have found their golden parachute. Not everybody wants the same thing.
Give Norman’s group credit for pushing to create something new. There’s no harm to thinking outside the box but are they attempting to fix a problem that doesn’t exist or trying to buy their way into a business that doesn’t need them?
What happened last week did irreparable damage to the new league.
It was never going to be as easy as writing checks to change the landscape of professional golf.
It’s not getting any easier.
“Who’s left?” McIlroy asked. “Who’s left to go? I mean, there’s no one. It’s dead in the water in my opinion.”
Top: Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau during the 2019 Presidents Cup
E-Mail Ron