As the threat from LIV Golf once again reared its head last week, the contrast between the response of Europe’s top golfer, by reputation if not ranking, and the CEO of the continent’s leading circuit was stark: Rory McIlroy pulled no punches while Keith Pelley apparently dithered.
“I’m surprised at a lot of these guys because they say one thing and then they do another,” the Northern Irishman said in response to news that Brooks Koepka was the latest player to join the Saudi Arabian-funded venture. “I don’t understand that, and I don’t know if that’s for legal reasons. I have no idea. But it’s pretty duplicitous on their part to say one thing and then do another thing.”
Meanwhile, the DP World Tour was in Germany at the BMW International Open, and so were a host of players who had competed in the first LIV Golf Invitational Series event at the Centurion Club earlier this month. Yet whereas Jay Monahan and the PGA Tour had immediately banned members who played that week, Pelley and the DP World Tour had been notably indecisive.
An announcement was due midway through the Munich tournament, but when the PGA Tour revealed its own response plans to the LIV threat on Wednesday, that lingering reticence became yet more awkward, especially since Monahan made no mention of the co-sanctioned Genesis Scottish Open, a key element of the much-trumpeted strategic alliance between the two circuits.
Given the sport’s current fevered state, it was inevitable that overthinking and speculation was rife. A realistic assessment of the situation, however, needs to appreciate a brutal reality: That the DP World Tour lacks the firepower of the PGA Tour, as revealed in a crucial detail – the fact that corporate America is in thrall to professional golf in a way that the rest of the world is not.
The DP World Tour has always had to construct a schedule on the short-term whims and fancies of corporations, governments, wealthy benefactors, tourist boards and other operations. The constancy of the PGA Tour’s itinerary and ever-changing nature of the DP World’s version reflects that whoever is in charge of the latter has more in common with a wheeler-dealer market trader of fruit and veg rather than stocks and shares.
Add to this hard truth that the hosting of the Ryder Cup every four years is vital to the financial stability of the circuit, that the hurt of the COVID crisis went deep, and that the schedule already was looking threadbare anyway.
“For the young guys coming up, I just don’t see the pathway any more to get into the top 100, which is what you’ve got to do. If that pathway to turn pro and play in Europe and have the comfort of your home environment to grow your game, learn your game, to develop as a player, with this new system, it’s gone.”
Pádraig Harrington
Even last week Pádraig Harrington spoke to the Irish Independent of the looming impact of the downgrading of DP World Tour world-ranking points, a direct consequence of the withering schedule.
“It’s devastating, and it’s not getting talked about with all that’s going on,” he said. “Really I’m distraught about it. For the young guys coming up, I just don’t see the pathway any more to get into the top 100, which is what you’ve got to do. If that pathway to turn pro and play in Europe and have the comfort of your home environment to grow your game, learn your game, to develop as a player, with this new system, it’s gone.”
There’s a reluctance to say it out loud, but DP World Tour insiders will talk of the myriad complications prompted by LIV peril. Monahan’s options, on the other hand, were relatively simpler. He might have argued otherwise, saying the PGA Tour cannot win a dollar-bill arms race with Saudi Arabia, but he did then reveal a wholesale redirection of yet more money toward his elite performers.
The DP World Tour’s Wentworth HQ has no similar facility to fall back on. Attacking LIV risks the future competitiveness (and therefore economic safety net) of the Ryder Cup and a breakdown in relations with some of the continent’s biggest names (the likes of LIV’s Sergio Garcia, Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter). Any kind of partnership with LIV would immediately thrust every broadcast, corporate and sponsorship partnership into flux. Moreover, notions of hostile takeover are not easy to overlook, and fears of future chaos are enormous.
When the response came, it was confirmed that sanctions were to be taken against members who breached tour regulations and participated at Centurion Club without official release, a contravention of regulations.
They were fined £100,000 (about $122,700), advised of their suspension from the Genesis Scottish Open (plus the PGA Tour’s Barbasol Championship and Barracuda Championship), and informed that future LIV participation would incur further sanctions.
In a statement, Pelley said: “Every action anyone takes in life comes with a consequence and it is no different in professional sport, especially if a person chooses to break the rules. That is what has occurred here with several of our members.”
Amid talk of a split in the membership, between those who are appalled by LIV and those who believe the tour should have embraced CEO Greg Norman’s vision, he added: “Many members I have spoken to in recent weeks expressed the viewpoint that those who have chosen this route have not only disrespected them and our tour, but also the meritocratic ecosystem of professional golf that has been the bedrock of our game for the past half a century and which will also be the foundation upon which we build the next 50 years.
“Their actions are not fair to the majority of our membership and undermine the tour, which is why we are taking the action we have announced today.”
Criticism remains rife, and it is a straightforward exercise to observe that a circuit which once boasted the Saudi International in its schedule is now wary of the same backers. A key difference is that in the past they dealt with LIV’s funders one week in every year. Now the threat involves that possibility of takeover or a schism in the status quo that jeopardises the future.
It’s slightly odd that both the DP World Tour, and to a lesser degree the PGA Tour, continue to fight LIV on human-rights and greed battlegrounds rather than addressing in outright terms the issue that two member tours might be replaced at the top of the game by a circuit answerable only to itself. Whereas many other issues are exhaustingly complex and explain Pelley’s apparent dithering, there surely is a rather straightforwardly inferred risk.
Top: Rory McIlroy, left, and Keith Pelley have had contrasting reactions to recent LIV Golf developments.
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