The question left hanging in the air last week after commissioner Jay Monahan announced the major changes coming to the PGA Tour schedule next season is a simple one: Is it enough?
The answer is: It has to be.
The future of professional golf depends on it.
If the PGA Tour-LIV Golf battle were a heavyweight fight, the tour would be behind on points at the moment. Monahan needed to land a punch instead of absorbing them. Though his announcement Wednesday about giving the best players more of essentially everything was a strong counterpunch, it was far from a knockout.
As Monahan essentially said, it’s hard to fight an opponent that can’t be outspent. The Saudi backers of LIV Golf probably looked at the extra $45 million that the tour intends to kick in annually to escalate prize money at a handful of special events and chuckled.
That’s Kevin Na money to the Saudis.
... if Monahan is going to die on this hill, he has the good fortune of being surrounded by the players whom the public wants to see and cares about the most. Rory McIlroy. Justin Thomas. Jon Rahm. Jordan Spieth. Collin Morikawa. And many more.
The PGA Tour wisely has decided to play to its strengths. That’s not enough for the Bryson DeChambeaus and the Brooks Koepkas of the world, but, as Koepka foreshadowed in his comments earlier this year, everyone has a price for which they will sell out.
In his about-face, Koepka changed the way he will be remembered, though it’s hard to know whether he cares.
In the same way that Tesla isn’t going to suddenly start making gas-powered cars and Chick-fil-A isn’t going to start serving burgers instead of chicken sandwiches, the tour needs to be about what it’s always been about: the competition, the history and players.
LIV lacks two of those three and likely won’t ever have them. All it has is money and misguided innovation. If Koepka struggles to get fully engaged in “regular” PGA Tour events, an admission he’s made more than once, how engaged will he be playing 54-hole, no-cut events that feel more like exhibitions than tournaments?
There’s an element of Jay Gatsby to the LIV Golf employees who now will have more money than they likely can spend, but that may be all.
As for the tour, if Monahan is going to die on this hill, he has the good fortune of being surrounded by the players whom the public wants to see and cares about the most. Rory McIlroy. Justin Thomas. Jon Rahm. Jordan Spieth. Collin Morikawa. And many more.
They are not blind to money, but they see more than that.
As a case study in personalities, LIV Golf has accumulated a group of names that, with the exception of Phil Mickelson, hasn’t stirred the soul of golf fans – PIP standings aside.
Has the golf public ever warmed up to Dustin Johnson or DeChambeau? Patrick Reed or Na? Sergio Garcia or Koepka?
Mickelson’s defection was a blow, but at age 52, he is at the back end of his career. What he has sacrificed is the chance to be one of the game’s elder statesmen and perhaps the seat beside Jim Nantz in the CBS television booth now that Nick Faldo is retiring.
Personalities, as much or more than performance, drive the pro game.
The upheaval in the professional game is more than unsettling. It could be destructive, splintering the audience and turning off casual fans whose affections toward other sports has been dulled by the incessant talk of money by the players.
Did anyone talk about how much money Matt Fitzpatrick got for winning the U.S. Open?
It wasn’t about that.
There are PGA Tour players who are frustrated that Monahan wouldn’t at least talk with the Saudi-backed group, but this is the road chosen and the tour is walking it now, for better or worse.
But the tour is a business, and the players are businessmen who happen to have brilliant short games and an uncanny ability to hole 6-foot putts.
Did Monahan and his advisers miscalculate the threat and impact of LIV Golf?
It appears that way at the moment.
Monahan steadfastly refused to take a meeting with Norman or the Premier Golf League’s Andy Gardiner, who was offering a similarly distinct concept from what the PGA Tour offers. That’s not necessarily the wrong decision, but the tour needed to be more aggressive sooner, or at least appear to be.
As someone deeply involved in the sponsorship of a top-tier tour event said, it looks like the tour is building the plane while trying to fly it. His group has decided to pause early work on a contract extension, waiting to see how things shake out over the coming months.
There are plenty of other places, the person said, where his company could spend more than $10 million annually. The PGA Tour often has been accused of arrogance, and it needs to be extra attentive to sponsors at this uncertain moment.
If LIV Golf winds up getting world-ranking points – an issue expected to be discussed during the Open Championship at St. Andrews – the challenges facing the PGA Tour will increase. Its advantage, however, is that not everyone wants what LIV is selling.
It was heartening to read that Pierceson Coody, the University of Texas star whose grandfather, Charles, won the 1971 Masters, didn’t seriously consider LIV’s offer, saying he grew up dreaming of playing the PGA Tour. That’s always been the dream.
Every kid who’s ever stood on a putting green imagining that he had a putt to win isn’t saying that it is for $4 million. He’s saying it’s for the Masters or the U.S. Open or another favorite tournament.
It’s not about leading the Hy Flyers to a victory in Portland, Oregon. Will it ever be?
Probably not.
By stuffing more money into a handful of events, the tour runs the risk of creating what appears to be a two-tiered schedule: one for the stars and one for everyone else.
The truth is there is plenty of money and opportunity to go around. The events that are getting big purse bumps already were in an elevated class. It would be wise for the tour to shift which events get the biggest purses from year to year. Say, let it be the Honda Classic or Valspar Championship instead of the Arnold Palmer Invitational one year, but that seems unlikely.
It didn’t take long after Monahan’s announcement last week for critics to say Mickelson and Norman were right in saying the tour has been holding back from its players. Some of these changes already were coming thanks to the tour’s new media-rights deal that runs through 2030, but they were fast-tracked.
Mickelson had a point and Norman had a grudge to settle. They’ve changed the landscape but not necessarily for the better.
Expect LIV Golf officials to announce more players joining their league in the coming days, and expect protesters in Portland when LIV Golf makes its U.S. debut this week.
The world of professional golf is fractured at the moment, perhaps permanently.
It’s possible there are no winners in this battle for professional golf. The PGA Tour has offered its rebuttal to LIV’s audacious arrival, and both sides are prepping for courtroom battles.
It’s a lousy place to be.
Top: Jay Monahan and Jon Rahm
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