The next steps in LIV Golf’s legal dispute with the PGA Tour could prove to be eye-opening for golf fans.
In legal parlance, it’s known as “discovery.”
Borrowing from the axiom that the best defense is a good offense, the PGA Tour has fired its own legal volley at LIV Golf.
The PGA Tour countersued LIV Golf on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Northern California, alleging harm from the rival tour’s actions and seeking unspecified damages. The PGA Tour claims in its 72-page filing that players who left to join the rival tour were erroneously advised that they could break their contracts with the tour “for the benefit of LIV and to the detriment of all tour members.”
The tour stated: “… a key component of LIV’s strategy has been to intentionally induce tour members to breach their tour agreements and play in LIV events while seeking to maintain their tour memberships and play in marquee tour events like The Players Championship and the FedEx Cup playoffs, so LIV can free ride off the tour and its platform.”
In a statement issued the next day, LIV Golf dismissed the claims by the PGA Tour as “a transparent effort to divert attention from their anti-competitive conduct.”
LIV Golf launched its inaugural eight-event season in early June in England with a 48-man, 54-hole no-cut tournament worth $25 million. The tour, financed by the oil riches of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and headed by two-time Open champion Greg Norman, has signed some of golf’s biggest names, who subsequently have been indefinitely suspended by the PGA Tour.
Two months ago, Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau and nine other LIV Golf players filed an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour. Three of those plaintiffs – Talor Gooch, Matt Jones and Hudson Swafford – were denied a temporary restraining order to compete on the PGA Tour.
More recently, the PGA Tour announced sweeping changes designed to get its top players competing against one another more often.
The latest legal move puts LIV Golf on the defensive and opens the door for further discovery, such as how the rival tour competes and negotiates for players, tournaments, vendors, sponsors and other facets of forming a tour.
The trial date is Jan. 8, 2024, before Judge Beth Labson Freeman in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California.
Patrick Reed refiled his $750 million defamation lawsuit, changing the venue and widening his target. In the original complaint filed Aug. 16 in federal court in Houston, Texas, Reed claimed that Golf Channel and analyst Brandel Chamblee acted as co-conspirators to defame LIV Golf and Reed, the former Masters champion who defected earlier this year to the rival tour. Reed’s attorney, Larry Klayman, refiled the lawsuit in federal court in Jacksonville, Florida, and added Golf Channel’s Damon Hack and Shane Bacon plus Golfweek columnist Eamon Lynch and parent company Gannett to the complaint. READ MORE
Phil Mickelson and three other LIV Golf players asked Sept. 27 to be removed from their federal antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour, further reducing the number of golfers who have taken legal action against their former tour. Mickelson was among 11 LIV Golf defectors who had sued the PGA Tour in U.S. District Court in Northern California in early August, alleging that their suspensions by the tour were anti-competitive. Talor Gooch, Ian Poulter and Hudson Swafford also dismissed their claims against the tour. That leaves only Bryson DeChambeau, Matt Jones and Peter Uihlein as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which LIV Golf joined Aug. 26 in an amended complaint. READ MORE
LIV Golf denied a Golfweek report that the tour is close to making a deal to buy air time on the Fox Sports 1 network, claiming in a statement that the report was “incomplete and inaccurate.” LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman had claimed recently that his tour was “talking to four different networks” and that the first-year tour had generated a lot of interest among broadcasters. READ MORE
Should LIV Golf reach a TV deal, be it with Fox Sports 1 or any other network, there would be a significant concern for advertisers to be associated with the tour, according to Terry Lefton of Sports Business Journal. READ MORE
The PGA Tour will not co-exist with LIV Golf, commissioner Jay Monahan insisted in an interview with ESPN.com.
Judy Rankin, one of the most recognizable and respected voices in golf television, returned to her home state of Texas last week to wrap up nearly 40 years in broadcasting.
Rankin, 77, calls herself an “accidental trailblazer” in a video tribute on LPGA.com, which includes footage of her as a child prodigy.
After having turned professional at age 17, Rankin won 26 times on the LPGA Tour. She worked as the lead analyst on Golf Channel’s LPGA telecasts since 2010 after 25 years with ABC and ESPN on PGA Tour telecasts.
“Some describe the early years of the LPGA as a traveling circus,” Rankin told LPGA.com. “For me, it was my neighborhood where I grew up and learned a lot about life.”
Sitting next to anchor Grant Boone as Golf Channel ended its coverage of the Volunteers of America tournament Sunday afternoon in The Colony, Texas, Rankin said, "I’ve had the time of my life with all of you at home and with these people here whom I’m very close to."
Global Golf Post’s Steve Eubanks wrote a longform profile of Rankin that was published in 2019, when she was honored at the Memorial Tournament, and can be read here.
TAP-INS
LIV Golf tweaked the format for its LIV Golf Invitational Series Team Championship, which will wrap up the Saudi-funded tour’s inaugural season and award a record $50 million in prize money. The event, set for Oct. 28-30 at Trump National Doral Golf Club near Miami, will feature a seeded three-day, knock-out tournament featuring match play and stroke play, while the 12 teams will compete head-to-head for the record purse. READ MORE
Boys’ and girls’ golf bucked a declining participation trend in U.S. high school sports, according to a survey by the National Federation of State High School Associations. Overall sports participation declined by 4 percent in the 2020-21 school year compared with 2018-19, the most recent year for the survey because of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the number of boys’ golfers rose nearly 4 percent, to 148,585, during the 2020-21 scholastic year, and girls’ golfers increased by 1 percent, to 80,829. READ MORE
Angela Stanford was named as an assistant captain for the U.S. team for the 2023 Solheim Cup, captain Stacy Lewis announced. Stanford, a seven-time winner on the LPGA Tour and six-time competitor in the Solheim Cup, joins Morgan Pressel and Natalie Gulbis as assistants. The biennial matches against Europe’s top female professionals will be played Sept. 22-24, 2023, at Finca Cortesin in Spain. READ MORE
The PGA EuroPro Tour, a third-tier developmental tour based in the British Isles, announced that it will cease operations after the season-ending Matchroom Tour Championship on Oct. 13-15 at Lough Erne Resort in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. The tour, which launched in 2002, has helped develop such future champions as South Africans Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel and England’s Tommy Fleetwood and Tyrrell Hatton. READ MORE
Four qualifying tournaments have been scheduled for PGA Tour Latinoamérica, the developmental tour announced. The events, all in November, will be played in Florida, Mexico and Argentina in advance of the season opener in early December in Argentina. READ MORE
Twenty junior golfers ages 12-15 – 10 boys and 10 girls – were named to the AJGA Junior All-Star Team based on the Rolex AJGA Rankings, the association announced. READ MORE
Sweden’s Linnea Ström clinched LPGA Tour membership for next season, becoming the third player from the developmental Epson Tour to secure a promotion for 2023. Ström competed in the 2019-2021 seasons on the LPGA but lost exempt status and had to play her way back onto the tour this year. She won the IOA Championship, one of five top-10 results in 15 starts. The top 10 from the Epson Tour standings after next week’s season-ending Epson Tour Championship will earn promotions. READ MORE
Staff and Wire Reports