If you’re enjoying the PGA Tour’s heightened emphasis on its stars this season via the “designated events,” you’re going to love what’s in store for next year.
In a letter to players, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan announced further changes to the model for 2024, ensuring that golf’s stars will compete against one another more often, for more money and in smaller, no-cut fields.
Foremost among the changes, which Monahan said will “transform and set the future direction” of the tour for its return to a calendar-year season in 2024:
Critics, especially those with ties to LIV Golf, say that the PGA Tour is stealing from the Saudi league’s playbook of smaller fields and no-cut events. Many point to the model pitched a quarter century ago by Greg Norman, the future LIV Golf CEO, for a world tour. The PGA Tour dismissed that competitive threat, then launched the elite World Golf Championships, which coincidentally will end later this month with the WGC Dell Match Play.
In a snarky tweet, LIV Golf ridiculed the tour’s moves: “Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Congratulations PGA Tour. Welcome to the future.”
The PGA Tour has sought to counter LIV since the rival tour, funded by Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Public Investment Fund, poached some of golf’s biggest names and major champions – Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Cameron Smith, among others – by offering massive signing bonuses and $25 million purses for 48-man, no-cut, 54-hole events that launched last spring. The PGA Tour introduced designated events with fattened $20 million purses this season and has slowed the talent drain to a trickle. The PGA Tour strengthened its position by winning some incremental legal rulings in LIV Golf’s federal antitrust lawsuit, which is scheduled for trial in January.
Monahan also said that the Player Impact Program will be halved, to 10 players divvying up $50 million, and that the savings will be reallocated to the FedEx Cup season bonus pool and the Comcast Business Tour top 10.
“Over the last year, we have spent a massive amount of time exploring how to better position the PGA Tour for continued growth,” Monahan said in his letter to members, adding the need to “innovate” and “showcase our top performers, while staying true to the meritocracy and legacy that define the tour.”
Monahan has called for a meeting with tour members at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday at TPC Sawgrass, site of this week’s Players Championship, plus weekly updates at tour sites.
Rory McIlroy, who has joined Tiger Woods in leading the players’ push for change on the tour, endorsed the strategy.
“It’s trying to get the top guys versus the hot guys, right?” McIlroy said last week at Bay Hill Club in Orlando, Florida, site of the Arnold Palmer Invitational, where 44 of the world’s top 50-ranked players competed. “I think that creates a really compelling product.” READ MORE
Carmen Mandato, Getty Images
Don’t look for Woods to compete again before Masters
Tiger Woods was not listed in the field for this week’s Players Championship, meaning that he almost certainly will not compete again before next month’s Masters.
Woods, 47, who has struggled with a reconstructed right leg after his near-fatal single-vehicle rollover crash in early 2021, did not commit to the Players field before the 5 p.m. EST Friday deadline. In early February, he made his 2023 competitive debut at the Genesis Invitational, which benefits his foundation, and tied for 45th. He played only nine competitive rounds in 2022, marked by a 47th-place finish in the Masters, a withdrawal after three rounds at the PGA Championship and a missed cut at the 150th Open.
The rest of the PGA Tour’s schedule on the road to Augusta National – Valspar Championship, WGC Match Play and Valero Texas Open – are not on his short list of candidates. Woods has played only once in the Valspar, finishing second in 2018. He’s not eligible for the Match Play.
Woods, a two-time Players champion and five-time Masters winner, remains tied with Sam Snead for all-time victories on the PGA Tour, with 82.
Another player who will be conspicuous by his absence this week from TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, is 2022 champion Cameron Smith. He was banned from playing PGA Tour events after signing with LIV Golf last summer. READ MORE
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund could merit a proverbial red card because of its seemingly contradictory statements about its position with LIV Golf and its ownership of the Newcastle United soccer team in England’s Premier League, according to a report by Miguel Delaney in London’s Independent newspaper.
In its effort to avoid the discovery process in U.S. federal court during LIV Golf’s antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour, PIF claimed to be a “sovereign instrumentality of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.” However, before its takeover of Newcastle United in October 2021, the PIF assured the Premier League that “the state will not be in charge of the club.” READ MORE
LIV Golf averaged 289,000 viewers and compiled a 0.18 rating in its network-TV debut, according to data compiled by ShowBizDaily. Two rounds of the season-opening LIV Golf Mayakoba were televised Feb. 25-26 on the CW Network after the first round was available only to U.S. viewers on CW’s app and LIV Golf’s website. “Those numbers exceeded our expectations,” Perry Sook, CEO of CW owner Nexstar, said on an earnings call. LIV Golf hailed its total audience of 3.2 million, according to iSpotTV data, across all linear and digital platforms as “a great start” in a news release. The number of viewers in metered markets was much smaller than those who watched the PGA Tour’s Honda Classic on Golf Channel (about 593,000) and parent NBC (about 2 million) on the same weekend. READ MORE
LIV has shifted travel reimbursements for players and caddies to the new team franchises for 2023, and the resulting disparity in accommodations is creating “tension,” according to a report by Alan Shipnuck in the Fire Pit Collective. READ MORE
A decision regarding the U.K. arbitration hearing between LIV players and the DP World Tour “is considered unlikely before April,” according to a report by Riath Al-Samarrai in London’s Daily Mail. LIV members have been allowed to compete on the former European Tour pending a decision by a Sports Resolutions panel, which heard arguments Feb. 6-10 in London. The decision also could hold implications for Europe’s Ryder Cup team ahead of the matches this fall in Rome. READ MORE
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund criticized a judge’s order that the PIF and its governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, should be subject to discovery in LIV Golf’s federal antitrust suit against the PGA Tour. The PIF filed an amicus curiae brief casting the decision as “an extraordinary infringement on the sovereignty of a foreign state.” READ MORE
Noah Alireza has been appointed CEO of Golf Saudi, the Asia-Pacific Golf Confederation announced. Alireza, a former member of the Saudi national golf team, succeeds Majed Al-Sorour, who remains as a board member. Al-Sorour left his role as a managing director with LIV Golf early this year and served as an adviser to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which supports the rival tour. READ MORE
Global Golf Post received a second-place award in the special projects category of the Golf Writers Association of America’s annual awards, the GWAA announced.
John Steinbreder and Sean Fairholm were recognized for their “Labor pains” project, which was published in GGP’s May 30, 2022, issue. In the same category, Steinbreder, Fairholm and contributor Bob Carney were awarded honorable mention for their “Back in the loop” project in the Oct. 24, 2022, magazine.
Also, GGP contributor Patrick Hand won an honorable mention in the daily features category for “Godspeed, Bob Goalby” in the Jan. 21, 2022, issue of GGP+.
The GGP writers and other award winners will be honored during Masters week in Augusta, Georgia. READ MORE
TAP-INS
The Korn Ferry Tour Championship will move to French Lick (Indiana) Resort’s Pete Dye Course in 2024 as part of a five-year deal, the PGA Tour’s top developmental circuit announced. The KFT’s season-ending event, which will award 30 exemptions to the PGA Tour for next season, is scheduled for Oct. 5-8 at Victoria National in Newburgh, Indiana. READ MORE
The PGA Tour, which has ramped up its business deals with gaming interests in recent years as more states legalize sports gambling, has joined the leadership circle of the National Council on Problem Gambling. READ MORE
Earl Grey Golf Club in Calgary, Alberta, will host the 2024 CP Women’s Open, the LPGA announced. The dates for the 50th edition of Canada’s national women’s open will be July 25-28. READ MORE
Mark Newell, a past USGA president, and Courtney Myhrum, a member of the USGA’s Executive Committee, have been named captains of the men’s and women’s teams, respectively, for the World Amateur Team Championships this fall in Abu Dhabi. READ MORE
Stanford’s Rachel Heck, the 2021 NCAA champion and national player of the year and a key figure in the Cardinal’s 2022 NCAA team title, is out indefinitely with an injury, Golf Channel’s Brentley Romine reported. Heck, a junior from Memphis, Tennessee, suffers from thoracic outlet syndrome in a shoulder. She has been scratched from the upcoming Augusta National Women’s Amateur. READ MORE
David McCarthy, an attorney from Toronto, was elected president of Golf Canada, which also released its 2022 annual financial report, the association announced. READ MORE
The Terra Cotta Invitational will offer the winners of the Faldo Series Grand Finals spots in the annual amateur event each April at Naples (Florida) National Golf Club. Also, the Terra Cotta champion will earn an exemption into a European Challenge Tour event. READ MORE
Compiled by Steve Harmon