AUGUSTA, GEORGIA | For LIV Golf, Masters week was, to use a popular word of the moment, bifurcated.
On the golf course, things went very well for the upstart golf league. Led by co-runners-up Brooks Koepka and Phil Mickelson, 12 of the 18 LIV players who gathered here made the cut, laying to rest the argument that their limited play would find them unprepared for the rigors of Augusta National.
Off the course, things could not have gone much worse.
On Tuesday, word began to spread that the DP World Tour prevailed in its hearing before the Sport Resolutions panel in London in an action against breakaway LIV Golf players who are members of the DP World Tour. The ruling, which was released officially on Thursday, means that the DP World Tour can fine and suspend players such as Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter who joined LIV Golf but hoped to retain their DP World Tour membership.
In addition, the players who fled the former European Tour are now ineligible to play in the Ryder Cup. (American players who defected the PGA Tour for LIV Golf were indefinitely suspended and ruled ineligible for the U.S. Ryder Cup team last year.) The U.K. decision likely will result in LIV players forsaking their DP World Tour membership, as the decision is final and there is no appeal process.
This action began in June when 16 DP World Tour players entered and competed in the inaugural event near London. They were immediately fined and suspended for two weeks. The sanctions were stayed after certain players launched an emergency appeal so that they could compete in the Scottish Open in preparation for the next week’s Open Championship. The players were granted an injunction, and they continued to play in DP World Tour events through February’s five-day arbitration hearing, which was followed by two months of deliberations. A legal source close to the situation described DP World Tour CEO Keith Pelley’s testimony in the hearing as “brilliant.”
A day later in San Francisco, Judge Beth Labson Freeman issued an order that compels Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which is financing LIV Golf, and the fund’s governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, to cooperate in the discovery process of the PGA Tour’s counterclaim against LIV, which had brought a federal antitrust lawsuit against the tour.
Importantly, she vacated the scheduled January 2024 trial date and ruled that the depositions for which Al-Rumayyan must sit will take place in America, not Saudi Arabia. Both decisions are wins for the PGA Tour.
LIV was beaten in the United Kingdom in the arbitration hearing, and it is fighting an uphill battle in a Northern California courtroom. LIV’s TV deal with the CW Network, which lacks a customary rights-fee payment to the tour, is an embarrassment.
The PGA Tour had demonstrated to a federal magistrate judge that the PIF and Al-Rumayyan were intimately involved in the establishment and day-to-day operations of LIV. As a result, Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen ruled that the sovereign-immunity protections that PIF and Al-Rumayyan might otherwise enjoy in a U.S. court did not apply in this case because the Saudis were running a commercial business in the U.S. The magistrate then ordered PIF and Al-Rumayyan (who are now parties to the case as the result of the PGA Tour’s counterclaims) to comply with the discovery process, including by having Al-Rumayyan give a deposition to tour attorneys.
The LIV legal team appealed the magistrate’s decision, but Freeman ruled in favor of the PGA Tour. The LIV legal team immediately filed an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. This could cause the entire case to grind to a halt for a year or more.
And so the question becomes, what does Saudi Arabia and its Public Investment Fund want?
Nothing has gone well for them since the initial flight of brand-name PGA Tour players in early 2022. LIV was beaten in the United Kingdom in the arbitration hearing, and it is fighting an uphill battle in a Northern California courtroom. LIV’s TV deal with the CW Network, which lacks a customary rights-fee payment to the tour, is an embarrassment, and corporate sponsors are nowhere to be found.
Also, Global Golf Post has learned that LIV Golf has been informed that its application for Official World Golf Ranking points is still deficient. LIV players have been sliding in the OWGR in recent months.
The only way to find out what Saudi Arabia and the PIF wants is to sit across a table and talk. But sources told GGP that two preconditions exist before PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan might entertain a serious discussion with LIV: Norman must be gone, and the original lawsuit that set off all the legal machinations must end.
On the former point, that’s easy. By now the PIF knows that Norman is not the guy to find compromise. He has a contract, one that the PIF easily can buy out.
On the latter point, the situation might be closer than we realize. The PIF is not going to accept a precedent-setting situation whereby its leaders and executives are subject to American jurisprudence. Period. But that is exactly what has been decided in U.S. District Court in Northern District, and although the PIF is appealing, it is on the losing end of the argument and irritating the federal judge presiding over the case. Despite the Court of Appeals filing, LIV and Al-Rumayyan might be better off cutting their losses.
Then, and only then, might Jay Monahan sit with Al-Rumayyan to see whether there is a face-saving exit for the Saudis.
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Top: Yasir Al-Rumayyan (left) and LIV CEO Greg Norman
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