When news broke in June that PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, plus board members Jimmy Dunne and Ed Herlihy, had been conducting secret negotiations with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who heads Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the golf world was, of course, stunned.
But it took very little settling of the dust before the staggering reality hit for those in, on and around the DP World Tour. Put simply, four men for whom the circuit’s future was not remotely close to a priority had been discussing notions that would fundamentally affect its destiny.
Notions that the organisation’s members, or the board it elects, might have some control over the future withered and wilted as the reality hit. As if pouring vinegar on the wounds, it also emerged that those clandestine machinations had taken place just a few miles from the European tour’s headquarters in Surrey, England.
Like a golfing version of the Cold War, the superpower leaders had flown in and out of an attractive spot for a covert summit meeting. The location and its people were political collateral damage.
In 2024 the ramifications will rumble on because pretty much every action by LIV Golf, and every reaction by the PGA Tour, has weakened the DP World Tour.
A generation of Ryder Cup heroes – the likes of England’s Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter, Spain’s Sergio García and Sweden’s Henrik Stenson – are now embittered and sidelined. Their playing potential already was diminished, but years of marketability has been squandered.
A modern-day superstar, reigning Masters champion Jon Rahm of Spain, has now joined them.
Even the good news – that the top 10 players in the DP World Tour rankings not already exempt earn PGA Tour playing rights – runs the risk of falling foul of the law of unintended consequences.
The PGA Tour’s new schedule, with its demands on where and when to play, limit the options of international golfers for the occasional return to the DP World Tour.
True, the DP World Tour’s schedule has been transformed ahead of the 2024 season, with a series of “global swings” designed to create narrative structure. Yet the recent trend is maintained: the international elite is attracted only by Middle East events at the start and end of the year, the linksland fortnight in July, and the BMW PGA Championship in September.
It will not be the case that annual class of graduates will retain all 10 cards, but not all will return. Some will prefer to play the Korn Ferry Tour – a drip-drip-drip effect that, in the long term, will further weaken fields.
And the readjustment of the Official World Golf Ranking – making fewer points available on the DP World Tour – means that the number of regular DP World Tour performers in the world’s top 100 is frighteningly low and in 2024 will drop even lower.
Is there any bright side? Only that what was the European Tour, like the European Ryder Cup team, has always been a scrapper, always been the underdog, always had to fight.
The total prize money – $148.5 million, excluding the majors – is also dizzying. It’s just even more dizzying elsewhere.
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