Golf’s buzzword last week, at least in Dubai where the DP World Tour played, was global.
As in, a global tour.
Something bigger than the United States-based PGA Tour.
“I think the PGA Tour is coming to the realization that global is the key for the growth,” DP World Tour CEO Keith Pelley told reporters last week, just days after his April resignation was announced. “They have heard me say it once or twice.”
Whether that is the eventual outgrowth of the ongoing negotiations between the tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund remains to be seen, and it is just one of the many unanswered questions still hanging over professional golf.
Rory McIlroy, who has remained chatty despite his vow to step away from the weighty matters of the moment, envisions a dream outcome with about 20 events played around the world, incorporating the majors and a handful of the best PGA Tour events coupled with significant events elsewhere, such as the Australian Open and perhaps a big event in India.
It’s a big idea and not an entirely new one. Just ask Greg Norman.
It would be great for the McIlroys and Rahms and Hovlands of the world, but it would further tier the professional game and seems to be a long way off.
“I think the PGA Tour is coming to the realization that global is the key for the growth."
Keith Pelley, DP World Tour CEO
If the give-and-take discussions that reportedly were held in Saudi Arabia last week between commissioner Jay Monahan and PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan moved the sport closer to a resolution in its civil war, perhaps the most pressing question is, What will the PGA Tour look like going forward?
It isn’t in the business of being a feeder tour.
It’s not an exaggeration to say the June 6 agreement was made to save the PGA Tour because the PIF could have spent the tour out of money and business. Monahan’s negotiations seem intent on protecting the tour’s place in the game while finding a path toward unity and player peace, understanding his future is precarious.
The tour is in a tough spot. So tough that the tour is on the verge of finalizing an agreement with a group of private-equity entities to underwrite the proposed for-profit arm of its operation.
Because of what LIV created, the tour has had to meet player demands for bigger purses and more perks. Some sponsors have balked at the increased cost for getting the same product or a lesser product considering the stars who took the Saudi money and left.
It’s hard for a potential sponsor to hear that $100 million over five years isn’t good enough.
The Saudis, meanwhile, are determined to make team golf a part of whatever is agreed upon even if they refuse to accept that American golf fans aren’t interested in that, no matter how hard Bryson DeChambeau tries to sell it.
The tour is said to have told the Saudis that team golf during the FedEx Cup season is a non-starter.
An idea has been floated to have a fantasy football-like team competition during the FedEx Cup season in which a group of players would be so-called teammates in that their collective earnings during the season would be matched against the other “teams,” with a big payout. That wouldn’t intrude on the tour model and, most likely, many of the players probably wouldn’t realize they were part of it until the bonus money arrived.
The most likely outcome may be a peaceful co-existence between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf for the short term, with LIV players gradually returning to the tour. Major champions such as Cam Smith and Brooks Koepka would have PGA Tour status, but there are many LIV players who probably would have to play their way back via the Korn Ferry Tour or Q-School.
The tour could surrender the fall to LIV and its team play, clearing the way for PGA Tour players to be part of it should they want.
Allow tournaments to use sponsor exemptions to invite LIV players – maybe it’s Cam Smith or Brooks Koepka or both – and begin the reconciliation that way. But what about signature events with 78 players? Cutting out tour players for LIV golfers would create another firestorm.
Turn the Saudi International into an officially sanctioned PGA Tour/DP World event and let the PIF put as much as it wants into the purse.
The tour shouldn’t let players who jumped to LIV walk back with no repercussions, but that may be how it has to happen, the argument being players on both sides made their choices and it’s not as if tour players weren’t playing for more money than ever before. The PIF may demand reinstatement.
“Changing everything overnight is probably not realistic, the way I see it at least,” said Adam Scott, one of six players on the PGA Tour Policy Board. “But if there's a vision and something to work towards, I think everybody can get behind that so that we see where the game is going.”
There is a sense of increased urgency to the negotiations, and there should be. It would have been nice if both sides could have booked a boardroom for a week last summer and hashed all of this out once and for all, but it didn’t happen.
The golf world is wondering, worried and waiting.
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Top: A truly global tour is not a new idea, but it's time finally may have arrived.
tom dulat, r&a via getty images