LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY | Not surprisingly, the pre-PGA Championship conversation here last week inevitably focused on the ongoing drama involving the PGA Tour and LIV Golf.
And despite pushback from Tiger Woods and Jordan Spieth at their press conferences at Valhalla Golf Club, one can’t help but get the sense that the inmates are running the asylum.
Six players now control the future of the PGA Tour in the LIV Golf era. Last week, they effectively ran off another Policy Board member, Jimmy Dunne.
Dunne, an independent director, wrote in his resignation letter to the board: “Since the players now outnumber the Independent Directors on the Board, and no meaningful progress has been made towards a transaction with the PIF, I feel like my vote and my role is utterly superfluous.”
Say what you will about Dunne – and much has been said during his 16-plus months of service – but he, along with board chairman Ed Herlihy and PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, saved the tour from insolvency. Dunne figured out that the Saudi strategy was simple: bleed the tour to death with expensive litigation. And it could. Monahan, Dunne and Herlihy stopped that from happening by ending all further litigation with the “framework agreement” last June.
What did they get from certain player corners of the PGA Tour?
Scorn.
Dunne’s resignation lays to waste the assertion by Woods, Spieth and others that things are “progressing” and going well. They most certainly are not. There is no deal to be considered. There are no serious discussions taking place.
Board member Patrick Cantlay ought to be grateful that Dunne saved his lifestyle. Instead, Cantlay simply won’t let go of what he believes is a breach of trust surrounding the “framework agreement” that Dunne helped craft.
Cantlay is the lightning rod in this drama. He is closely aligned with Joe Ogilvie, the former player who recently joined the board of PGA Tour Enterprises, the new for-profit entity that ultimately will try to negotiate a deal with LIV Golf’s parent, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. And like Ogilvie, Cantlay is close to the recently announced chairman of PGA Tour Enterprises, Joe Gorder, after he engineered Gorder, the executive chairman of tour sponsor Valero Energy, into a position as an independent director at PGA Tour Enterprises.
Cantlay is also the one who stopped Rory McIlroy cold when he recently sought to return to the Policy Board. The two are said to be unable to be in the same room together. Cantlay most certainly didn’t want to hear McIlroy’s thoughts on Dunne’s departure.
“I think it's a huge loss for the PGA Tour, if they are trying to get this deal done with the PIF and trying to unify the game,” McIlroy said last week. “Jimmy was basically ‘the’ relationship, the sort of conduit between the PGA Tour and PIF. It's been really unfortunate that he has not been involved for the last few months, and I think part of the reason that everything is stalling at the minute is because of that. So it is … it's really, really disappointing. I think the tour is in a worse place because of it. I would say my confidence level on something getting done before last week was as low as it had been, and then with this news of Jimmy resigning and knowing the relationship he has with the other side, and how much warmth there is from the other side, it's concerning.”
Dunne’s resignation lays to waste the assertion by Woods, Spieth and others that things are “progressing” and going well. They most certainly are not. There is no deal to be considered. There are no serious discussions taking place. There is a transaction subcommittee, but there is no transaction to evaluate. The way Woods described it last week, at best there are conversations. But not much more.
Woods warned the media last week that this is going to take a while. Meanwhile, Mary DePaoli, the Royal Bank of Canada marketing executive who will determine the future of the bank’s relationship in the professional game, has said that the tour is on the clock, at least as it relates to continued sponsorship by RBC. The bank is paying a reported $25 million this year to underwrite the RBC Heritage and the RBC Canadian Open.
Just because a player can get the ball in the hole quickly does not mean he can guide a complex, multibillion-dollar global enterprise.
“It is crucial for the Board to avoid letting yesterday’s differences interfere with today’s decisions, especially when they influence future opportunities for the Tour. Unifying professional golf is paramount to restoring fan interest and repairing wounds left from a fractured game.”
Jimmy Dunne
Referring to Dunne, tour player Lucas Glover, a former U.S. Open champion, said: “Tour players play golf. Businessmen run business. They don’t tell us how to hit 7-irons. We shouldn't be telling them how to run a business.”
He elaborated: “Players that think they know more than Jimmy Dunne, players that think they know more than Ed Herlihy, players that think they know more than Joe Gorder, players that think they know more than Jay Monahan, when it comes to business, are wrong.
“We have no business having the majority [of Policy Board seats].”
He is not wrong. And he probably speaks for the vast majority of PGA Tour card holders.
When the Wall Street Journal runs two derogatory pieces about the state of the PGA Tour in a single day, as happened on Monday of PGA Championship week, there is a serious problem. For the CEOs of corporate America who write the checks that enable the tour players to live lives of the rich and famous, the Journal is their daily read. Their take could be as follows: This is amateur hour, so why are we involved at all?
Dunne is correct that history will look favorably on the outcome of his efforts. In his resignation letter, he fired off a shot that the leadership of the PGA Tour – players and non-players – best heed, and quickly: “It is crucial for the Board to avoid letting yesterday’s differences interfere with today’s decisions, especially when they influence future opportunities for the Tour. Unifying professional golf is paramount to restoring fan interest and repairing wounds left from a fractured game.”
Those who seek that unification hope Patrick Cantlay got Dunne’s message.
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