The Day That Will Live In Rich, Greedy And Egomaniacal Golf History
The PGA Tour suspends players after LIV's shotgun start. Phil trolls the Masters. Norman watches the press get ejected. And the majors wisely stay out of this war. For now.
It was a rough Thursday. Even for the ones who thought they were winning.
After LIV Golf launched in London and the PGA Tour hit send on an oddly-crafted letter announcing indefinite suspensions of defectors, the shock kicked in.
Maybe it was the sight of golf balls airborne that finally made years of disrupter league talk a bleak reality: the PGA Tour and its partners at FedEx, NBC, CBS, ESPN+ and GOLFTV/Discovery may have a big problem. They’ve got over eight years left with what suddenly could be a damaged product. Sure, some can opt out of deals or write off hundreds of millions the way Fox did when offloading its bloated-from-day-one USGA deal. But the potential damage to charities, communities and good people relying on the PGA Tour model will be terrible.
And so avoidable.
For years the PGA Tour’s arrogance grew as a brain-drain in Ponte Vedra People shipped out those with enough golf, legal and business savvy—tinged with absurdly conformist ways to match Commissioner Farquaad’s desires—and swapped them out despite holding things together through recessions and insurrections by rugged individualists in Sansabelts.
The brainpower has been swapped out mostly for marketers who might or might not like golf and spend half their days burnishing LinkedIn profiles. So Thursday when the PGA Tour faced a complicated, existential threat years in the making, it became apparent that Cult Ponte Vedra never imagined the same players they’d lionized suddenly giving them the bird. Or that an entity would come along with advances so great that players could shrug off lost blue chip endorsement deals. Or that the longtime Titleist CEO’s son would be helping to lead the charge after the company profited so handsomely for so long off its PGA Tour ties.
There was also the apparent shock of players countering the PGA Tour’s response not by directing questions to LIV’s lawyers, but by openly resigning their memberships. Other than Graeme McDowell, most did not seem sad to say bye. From Sean Zak’s excellent write up from Centurion:
Five other suspended players were asked about it, shortly after their cab drivers returned them to the clubhouse to sign their scorecards. Some of them were made aware of the news. Others were alerted by the press. Lee Westwood had no idea of the memo, and couldn’t be bothered to care. “I thought I’d just resign and that would clear it all up,” he said. “You know, no longer a member of the PGA Tour, so why would they be worried about me? I’ve resigned.”
Now it’s a matter of how many likable types go. To date, LIV has accumulated a who’s who of badboy d-baggery melded with guys who’ve had too many divorces, debts and delusions of grandeur. But then Bryson DeChambeau became the first seemingly-relevant player to go, adding to the intrigue and smear campaigning. Rocket Mortgage dumped him before he could even make the news official his way—in a slick bro-infused video—but that’s probably as much a reflection on his 2021 antics in Detroit as Rocket’s views of Saudi Arabia or LIV Golf.
While there were so many lame elements to LIVGolf’s Thursday rollout that would damage off any other upstart—someone forgot to create a website leaderboard until late Thursday night!—this one has unlimited resources and smells blood in the water. We know how the Saudis love combining bloodshed with a perverse desire to be legitimized by Westerners even as they screw ‘em over.
Kyle Porter at CBSSports.com summed up the Tour’s rough day:
The PGA Tour, by the way, is in some real trouble. A mostly toothless letter on Thursday banning players who traded their PGA Tour cards for LIV Golf lanyards is emblematic of just how little leverage or power the Tour currently wields. When your annual revenue is $1.5 billion, and your rival league has a war chest roughly 400 times that, there is no logistical change you can make to retain all of your players. When your only recourse is to point out to players how much money the other guys have, and how much harder it is to exist and thrive on the PGA Tour than the more comfortable LIV Golf league, then you're foisting a trust upon professional athletes that they will choose legacy and morals over wealth.
Porter was kind to avoid a burning question in Jay Monahan’s mind: will these suspended players ever be Champions Tour eligible? From the letter:
Right. When you’re playing for $25 million 8-10 times in a year, you’re also thinking about post-50 playing opportunities in the Chubb Classic.
It should also be noted the letter was shared immediately with preferred media and even posted on PGATour.com.
So much for PGA Tour disciplinary matters remaining private.
Random thought: maybe if you revealed more fines and suspensions the guys wouldn’t think they walk on water? Just something to think about!