Days ago, before the absence of actual golf became the dominant storyline of golf’s “fifth major,” the Players Championship felt like any other event on the PGA Tour, flush with rumor-mongering and speculation about possible announcements from rival circuits. As this week at TPC Sawgrass grinds onward into next week at TPC Sawgrass, not much has changed.
Chatter about a prospective Super League has taken on the feel of Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh,” in which a misbegotten band of barflies (like Jimmy Tomorrow) are forever promising progress that never materializes. Unlike the patrons of O’Neill’s saloon, it’s possible—even likely—that the Saudi-financed concept will advance, or at least make noise. Whispers in hallways at the Players Championship persist like herpetic hypothesis: on what players might yet jump, on what Phil Mickelson will do next, on how the Saudis will pivot.
The latest conjecture has the Crown Prince’s coat holders planning to stage a tournament with an enormous purse that could dwarf the $20 million offered at the PGA Tour’s flagship stop in soggy Florida. The goal would be to engineer litigation by inviting Tour members to compete while hoping commissioner Jay Monahan denies the permission required to do so, thereby presenting an opportunity to challenge his control over where members play, or to at least jeopardize the Tour’s tax-exempt status as a 501c organization.
