Not everything remains unclear in the escalating war between the PGA Tour and its Saudi-funded rival, LIV Golf. We know, for example, that moral arguments are meaningless to the amoral, that calls for loyalty are futile if directed to the disloyal, that appeals to a greater good are worthless to the selfish, and that emotional pleas are ineffective to the indifferent, even from families of those killed on September 11th.
We know too that professional golfers view the current landscape in purely commercial terms: what’s the maximum they can be paid for the minimum amount of work?
The baggage that comes with any benefactor — which in this case includes the bonesaw dismembering of a critic, mass executions, systematic mistreatment of women and gays, and war crimes in Yemen — are mere moveable obstructions for those who have signed with LIV Golf and those who will do so. The next wave of announced players will spotlight men who lack the character to say no and didn’t have the courage to say yes until others had absorbed the initial volley of criticism and normalized it. But that wave is coming.
Mocking LIV Golf is fertile terrain — the amateurish inaugural event, fields oversubscribed with the washed-up and broken-down, cartoonish fees that defy economic logic, a buffoonish frontman — but golf executives who draw comfort from the widespread scorn are whistling past the cemetery. That’s because the only constituency that isn’t laughing at LIV Golf is the only one that matters: the players. This underscores just how urgently the PGA and DP World tours need to respond to a threat that is moving faster than they are.
It’s been more than two years since Saudi ambitions to own professional golf moved out of the shadows. In that time, they’ve leveraged lies and misinformation, falsely claiming top players have committed and then using that non-existent commitment to entice others to consider following. That duplicitous strategy — greased with exorbitant payments — gave the Saudis traction, and the progress highlights how golf’s establishment has lagged in responding effectively.
The PGA Tour and DP World Tour still have not presented a vision of a shared future based on the much-ballyhooed “strategic alliance.” The failure to adequately articulate the potential of that future to members hints at an over-reliance on lawyers who are fearful of collusion claims and antitrust litigation. The resulting void has been exploited by the Saudis and makes both tours appear to be playing defense for the same, stale system and offering nothing new to players or fans. Given free rein, those lawyers will one day proudly boast of how no one overran their majestic, deserted castle.
Gossip is running amok at this U.S. Open and the narrative gaining traction does no favors for either tour. It suggests they are overly dependent on two firewalls, neither of which they control. One is the Official World Golf Ranking, which does not (yet) award points to LIV Golf tournaments, which could eventually see LIV players unable to rely on their ranking to access major championships. The other bulwark is the majors themselves, and that defense is at risk of being compromised by the game theory the players are employing.
If LIV attracts a critical mass of competitively relevant players, the majors face a major dilemma. Isolating LIV players by changing their qualification criteria or observing bans imposed by the tours would mean diluting their fields, at least temporarily. Jay Monahan and Keith Pelley might be reluctant to test the willingness of Messrs. Ridley, Waugh, Whan and Slumbers to support the existing ecosystem in that manner. Every recruit the Saudis announce brings them closer to the names that matter, and the tours closer to a reckoning they appear ill-prepared for.
The PGA Tour, in particular, has long needed a radical overhaul. Its corporate culture lacks entrepreneurial spirit, values familiarity over innovation, and had never faced a credible threat to its dominance, business model or player loyalty. Which might explain why, when finally confronted with such a threat, its response has been ponderous, achingly slow and poor in laying out the alternative to golf being owned by the Saudis.
Next Tuesday, June 21, there are two meetings planned at the Travelers Championship in Connecticut, one for players and another of the PGA Tour’s board. Both agendas will be dominated by discussions on the path forward. But the time for talking is fast giving way to a desperate need for concrete action. The PGA Tour must put forward a detailed vision — on a new schedule that can win the support of elite players, on its investment priorities, on how the fall will be used as an innovation window to improve its product.
It cannot rely on public revulsion at Saudi sportswashing to assist them, because that clearly isn’t working.
Admittedly, this is a complex and legally fraught business, and an immense amount of backroom diplomacy has taken place. But this week at The Country Club, there’s a palpable sense that the sport’s leaders don’t fully grasp that time is ebbing away at an alarming rate, and that the framework of the future is required now. The house is ablaze. We shouldn’t be debating what sprinkler system to install a couple of years hence.
