CROMWELL, Conn. — PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan addresses the media during a press conference prior to the Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands on June 22, 2022. | Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images
Tuesday’s news came as a shock to the entire golfing world, including those players on the PGA Tour, who were left in the dark.
PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan sold out, pure and simple.
The man who defended his tour, the same man who loathed and lambasted the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Tour, went behind the scenes and struck a deal with the Public Investment Fund (PIF), the benefactor of LIV.
Since LIV Golf’s inception, the PIF has invested almost $1 billion into LIV Golf, the start-up league.
LIV Golf is a part of the PIF’s “Vision 2030,” a plan “to drive Saudi Arabia’s economic transformation through active, long-term investments and high standards of governance and transparency.”
The PIF has more than $600 billion in assets, according to Bloomberg.
Photo by Chris Trotman/LIV Golf via Getty Images
SUGAR GROVE, Ill. — Greg Norman, CEO and commissioner of LIV Golf, is seen with his excellency Yasir Al Rumayyan, and Majed Al Sorour, CEO of Saudi Golf Federation, during Day Three of the LIV Golf Invitational – Chicago at Rich Harvest Farms on September 18, 2022.
That gaudy figure clearly appealed to Monahan.
On Tuesday morning, Monahan appeared live on CNBC with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the PIF, as these two men announced that the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour had struck a deal with LIV as these three leagues will merge and form a new entity.
Monahan will become the CEO of the newly merged entity, and Yasir Al-Rumayyan will become the chairman.
“After two years of disruption and distraction, this is a historic day for the game we all know and love,” said PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan. “This transformational partnership recognizes the immeasurable strength of the PGA TOUR’s history, legacy, and pro-competitive model and combines with it the DP World Tour and LIV – including the team golf concept – to create an organization that will benefit golf’s players, commercial and charitable partners, and fans.”
A historic day? More like a historic sell-out and a historic surprise.
“I can tell you no one in the hemisphere of golf really saw this coming,” said Todd Lewis, a veteran golf journalist, on the Golf Channel Tuesday morning. “This seems to me, from the people I have talked to and sources I have talked to, just a handful of people put this together.”
Considering previous remarks from the PGA Tour Commissioner, this is unbelievable news.
When Rory McIlroy won the Canadian Open in dramatic fashion a year ago, Monahan made a rare appearance on the CBS broadcast alongside Jim Nantz.
“I would ask any player who has left or any player who would consider leaving,” Monahan said. “Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?”
Exactly a year later, Monahan should apologize to his members of the Tour as the PGA heads back to Canada this week.
He left them in the dark.
Nobody saw this news coming.
“The guys who stood loyal to the PGA Tour, it’s kind of a kick in the teeth for them,” said English golfer Callum Tarren on Golf Channel. “Obviously, Rory was a huge advocate for the PGA Tour, but now it looks like all his hard work and sticking up for the tour has been left by the wayside.”
McIlroy, a LIV dissident and staunch PGA supporter, spent months vehemently arguing against LIV and everything it stood for.
Yet, Tuesday’s news signifies that Monahan took the wind out of McIlroy’s sails.
Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland speaks to the media during a press conference prior to the 2023 PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club on May 16, 2023.
For the commissioner to depart from what his tour’s most popular player stood for is deplorable, and frankly, demoralizing.
He remains silent Tuesday, as McIlroy did before the PGA Championship when asked about the PGA-Tour LIV Golf divide—perhaps signaling a harbinger of things to come.
Nonetheless, other PGA Tour players are angry.
“Tell me why Jay Monahan basically got a promotion to CEO of all golf in the world by going back on everything he said the past 2 years,” Dylan Wu tweeted. “The hypocrisy. Wish golf worked like that. I guess money always wins @PGATour.”
Hearing from multiple PGA Tour players that they had absolutely zero heads up on this before the announcement was made on social.
— Shane Bacon (@shanebacon) June 6, 2023
“Nothing like finding out through Twitter that we’re merging with a tour that we said we’d never do that with,” said McKenzie Hughes, a Canadian golfer, on Twitter.
Collin Morikawa found out about the news on Twitter too.
So did Brooks Koepka and Phil Mickelson, two LIV players that celebrated the announcement.
But the LIV Golfers got their cake and got to eat it too.
Mickelson, Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Henrik Stenson, and other former PGA Tour players received hundreds of millions to break away from tradition and join the new LIV Golf Tour in 2022.
Many of these players received harsh criticism, mainly because of who LIV Golf’s benefactors are. The Saudi government has a long history of human rights abuses, subjugating women, and even murdering a Washington Post journalist.
“They execute people for being gay over there,” Mickelson told author Alan Shipnuck in 2022. “They are scary motherf***ers to get involved with.”
Photo by Chris Trotman/LIV Golf/via Getty Images
DORAL, Fla. — Phil Mickelson, Team Captain of Hy Flyers GC, speaks to the media during the LIV Golf Team Championship Press Conference prior to the LIV Golf Team Championship – Miami at Trump National Doral Miami on October 26, 2022.
Although Mickelson knew this, he still went forward with LIV, noting that it was “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.”
Consequently, Monahan suspended anyone who left his Tour to get the money with LIV in 2022.
Tuesday’s news immediately ends that declaration, as LIV Golfers can now re-apply for membership on the PGA Tour.
Indeed, men’s professional golf will look much different in the future—perhaps more like what Greg Norman envisioned in the 1990s: a global golf league similar to the world tennis tour.
Norman, the CEO of LIV Golf, has criticized the PGA Tour over the years. His role in this future entity remains to be seen.
Nonetheless, Monahan will host a players-only meeting at the Canadian Open at 4 p.m. ET Tuesday—perhaps the most critical meeting in the history of golf.
“It’s less about how people respond today and it’s all about how people respond in 10 years.” — Jay Monahan on CNBC
The few Tour players I’ve spoken with are absolutely stunned at this news. Had no clue it was coming. pic.twitter.com/kbB6h0pCzG
— Sean Zak (@Sean_Zak) June 6, 2023
McIlroy, Morikawa, Scottie Scheffler, Jordan Spieth, and Justin Thomas, among other star players, turned down the money and stayed loyal to the PGA Tour.
Yet, these stars get a stamp of betrayal—not approval—from their commissioner.
Instead of players receiving generational wealth, like Harold Varner III, one of the lone LIV golfers who publicly said he went for the financial incentive, the PGA Tour players were back-stabbed by their own commissioner.
The commissioner failed to keep the players in the loop about this bombshell development, and now he should do only one more thing: resign.
How can a commissioner of a players-led tour not keep his top players informed?
Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
ATLANTA — PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan presents Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland with the FedEx Cup after McIlroy won during the final round of the TOUR Championship at East Lake Golf Club on August 28, 2022.
Monahan should focus on his new entity, as he now sits alongside Al-Rumayyan on top of an endless money supply.
“We are pleased to move forward, in step with LIV and PIF’s world-class investing experience, and I applaud PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan for his vision and collaborative and forward-thinking approach that is not just a solution to the rift in our game but also a commitment to taking it to new heights,” Monahan said in a statement. “This will engender a new era in global golf, for the better.”
Yet, to go back to the Canadian Open a year ago, Monahan castigated LIV Golf and its beneficiaries.
“It’s not an issue for me because I don’t work for the Saudi Arabian government,” Monahan said a year ago on CBS. “You have to ask the question, why? Why is this group spending so much money recruiting players and chasing a concept with no possibility of a return? How is this good for the game that we love?”
The Saudi Arabian government wants to have a seat at the table globally, that’s why.
Now, Monahan most definitely works for Chairman Al-Rumayyan, who is the right-hand man of the Saudi Arabian crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman.
According to the Financial Times, Monahan has met with members of PIF for months now, working on and discussing this merger agreement behind the scenes.
Monahan even told the Financial Times that he began to trust Al-Rumayyan “10 minutes after sitting down with him in Venice.”
Perhaps it was the bags of money discussed during that 10-minute conversation that made Monahan flip a switch.
Photo by Brian Spurlock/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
SUGAR GROVE, Ill. — Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund talks with Greg Norman the LIV CEO and golf commissioner on right on the first tee during the second round of the LIV Golf Invitational Series Chicago on September 17, 2022 at Rich Harvest Farms.
Money talks, but the game of golf looks to be unified for the future. These are promising developments for the game—NBC’s Mike Tirico admitted this when appearing on the Golf Channel Tuesday.
The great golf schism appears to be over, which again, is a good thing. The 2023 Masters and 2023 PGA Championship were both tremendous events because both PGA and LIV players competed, and players from both leagues did well. Mickelson and Koepka finished second at Augusta while Rahm took home the green jacket. Koepka then dominated Oak Hill, en route to winning his fifth major.
So from a golfing sense, it will be nice to see the world’s best share the biggest stages once again.
But the problem players, golf fans, and many others have—and rightfully so—is that Monahan left the decision-making up to himself.
Spoke with several @PGATOUR players who were a part of a meeting in Delaware that ultimately reshaped the Tour schedule. Most of those players were offered @livgolf_league money but turned it down to be loyal to the Tour. Those players told me they feel betrayed and manipulated.
— Todd Lewis (@ToddLewisGC) June 6, 2023
Monahan failed to inform his players before going on CNBC alongside Al-Rumayyan to announce their decision to the world.
So instead of re-instating formerly suspended PGA Tour players, Monahan should suspend himself.
He made a mockery of the PGA Tour, his top players, and now must bear the name of golf’s largest hypocrite.
