LIV and the PGA "Merge" - What does it mean?
Was it shocking? What does it mean for fans of the game
Perhaps because many of us have been watching Succession, folks looking at the news of LIV and the PGA Tour “merging” - a term that may or may not be applicable here - seem to want to figure out who won and who lost. And just like in that show, it might not really be the point of it all.
Even though all the LIV golfers and bots are all taking bows after the announcement and feeling incredibly smug, it’s not at all clear that LIV “won” this battle. It’s important to note that there are a LOT of details involved with this that are unknown - perhaps because they are also undefined. So there are many moving parts, a lot of which could result in different outcomes. But for what we know now, let’s break it down.
Who won?
In no uncertain terms, the bad guys did. Who ARE the bad guys? Though in some ways, everyone involved could be classified that way, the winners are as follows:
The Saudis. Specifically, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), which represents the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and as part of this deal not only is pouring new money into the PGA Tour, but has first right of refusal for any other funding source. That is to say, they’ll financially control the future of the PGA Tour. So, that’s lovely. They won’t be able to stop the Tour from doing something - let’s say the Tour wants to start a gay-friendly tour stop (which is laughable, not because it’s not a worthy idea, but because the Tour only looks progressive when compared to the Saudis, who literally murder gay people). The Saudis would have the first right to invest in this, but if they pass, presumably others could invest. BUT, if the idea is one they like, they will get to invest and reap all the benefits. That is to say, for any great idea the PGA Tour has moving forward, the Saudis will get to be financially involved at their discretion.
No reason at all I chose this of all pictures to show Yassir. Golfers who fled the PGA Tour to join LIV. Most of them will find their way back to the PGA Tour – with, apparently, some repercussions for not just quitting the tour but actively trying to destroy it via LIV - but, apparently will be able to keep the millions of dollars they got from LIV to join them. Consider it a bonus! So Bryson DeChambeau can keep his $100,000,000 and, if he wants, still play on the PGA Tour. Whether guys like Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia, Jason Kokrak and others actually DO return is an open question (they’ve talked either so harshly about the tour or in Kokrak’s case just wanted a payout to stop playing golf), but it’s likely their decision.
Content. These aren’t villains to be clear (see above) though plenty of golf content folks aren’t really my cup of tea, but the number of “emergency podcasts” that dropped in my feed on Tuesday was hilarious, and that will only continue.
Professional Golf, maybe. The details really matter here, BUT – putting aside the horrific morality involved here, which isn’t really possible to do – with a huge influx of money, it’s clear that professional golf as we mostly know it will survive. The existential threat of LIV is no longer. And, it’s POSSIBLE that the game could get more interesting. Team play, more match play, some things we haven’t really considered yet … that could all be in play with a new voice and a HUGE wallet being involved. Heck, the players might even get to wear shorts.
Who lost?
The Fans. Yes, that’s melodramatic, and a bit in conflict with the last bullet point above but … the key thing I kept thinking about is that even though PIF/LIV “won” they did so NOT because they had such a good product the PGA Tour couldn’t compete. It won because it had such an unending bag of money, they were going to be able to sue the PGA Tour into a position of weakness, and potentially poach more and more players until the PGAT was a frail exoskeleton of its former self. So, MAYBE the product gets better? But it’s not about that. To quote the great Kevin Van Valkenburg from No Laying Up:
“What the last few weeks have revealed about golf is that, at the highest level, virtually everyone is a bullshit artist who has been duplicitous enough to say whatever the moment called for in order to justify their position. None of this, it turns out, has ever had anything to do with the 9/11 families, human rights concerns, LGBTQ rights, growing the game, shotgun starts, golf in Australia or disrupting the PGA Tour’s monopoly.
It was about power and money. Everyone at the top wanted more.”
Kaboom.
The best PGA Tour Golfers. Weep not for Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Scottie Scheffler, Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth, Patrick Cantlay, Xander Schauffle, Rickie Fowler, Hideki Matsuyama and even Tiger Woods. They can dry their own tears with the tens or hundreds of millions they already have. But all of them pledged loyalty to the PGA Tour, and either avoided even talking with LIV or turned down offers that ranged in the hundreds of millions of dollars apiece. McIlroy in particular became the default commissioner of the tour, constantly making the anti-LIV argument in public while actual PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan was nowhere to be seen. And now? They get nothing for that loyalty. Monahan has stated it will be rewarded – perhaps with equity in the for-profit company just formed, perhaps in bonuses for some new teams that don’t exist, perhaps … not at all.
But in the meantime, they look like guys who made bad business decisions by aligning themselves with Monahan, who in the meantime negotiated a deal with the very folks he was pressuring these golfers to not do the exact same thing. People can make bad business decisions all the time - indeed, a few folks joined LIV in part because of bad decisions they’d made in their past! But right now, the guy who duped them into that bad decision is still leading the Tour and they’re expected to just fall in line. Because … what else are they gonna do? It’s a bad spot to be in.
The RBC Canadian Open. It’s just worth pointing out that a year ago, the Canadian Open week was the week that LIV launched it’s own first event, which took all the shine off of this historical national open. RBC has been a HUGE sponsor for the PGA Tour (also sponsoring another event this season) and … the PGAT not only did this during the week of this event, but it’s also not remotely clear whether the Canadian Open will even survive the new schedule. But hey, thanks for the millions, guys.
Greg Norman. OK, so at least one villain maybe didn’t win. Greg seems convinced that LIV will survive and in fact “changed the world of golf.” This is mostly because Greg is and always has been an idiot. LIV was specifically NOT mentioned in the news at all, and what Greg doesn’t get but the rest of us see is that LIV was merely something the PIF used to get where they are today, controlling the PGA Tour.
So, who’s gonna tell him? LIV may or may not remain alive, but it’s not going to matter in any real sense. (It’s possible that it stays alive to fend off monopoly concerns, a concern raised by (checks notes) LIV Golf.) And in practical terms, I’d be shocked if Greg – who didn’t know about this merger until minutes before it was announced, which highlights exactly how important he is to the PIF – even has a job in a few months. Good riddance to a true pest. This quote fromSports Illustrated should - SHOULD - make Greg very, very concerned that he misread this:
Al-Rumayyan made it fairly clear that, although PIF invested much more than $1 billion in LIV, it mostly wanted to be a major part of golf. LIV was a means to the end.
“He was more about growing the pie and interest in the game, rather than ‘We're gonna do it x way,’” Dunne says. “They have LIV, which, at some level, they've got to think was not what they hoped it would be. They have the ability to align with the PGA Tour, and that is meaningful to them. And that’s it.”
The article also says that Monahan (see below) is in charge of LIV and the PGA and that they’ll evaluate LIV at the end of the year. Hey Greg? That sound you hear in the distance? That’s the bells, tolling for thee.
Jay Monahan. I don’t think there’s anyone who has thought he was a good commissioner, perhaps for his entire tenure. His utter absence during the craziest time in the sport was already a fireable offense (though when you see him in front of the cameras, fumbling EVERY possible question including the most predictable ones he should be prepared for, you kind of get it). But he negotiated this deal without any other real executive on the tour (many who were tasked with preparing for something like this, which could have helped in the way this was rolled out), without any player representative – remember, this is a “player run organization” – or without, it seems, thinking about the viability of this given that the tour was already being looked at by the Department of Justice for being a monopoly. Who raised those concerns? The PIF. He also went out of his way when he was anti-LIV to co-opt the families of those who died on 9/11 as a way to paint LIV as evil. Now? He’s helping them pour billions of dollars into the tour and has to shrug off those very issues he apparently wasn’t actually that bothered about. My guess is, like everyone who decides suddenly that the Saudis are actually great guys, Monahan got a big bag of cash.
Great for him. But despite his prominent role in the new entity, I can’t see him surviving this. At the players meeting at RBC that happened immediately after this was announced – at which point, all the players learned of this happening for the first time, right when we all did – someone suggested that the Tour needed new leadership, which was received with a huge round of applause and/or a standing ovation, depending on who you believe. Either way, not great news for Big Jay.
The reality, of course, is that we still don’t know how this sorts out. Or if it even DOES sort out - the deal could be nixed by the players, or the Department of Justice, or something else. Does LIV stick around and former holdouts like Jon Rahm play a few events for some guaranteed cash? Does the new for-profit arm give some or all players a salary? Will Greg Norman ever understand how big of a patsy he is and has been?
More to come. But in the meantime, one of the sports I love the most has made a decision that just doesn’t feel good in any real way.
Good takes. It’s — what I termed years ago that seems to be often used now by others — a shitshow .