Let us assume that the cocktail glass is half full and at some point in the not too distant future, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and Public Investment Fund governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan will sit together again to announce that they have made peace and, consequently, created a shared path forward.
As Andy Dufresne said in “The Shawshank Redemption,” “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
Maybe that’s a touch on the melodramatic side, but what’s at stake here is nothing short of the future of professional golf. It’s broken, it needs to be fixed and the moment for that has arrived.
There are no winners between the tour and LIV at the moment, just a survivor and an aggressive disruptor. Separately, they are less than they could be together.
Unification must be the goal.
There are serious moral and ethical questions surrounding a potential agreement with the Saudis, but it seems as if the tour took those under advisement when it announced the framework agreement with the PIF on June 6 with the intention of making this work.
That’s another way of saying, it’s just business.
If we make the assumption that an agreement is coming (and we all know what happens when you assume), the hottest hot-button topic is, what happens to the players who left the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour to take LIV’s money, its offer to wear shorts in competition and its siren call of no-cut competitions?
Will they be allowed to return to the tour?
Will there be a cost to return?
Will they be placed on double-secret probation for a time?
Like so many other parts of this mess, there are still more questions than answers.
These were seismic choices with enormous impacts, and the vast majority of players who were offered the big money were in that position because of the opportunity created by the PGA Tour.
It seems only fair that those who abandoned the PGA Tour for LIV – whether it’s Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka or Hudson Swafford and Talor Gooch – should pay some sort of price for their decision.
That’s not to say Jon Rahm or Phil Mickelson made bad financial decisions. Their bank statements no doubt indicate otherwise.
But these were seismic choices with enormous impacts, and the vast majority of players who were offered the big money were in that position because of the opportunity created by the PGA Tour.
When the moment came to decide whether they were in or they were out, they chose the shiny new thing, golf with a backbeat.
There should be a cost for coming back.
If they didn’t realize the potential impacts – the loss of world-ranking points, a narrowed path to the major championships, no access to the PGA and DP World tours – it’s because they wanted to believe all that LIV was selling them and that LIV had all the answers.
Dollar signs can create financial glaucoma.
LIV CEO Greg Norman sold players on a promise that they still could play the PGA Tour. That promise lasted as long as it took tour officials to sign the suspension papers.
When the PGA Tour and the Strategic Sports Group went into business together recently, it allowed the tour essentially to offer loyalty payments to the players who stayed, not that a majority of the 193 in line for such payments likely were approached by LIV. Still, the money faucet has been opened, probably with strings attached demanding continued loyalty or a hefty payback fee for leaving.
It’s fair to expect that Al-Rumayyan will lobby to open the doors to LIV players if and when an agreement with the tour is reached, a necessary cost of business for the PGA Tour.
Monahan, however, will have to answer to the tour Policy Board and specifically the six player directors whose opinions may be the most important. Tiger Woods, the alpha among players on the Policy Board, has been quiet on the subject, but he will be asked about it when he makes his 2024 debut at the Genesis Invitational this week.
Jordan Spieth, another Policy Board member, said he’s hearing it from both sides: players who are willing to let LIV players return free and clear and others who are strongly opposed to that concept.
Rory McIlroy, once the anti-LIV voice, has softened to the point of saying let them back in for the good of the game. It’s a benevolent approach, but it may be a hard sell among his peers.
“I would say that there’s a handful of players on LIV that would make the tour a better place, but I’m definitely not in the agreement that they should just be able to come back that easily,” Justin Thomas said.
“I think there’s a lot of us that made sacrifices. … I would have a hard time with it, and I think a lot of guys would have a hard time with it.”
Ditto from Scottie Scheffler, who told Golf Channel: “It wouldn’t be a very popular decision, I think, if they just came back like nothing ever happened. They did kind of leave and – they left our tour; that’s just part of it. There should be a pathway back for them, but they definitely shouldn’t be able to come back without any sort of contribution to the tour.”
There are some on LIV who insist most players don’t want to return to the PGA Tour. That can be their choice. Sound familiar?
Having just secured an eventual $3 billion investment from the SSG and with the expectation that an agreement with the PIF could be similarly lucrative, letting players back shouldn’t be just about money. It should be about when and where they can play.
There is a sense of cautious optimism that an agreement – something that can end the player poaching and fill the cracks – is getting closer. It won’t please everyone, but nothing ever does.
Make them ineligible for the $20 million signature events for a time. That would push them to play lesser events which could stand the addition of some star power. Make them ineligible for the FedEx Cup playoffs for a time. Require them to play a handful of Korn Ferry Tour events for a year or two.
Maybe it’s some of those; maybe it’s none of those.
McIlroy recently said that it’s hard to punish the defectors, but there should be consequences to actions, a concept that’s apparently difficult for a portion of the general population to accept.
There are still questions about what the landscape might look like down the road. Will there still be LIV events? Will the tour grudgingly accept a team concept of some limited scale? And let’s not forget everyone’s favorite: can it grow the game?
There is a sense of cautious optimism that an agreement – something that can end the player poaching and fill the cracks – is getting closer. It won’t please everyone, but nothing ever does.
Let’s close with another thought from “The Shawshank Redemption.” It was Red, Andy Dufresne’s jailhouse friend, who said, “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”
Raise a half-full cocktail glass to that.