GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA | The news of the day at the Wyndham Championship on Tuesday was the announcement that Steve Stricker (no surprise) and Webb Simpson (mild surprise) will be assistant captains for Davis Love III when the Presidents Cup is played next month at Quail Hollow Club, joining Fred Couples and Zach Johnson on the U.S. side.
However, the inescapable subject remained what it’s been for months now: LIV Golf’s heavy-handed intrusion into professional golf, which has jarred the sport’s structure and clouded its future.
For Love, the turmoil engulfing the sport is both professional and personal.
A World Golf Hall of Famer, lifetime member, five-term member of the PGA Tour’s agenda-setting Policy Board and one of the most admired figures in the game, Love not only has the ear of PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan but the trust of multiple generations of players.
Love never saw this coming.
He heard about LIV and its audacious plans, but counseled Monahan its threat would fade. Instead, it has grown, luring away stars such as Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Phil Mickelson while putting the tour on the defensive.
Love went so far as to suggest last week that if LIV players are allowed to play in major championships next year, PGA Tour players might consider boycotting at least one of the game’s biggest events. Though the tour doesn’t run the majors, following its member-approved rules is critical to Love.
“The whole situation is unfortunate,” Love said Tuesday. “I didn’t try to single out the U.S. Open as the players’ striking or threatening not to play. I was saying that if the LIV guys sue and are allowed to play on the PGA Tour, that the players are enough fed up with it, we understand that we make the rules on the PGA Tour and the commissioner’s enforcing our rules and we don’t want those guys playing, come and cherry-picking our tournaments, that we hold all the cards, not Jay or not (PGA CEO) Seth Waugh or (USGA CEO) Mike Whan.
“They don’t hold all the cards; we hold all the cards. If we say to the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) and to Washington, ‘No, we support the rules; we don’t want those guys playing; we don’t care what the courts say.’ Our only option, really, the nuclear option, is to say, ‘Well, fine. If they have to play in our events, we just won’t play.’ ”
That speaks to the contentious nature of professional golf’s growing divide. Love and others are waiting to see whether one or more PGA Tour players who joined LIV Golf will sue this week to be allowed to play in the upcoming FedEx Cup playoffs, which begin next week in Memphis, Tennessee.
Love has listened to what LIV players have said after making the jump, and he’s not buying what they’re selling.
It was made clear, Love said, that joining the Greg Norman-led league meant saying goodbye – perhaps forever – to the PGA Tour. Love has talked to multiple players about LIV, some of whom have stayed where they are and others who haven’t.
“Look, I told the players that I’ve talked to that have gone or are thinking about going, ‘It’s your decision and you do what’s right for you, but understand the consequences,’ ” Love said.
“I tried to sound like my dad, and I probably wasn’t very good at it. I didn’t argue. I said, ‘Look, you can do this or you can do this. You can be Tiger Woods or you can be banned from the game; take your pick. But understanding the consequences, you signed up for these rules. You have rules that you have to adhere to.’
“I said ‘fixing to,’ but, ‘You’re fixing to break a rule that’s a big rule, and you’re going to get penalized for it.’ And Jay’s been saying it for a year and they either understood it – some of them understood that, some of them said it’s not going to happen, and some of them just flat out lied: ‘I’m not doing this; I’m not doing that.’”
Love has listened to what LIV players have said after making the jump, and he’s not buying what they’re selling.
“You hear it, the talking points or the interviews,” Love said. “They’re spinning their decision because they know they’ve turned their backs on their friends and they know they’re taking the money and they know it’s not the right thing to do. But it is their decision, and they can do that. They just can’t come back and play the Players Championship. That’s just not fair.”
As captain of the U.S. Presidents Cup team, Love feels secure about the players who are in the running to be on his team for next month’s matches at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte. There are more questions – specifically about Hideki Matsuyama and Cameron Smith – about who will be on the International team, which has already lost Abraham Ancer and Louis Oosthuizen.
How the PGA Tour responds to LIV’s ongoing challenge rests largely with the players, Love said. He was on the Policy Board when Tim Finchem and successor Monahan were named commissioner, and players voted on those positions.
They can do the same with amending their rules, which already restrict how often members can compete outside the PGA Tour, a restriction LIV believes it can defeat in litigation. Love said during Finchem’s long tenure, there were 267 rules changes to the tour’s operation, all but two of which came from player suggestions.
Love said tour players are increasingly frustrated by LIV’s approach and defended Monahan’s stance while acknowledging the threat is more serious than Love thought.
“It’s hard to not be reactionary to something that, when you’re blindsided, you are being reactionary. I told Jay a year ago – and you can ask him – I said, ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s not going to happen.’ I was completely dead wrong,” Love said.
“Six months ago, I told my own tournament (the RSM Classic), ‘Oh, don’t worry about it; not going to happen. Mickelson’s going down, but nobody else will jump ship.’
“So, I was wrong. I don’t know what’s going to happen from here on out, but I know it’s going to be a fight, and the players are getting more and more unified against it.”