Editor’s note: “In Case You Missed It” is a GGP+ feature that highlights a story from Global Golf Post‘s Monday magazine.
LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA | Remember the good old days, just five years ago, when the biggest question facing men’s professional golf was whether hoodies were appropriate golf course attire?
Scottie Scheffler had never won a PGA Tour event. AimPoint was still a curiosity. The world thought foam hole inserts could save golfers from COVID-19.
And the PGA Tour was where anyone with enough game wanted to play their golf.
Though there are a few contrarians who insist otherwise, it’s still that way, though nowadays it means dealing with Scheffler on a regular basis which is like betting against the house in Vegas.
More than at any time in the nearly four years since LIV Golf crashed the party with its money and moxie there is reason to believe that the men’s professional game is close to shaking hands and starting, if not over, at least starting fresh.
For those of us of a certain age, it brings to mind the Beach Boys.
Wouldn’t it be nice.
When PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan last week provided an upbeat update on the status of the tour’s ongoing negotiations with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and the tour’s schmoozing of President Trump in hopes of streamlining any potential antitrust snags within the U.S. Department of Justice, Monahan reiterated the obvious but with more conviction than any time before.
Here’s how a portion of Monahan’s stand-up session with the media went at Torrey Pines, site of last week’s Genesis Invitational:
Monahan: “When you talk about reunification, that’s all the best players in the world competing with each other and against each other.”
Media: “More than four times a year?”
Monahan: “Correct. If you think about what the fans want, the fans want reunification. That’s what we’re focused on. We’ve operated in a world where there’s more than one (tour) and the PGA Tour has performed very well. But in the long run, is that the best thing for fans? Is that the best thing for the game?
“We’re trying to solve it so everybody benefits.”
The biggest beneficiary needs to be the PGA Tour and it seems likely to work out that way. The tour is the actual and the aspirational place for the best players in the world, having built decades of equity with fans, sponsors and players. When you think of men’s professional golf, you think of the PGA Tour.
There are business aspects to consider and a restructuring of both tours to be sure. It’s reasonable to assume that the foundation of an agreement has been determined and now it’s a matter of working through the details.
LIV’s audacity and access to money fractured the game and while it seems to have settled into a tenuous coexistence, both sides stand to gain by reunification.
Rory McIlroy, once a fierce critic of players who abandoned the PGA Tour for LIV, now plays golf with an olive branch.
“Having Bryson DeChambeau come back and play on this tour is good,” McIlroy said last week, cutting to the heart of the matter.
DeChambeau. Brooks Koepka. Jon Rahm.
There are business aspects to consider and a restructuring of both tours to be sure. It’s reasonable to assume that the foundation of an agreement has been determined and now it’s a matter of working through the details.
That can’t be easy. The tour is still determining how to invest the $1.5 billion provided by the Strategic Sports Group for PGA Tour Enterprises. It’s a nice problem to have but it speaks to the scope of the process.
What fans want – and the tour continues to point to the results of its 50,000-person Fan Forward survey as a guiding light – is to see more golf, played more quickly and with the best players together.
McIlroy suggested last week that it’s possible some LIV players could play PGA Tour events as early as next year once the deal gets to the finish line. That would put a smile on Rahm’s bearded face.
Asked directly about that, Monahan played coy.
“If we respond to what our fans are telling us, we put together the best, the strongest possible schedule and product, to me all that will resolve itself,” the commissioner said.
Read another way, so you’re saying there’s a chance …
For all the hand-wringing about television ratings earlier this year, the tour is on a nice roll. McIlroy winning at Pebble Beach – when the NFL was taking the weekend off and golf ratings surged – was the perfect combination of person and place. Phoenix is magnetic regardless of the leaderboard. So is watching the best in the world at Torrey Pines.
Both the USGA and the R&A have created pathways for LIV players into their respective Opens. The arrival of Scott O’Neil as LIV’s new CEO has been greeted enthusiastically, including from Monahan, who got a call from LIV’s new boss on the day he officially replaced Greg Norman.
While the exodus of top players to LIV did serious damage to the PGA Tour, it also forced change that has ultimately benefited those who stayed, especially the top players. Five years ago, the purse for the Genesis Invitational was $9.3 million. This year, 72 players were playing for a $20 million purse.
“I earn more money now than I did in 2019 and if LIV hadn’t have come around, I don’t know if I would have been able to say that,” McIlroy said.
“I think everyone’s just got to get over it and we all have to say OK, this is the starting point and we move forward. We don’t look behind us, we don’t look to the past,” McIlroy added later.
“Whatever’s happened has happened and it’s been unfortunate, but reunification, how we all come back together and move forward, that’s the best thing for everyone.” – Rory McIlroy
That didn’t sit well with Johnson Wagner, the former tour winner who now does television commentary. He fired back that sponsors and television are not thriving the way McIlroy may be and suggested McIlroy needs to look beyond himself.
McIlroy’s point was bringing the game back together is in everyone’s best interest.
What does reunification ultimately look like?
Maybe some players who went to LIV apply for reinstatement on the PGA Tour with many contracts set to end after this LIV season. Several who left for LIV would have to play their way onto the tour like anyone else and may not want to try.
LIV seems intent on continuing into the future but Monahan made it clear that he sees a world where there’s just one primary tour. If that means welcoming back players who took LIV’s money and letting them have a shot at the tour’s new money, so be it.
“Whatever’s happened has happened and it’s been unfortunate, but reunification, how we all come back together and move forward, that’s the best thing for everyone,” McIlroy said.
“If people are butthurt or have their feelings hurt because guys went or whatever, like who cares? Let’s move forward together and let’s just try to get this thing going again and do what’s best for the game.”