LIV Golf vs the PGA TOUR: Round 2

In 2022, the unthinkable happened – Snow White got some mud on her dress.

After all these years of purity, innocence and beauty, believers of virtue, softness and high values and the wonderful Norman Rockwell images surrounding the PGA TOUR came crashing down. Everything fought for and won in 1968 when Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus supported a separation of the players from the PGA of America that brought such amicable growth within each entity was about to get stained. Now, the PGA TOUR, our honest, decent, boy-next-door PGA TOUR is wallowing around in the mud making threats, bullying people and acting childish. They have faced internal bickering before but never a challenge from an external force, particularly from a viable opponent. They have a perfect target: LIV, the creation of Saudi Arabia.

No right-minded person could ever condone the Saudi’s political platform but the opposition to a competitive rival shown by the PGA TOUR has nothing to do with Saudi politics. It has everything to do with competition, something the monopoly known as the PGA TOUR has had very little of.

There was a minor skirmish in 1974 over naming rights but it was settled without a shot being fired. However, in 1994, two of the marquee players, Greg Norman and Seve Ballesteros presented a plan to form a World Tour. It was their belief, and maybe rightly so as two of the feature attractions to all things related to media exposure at the time, that the best players should be paid the most money. They proposed to conduct a series of tournaments held the week before each major, plus four other events with fields limited to 30 or 40 players vying for monster purses.

Then PGA TOUR Commissioner Tim Fincham, who is current Commissioner Jay Monahan’s mentor, immediately declared they would not issue waivers for any player wishing to participate in a big payday played opposite a PGA TOUR event. This began an investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that has been on-again, and off-again for the past 30 years.

Why didn’t Fincham simply pick up the phone and ask Norman if there was some way the two could work together? Starting to sound familiar?

Other sports have a free agency where a player can ‘test’ their market value and choose to play for more money if he can get it. Maybe there was a way to accommodate eight or ten high purse tournaments played in places and on continents where golf is played very little. Instead of starting with a small field, suppose the field was reduced just as it is in the current playoffs? In fact, with the new designated events featuring limited fields, hasn’t Jay M built the exact blueprint Norman and Seve proposed 30 years ago?

I just read the other day that Adam Scott thinks a tour winner should get a bigger % of the purse. Gee, I wonder where he got that idea. Maybe he was watching YouTube one night and a tournament broke out in a field beside some roadside diner on Route 66 and the winner won $4M. Not only that, every player received money before they even teed off. What a concept!  Imagine, Tiger Woods, signing contracts for close to $100M before he hit his first ball in a professional competition. Or, Tom Brady signed for $15M guaranteed plus $15M/yr. Why would he even show up for practice? What could possibly motivate him to arrive at the stadium before any other player or coach to work out and study film?

Back to Adam Scott, this was an idea presented by Jack Nicklaus in the 1968 discussions. He thought a player should receive an extra bonus for winning because most players win so seldom, they should get a ‘big pot at the end of the rainbow’.

I’ve said many times “I am not a Saudi fan”! I am a free market fan. I am not a fan of guaranteed money but $25M, $50M, $100M have a certain ‘ring’ to them. I would rather return to the days of a tournament being an actual ‘open’. Let’s begin with 10,000 players competing in a series of play-offs held all around the world. Every field is reduced by 25% and as the fields get stronger the purses increase. Eventually, after a season-long gigantic elimination, we would arrive at one final 72-hole championship where the purse is $100M and the winner receives $50M. What a playoff that would be! First place, $50M and the Winner’s Belt to the Champion Golfer of the Year; second place $5M.

If LIV and the PGA TOUR are serious about helping to grow the game here is a path for them to do it in every country in the world and actually work together. They can probably pay for it with their savings from legal fees.