The golf world, once a place of civility, whispers and etiquette has suddenly been turned on its head. If you thought the Ryder Cup celebration at The Country Club in 1999 following a mile and a half made Justin Leonard putt was disruptive, then what LIV Golf has done is nothing short of an eighteen hole tsunami. The closest golfers usually get to a courtroom are when they try to set up a tee time with the local judge who happens to be in their foursome.
But now, we have Jay Monahan of the PGA Tour and Keith Pelley of the DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour) on one side and Greg Norman and eleven LIV and now suspended PGA Tour players on the other side. The battle lines have been drawn and the dispute appears to headed to court as the players have filed an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour. We're not talking about the Joel Dahmen's and Beau Hossler's here, but instead they're the likes of Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau, players with 77 Tour victories and nine major championships between just the three of them.
On the one hand, this dispute between the established Tours and LIV appears to be somewhat complex, especially when considering that the source of the funding is Saudi Arabia. We've heard talk of human rights violations, appearance money instead of purses distributed on the basis of performance and even that the startup is somehow damaging the integrity of the game.
In order to keep this piece to a length that won't require the consumption of a meal while reading it, I'll try to be brief on my take on the entire dispute. First of all, the PGA Tour is comprised of players who are all independent contractors, as much as the Tour would like to think differently. With the exception of the four World Golf Championship events that don't have a cut, thus guaranteeing players a minimum payday, a player has to make it to the weekend to be compensated for that event.
If a player doesn't finish in the top 125 in FedEx Cup points at the end of the season, they lose their fully exempt status on the Tour. If they finish outside the top 200, they basically lose all status whatsoever. So these guys have travel expenses, caddies, coaches and whoever else they wish to employ, with no guaranteed money outside of any sponsorships or exhibition pay they might be able to negotiate. None of that, however, comes courtesy of the PGA Tour or any of its 45 or so events.
Then along comes LIV Golf, which is offering some players more than $100 million over several years to participate in their Tour. Now let's take Dustin Johnson as an example. He's been on Tour for 15 years with 24 victories, including a pair of major championships. Johnson's career earnings on Tour stand at just under $75 million. He signed with LIV for at least $125 million, and that's in addition to any tournament winnings he amasses with his play on the course. At the time he was suspended from the PGA Tour, he'd earned $1.6 million in the current season.
In last week's LIV event in Bedminster, New Jersey, Johnson finished second in the individual competition and he was a member of the winning team, handing the 38 year old a total paycheck for the week of just over $2.5 million. That brought his total LIV winnings to over $5.2 million, and that's for playing 54 hole events with no cut. The winner of the event, Henrik Stenson, won $4 million individually and another $750,000 for his team's second place finish. Stenson was forced out as the European Ryder Cup captain after signing with LIV.
To say it's all about the money would probably be accurate, although some players have also expressed that part of their motivation was the way they've been treated by the PGA Tour. Don't get me wrong. Many of these players have been highly compensated for years and I'm not painting any of them as lacking financially. Nonetheless, guaranteed money, shorter golf tournaments, a team component and bigger purses all add up to a huge incentive for players to make the jump. After all, even though they're competitors, golf is a business and it's their livelihood.
What's interesting about this situation is that shortly following the inception of the LIV season and in response to the continuing exodus of players from the PGA and DP World Tours, the PGA Tour announced big changes to the Tour schedule, tournament formats and purse sizes. They've increased the number of events without a cut and radically raised purse levels for a number of tournaments. For an organization that wanted to stand by the "don't make the cut, don't get paid mantra", it smacks somewhat of hypocrisy.
I'm no legal expert, but when a non-profit organization suspends or kicks out independent contractors who get no guarantees on a week to week or season to season basis, it would appear the PGA Tour has a pretty thin case. In conversations with a longtime friend who also spent his career in the golf business, it doesn't make a lot of sense for the Tours to suspend these players for simply pursuing a living. LIV Golf could easily have coexisted with the PGA and DP World Tours. Both of those organizations have minimum participation requirements in order to retain membership.
LIV golfers could have chosen to play the minimum number of Tour events while still participating in LIV tournaments. The goal of LIV, as explained this week on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" during interviews with Norman and DeChambeau, is to bring a different type of fan experience to the sport. It's as if TopGolf suddenly came to a country club near you. Now the PGA and DP World Tours simply look jealous and vindictive, and may very well lose in court or need to come up with some compromise to avoid legal embarrassment.
There are still some issues around how long LIV Golf may survive, especially without a television contract or Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) points awarded for tournament play. The earliest OWGR points could be granted would be July of 2024, so even if the other bodies such as the PGA of America, the USGA and the Masters allow LIV golfers to play in their major events, it's doubtful they can qualify, except for the players who have exemptions already in place.
Where will this go? My prediction, and if you've ever seen my football prognostication, could be spot on or wildly inaccurate. I am guessing that LIV could end up going the way of the original USFL, while many of the new ideas generated finding their way to the major Tours. They already have to an extent. I find it hard to believe that top players, despite the money, will want to be on the outside looking in when it comes time for the Masters, the PGA Championship, the U.S. Open and the Open Championship.
What's really interesting is that a victory in court for the players could actually end up being the best thing to happen to the PGA and DP World Tours. It would mean they would retain the top players for many of their events, making it more difficult for LIV Golf to gain additional traction. I believe the players will prevail and the Tours will work out some sort of compromise with LIV Golf to return civility to the game.
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