PGA Tour commissioner defends new merger
PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan believes the agreement between the tour, DP World Tour and the Saudi-financed Public Investment Fund (PIF), which finances LIV Golf will only prove beneficial to unify the game in the coming years.
“I’m confident we’ve done something that’s in the best interest of our sport and ultimately in the best interest of PGA Tour members,” Monahan told The Golf Channel on Wednesday afternoon.
But it’s how we have arrived at this point that still has the golfers, the tour’s stakeholders and the fan base at large still reeling after Tuesday’s landmark decision to try and bring back together a fractured sport.
The unification will allow the PIF to reinvest in the game and get a seat at the table with the PGA Tour. Rory McIlroy, one of the most outspoken tour players against LIV Golf, said it was “hard for me not to sit up here (during a press conference) and not feel somewhat like a sacrificial lamb.” but he has come to terms with the Saudi-backed PIF being involved the game of golf.
“Honestly, I’ve resigned myself to the fact this is what’s going to happen. It’s very hard to keep up with people that have more money than anyone else. If they want to put that money into the game of golf, then why don’t we partner with them and make sure it is done in the right way,” said McIlroy at the Canadian Open, where he is the defending champion.
McIlroy, who is scheduled to play in the Travelers Championship in Cromwell in two weeks, said he got a heads-up Tuesday morning before the announcement.
That included the tour players, who met with Monahan at the Canadian Open later Tuesday. It was a hotly-contested meeting where Monahan, was reportedly called, among other things, a hypocrite.
At the 2022 Travelers Championship, when Monahan was announcing future plans for the tour that included having limited fields at no-cut events for the top players — now referred to as designated events — he said:
“When someone attempts to buy the sport, dismantle the institutions that are intrinsically invested in its growth, and focus only on a personal priority, that partnership evaporates, and instead we end up with one person, one entity, using endless amounts of money to direct employees, not members or partners, toward their personal goal.”
Monahan, who graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, made another ominous statement last June at the Travelers: “The
PGA Tour, an American institution, can’t compete with a foreign monarchy that is spending billions of dollars in an attempt to buy the game of golf.”
Over the course of the last several weeks, shrouded in secrecy, a merger was reached. Monahan will be the new CEO of the merger and the PGA Tour will control where the PIF’s money is reinvested in the game.
“What I tried to do is in every single moment with the information that I had and my knowledge of where things stand try and make the best decisions and communicate those decisions to the membership,” Monahan said on the Golf Channel Wednesday. “As we sit here today, I understand the criticism I’m receiving around the hypocrisy and me being hypocritical given my commentary and my actions over the last
couple of years as we went forward and we reached a compromise that was obviously one of my great considerations, any hypocrisy I have to own, nobody else, that’s on me.”
Said McIlroy: “I said it to Jay yesterday. ‘You galvanized everyone against something and that thing you galvanized against, you’ve now partnered with.’ … It is hypocritical. It sounds hypocritical.”
The PGA Tour is expected to remain a 501(c) (6) tax-exempt organization and Monahan will be the CEO of the yet-to-benamed alliance. Also, the lawsuits that the PGA Tour and LIV Tour had against each other were dropped.
The creation of LIV Golf helped lead to the designated events for this season, which includes the Travelers Championship this year. Currently, the top seven players in the world rankings, including McIlroy at No. 3, are scheduled to tee it up at TPC River Highlands June 22-25.
“We’re planning on delivering another worldclass Travelers Championship, which starts in 13 days,” the Travelers Championship said in a statement Tuesday after the agreement was announced. “There’s not much we can say about the PGA Tour announcement this morning, as we are still learning more about what it means for everyone involved. Soon, we’ll be hosting the world’s best golfers, generating millions of dollars for charity, and creating the experience our community and New England golf fans expect and deserve. That’s where our focus lies right now.”
Andy Bessette, the chief administrative officer and executive vice president for Travelers, said last month that he felt “really good” that the Travelers would be a designated event in 2024.
Monahan told The Golf Channel that the next time he expects to speak publicly on the topic will likely be no later than the week of the Travelers Championship. He said the 2024 PGA Tour schedule is expected to be announced “in the coming weeks.”
Also part of that agreement is that those golfers who defected to the LIV Tour, including reigning PGA Championship winner Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickeson Dustin Johnson and Cameron Smith, will have an opportunity to reapply for the PGA Tour membership following the conclusion of the 2023 season. All LIV golfers had been banned from playing the PGA Tour.
But the process may not be an easy one, McIlroy said.
“There still has to be consequences to actions. People who left the PGA Tour irreparably harmed this tour, started litigation against it,” McIlroy said. “We can’t just welcome them back in. That’s not going to happen. That’s the one thing Jay was trying to get across yesterday.”
Monahan kept on going back to his original point, how this decision will have very good ramifications for golf years down the road — even if there are more questions than answers in the immediate aftermath of the agreement.
“No question yesterday was a setback. I’ve had setbacks before,” Monahan said. “In terms of rebuilding the trust, it starts with conversations we had through the night last night (and) here in the morning, talking to players and explaining to them this deal and how it is a great outcome for every PGA Tour member and the game. I don’t expect everybody to understand it right off the bat. This is going to take some time.”