Travelers welcomes PGA Tour at time of divisive golf controversy

The Travelers Championship, a major driver for charities and a magnet for star power like no other sports event in state history, has long been about capitalizing on professional golf ’s momentum and creating some locally.

“New England is very specific with its seasons and I love our date in June because there is a natural element of excitement,” tournament director Nathan Grube said. “School is finishing up. Families are thinking about vacation. Summer in New England is incredible. And we have the U.S. Open right up the road, so everybody is thinking about golf.”

The Open finishes Sunday in Brookline, Mass., and on Monday many of the world’s top players will begin arriving in Cromwell. Our state’s annual PGA Tour event runs Thursday-Sunday at TPC River Highlands and, per usual, it is built on one of the strongest fields on the tour schedule.

But the tournament, this time around, is also squished into an international conversation about the future of professional golf. Several high-profile PGA Tour players, a few with rich ties to Travelers Championship history, have already resigned from, or been suspended from, the PGA Tour with their decision to play LIV Golf, a controversial Saudibacked rival tour that held its first tournament last week in London.

So while the sun is shining brightly on the Travelers championship, there is a black cloud of confusion hanging over the sport.

Discussion of further fragmentation — of LIV Golf and the potential for more defecting PGA Tour players — and of fallout over time for events like the Travelers, now shifts to Cromwell. Many vocal figures are in the field.

Rory McIlroy, world No. 3, will play at River Highlands. He has become one of the most outspoken critics of LIV, and one of the most ardent supporters of the PGA Tour.

“Because, in my opinion, it’s the right thing to do,” McIlroy said this week during a press conference at the U.S. Open. “The PGA Tour was created by … the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer. They created something and worked hard for something, and I hate to see all the players that came before us and all the hard work that they’ve put in just come out to be nothing.”

World No. 5 Justin Thomas will also play the Travelers.

“If more go [to LIV], it’s just sad,” Thomas said, also at the U.S. Open. “The people that have gone, they have the decision that they’re entitled to make. Not necessarily that I agree with it one way or the other, but everything has got a price, I guess. Like I’ve said from the beginning, it’s astronomical money that they’re throwing at people. Everybody has a price for everything. … There’s going to be some kind of number that’s going to get people to think about it, and they’re reaching that number with a lot of people.”

The PGA Tour isn’t necessarily fighting for its life. It is, however, fighting for preservation of what it has become and represented since it began operating separately from the PGA of America in 1968.

The tour last week suspended 17 players — including Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Sergio Garcia — who were lured to LIV by its unique scheduling and competitive structure and, more than anything, its appearance fees and purses.

Mickelson has reportedly been paid $200 million, and Johnson $125 million, just for agreeing to play LIV events. Charl Schwartzel pocketed $4 million as last week’s winner individual winner in London. There is no cut in 54-hole LIV events, which also feature team competitions, and last week’s lastplace finisher, Andy Ogletree, won $120,000.

PGA Tour events reward far less. The Travelers purse, for instance, is $8.3 million, with the champion winning $1.494 million. So with another lucrative option for the sport’s top players, every PGA Tour event, the Travelers Championship included, must be mindful that player pools could shrink if LIV gains further traction.

Bryson DeChambeau committed to play the Travelers June 6 only to withdraw eight days later, citing his intention to join LIV. Johnson was the 2020 Travelers winner and has played the event five times. Mickelson, the Canon Greater Hartford Open champion in 2001 and 2002, has played in Cromwell eight times, including the past three years. Mickelson said this week he will play all eight LIV events this year, and all 10 next year.

No player is more synonymous with the Travelers Championship than threetime champion Bubba Watson, the three-time champion who has played the past 14 years. Watson is currently out with a knee injury and numerous reports indicate that, when healthy, he is likely to play LIV.

In a letter to tour players announcing the suspensions, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan wrote, “I am certain our fans and partners — who are surely tired of all this talk of money, money and more money — will continue to be entertained and compelled by the worldclass competition you display each and every week, where there are true consequences for every shot you take and your rightful place in history whenever you reach that elusive winner’s circle.”

Scheduling complications and players declining are part of a golf tournament’s business model. But if the PGA Tour continues to ban players who choose to play LIV events — and maybe this is something that ultimately winds up in court — putting together attractive fields could become more complicated.

“I always have something against my calendar that is vying for the players’ attention,” Grube said, noting that player withdrawals, European Tour events and other circumstances always keep event fields fluid until the balls are teed up. “You’re never going to get every guy. When I look at the discussion in the world of golf right now about another playing opportunity for people — what they are going to choose to do — we deal with that every year. Then I look at, OK, with all those other playing opportunities that are out there, what has it done to us? What it’s done is, we have four of the top five players in the world, we have six of the top 10, we have 12 of the top 20. We have one of the strongest fields we’ve ever had.”

The LIV debate is centered on morals as much as money — or the tug-o-war between the two.

LIV Golf is financed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which is controlled by the country’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. U.S. intelligence has claimed that bin Salman was behind the 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Also, a 9/11 survivors group recently sent a letter to several golfers, Mickelson included, expressing outrage at their decision to play for LIV golf. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.

“I would say to everyone that has lost loved ones, lost friends on 9/11 that I have deep, deep empathy for them,” Mickelson said at the U.S. Open. “I can’t emphasize that enough. I have the deepest of sympathy and empathy for them.”

Mickelson has been at the heart of the LIV debate for months. He took several months off from golf after comments he made to Alan Shipnuck, the author of a Mickelson biography, went public in February.

“They’re scary motherf——— to get involved with,” Mickelson said about Saudi Arabia. “We know they killed Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-alifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.”

The PGA Tour, Mickelson went on to say, has “been able to get by with manipulative, coercive, strong-arm tactics because we, the players, had no recourse. As nice a guy as [Monahan] comes across as, unless you have leverage, he won’t do what’s right. And the Saudi money has finally given us that leverage.”

LIV Golf is headed by Greg Norman, a World Golf Hall of Famer and two-time British Open champion. His victory at the 1995 Greater Hartford Open is among his 20 PGA Tour career victories.

McIlroy, who won his 21st tour even last week at the Canadian Open, this week discussed his legacy and that of the tour, noting its impact on society.

“If you put all the other major sporting organizations in this country — NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL — their charitable dollars combined, the PGA TOUR has raised twice as much as that in their history,” he said. “That is a massive legacy and something that I don’t think people talk enough about, so when you are talking about the tour and everything that’s happening right now, you have to see the bigger picture than just the golf, and I think I’ve tried to take a wider view of everything, and I just think it’s the right thing to do.”

Last year’s Travelers Championship raised $2.2 million for 125 charities. Since Travelers became the sponsor in 2007, the event has raised $22.5 million for more than 800 charities.

Last year’s charity money is expected to be matched, perhaps surpassed, this year, Grube said. Ticket sales are tracking ahead of 2019. The Travelers was one of the first professional events held — without fans and sponsors on site — when the sports world began to come back to life in June 2020. Last year, tournament attendance was capped at 10,000 a day.

This year represents a return to normal, even if it comes with a distraction.

“We are going to have an incredibly successful year in the midst of all these other conversations going on,” said Grube, tournament director since 2005. “So when it comes to how that all impacts us, it hasn’t really impacted us. If anything, what it’s done has put a microscope on what is the difference between the PGA Tour and what else is going on out there. I like what you see. I like the community impact. I like the charity. I like the volunteer aspect. And when people get to see what a PGA Tour event is and what it means in your market, that’s massive. That is a pretty special thing.”

John Minchillo / AP Mickelson