How will the PGA Tour further react to the Premier Golf and Super Golf Leagues?
MORRI: This is perhaps the most complex question facing the professional game and without doubt the one with the greatest long-term ramifications.
News late last year that the Tour had granted releases – with conditions – to those players wanting to tee up at the Saudi International in February may be a clue to their long-term strategy.
The thinking seems to be that if they can make it as inconvenient as possible for players to take the Saudi money, perhaps the players will opt to simply not take it.
Those who are playing this year’s Saudi International opposite the Pebble Beach event will only be able to do so if they commit to playing the Pebble Beach event in future to make up for it.
That might be an eective strategy for the short term but if the Saudis put together a calendar of events rather than just a handful of tournaments, it will quickly lose its bite.
In boxing terms, round one has only just started in this bout and the two combatants are still feeling each other out.
We have seen a couple of exploratory jabs but the real heavy hitting is yet to get underway and how that plays out is a complete unknown.
HUGGAN: The PGA Tour will do what it always does. It will act in a way that is 100 percent beneficial to its own interests, the rest of golf and the world be damned. So, if the “threat” emanating from Saudi Arabia increases during 2022, the attitude of Commissioner Jay Monahan and his army of blue-blazered cohorts will surely harden. Should any of the game’s bigger names indicate a wish to make the jump to Middle Eastern riches, look for the subsequent sanctions – up to and including bans from PGA Tour events – to become ever-more draconian. This is almost certainly going to get really nasty folks.