Golf facing World Tour breakaway
Fore play: Saudis to pump $1b into competition
Golf’s biggest names, including world No 1 Dustin Johnson and England’s Justin Rose, have received contracts worth up to $140 million to play in a breakaway World Tour that has forced them to choose between Saudi money and the PGA Tour and perhaps even The Masters and Ryder Cup.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monagan warned the would-be rebels they face an instant suspension and a lifetime ban.
The mandatory players meeting at Quail Hollow fell silent as the audience took in the seismic consequences. While the majority considered the Premier Golf League (PGL) to be dead in the water after significant Tour efforts to kill the idea, formal offers worth $40m to $70m up front are being mulled over by 11 players, including — alongside Johnson and Rose — Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Henrik Stenson, Adam Scott and Rickie Fowler. The cash may total $1 billion.
Phil Mickelson has purportedly been offered $140m as the de facto head of the rebels.
The Saudis are not taking “no” for an answer and have indicated they are intending to start their circuit in September 2022.
Similar to the Super League and European football, the news has caused huge shockwaves throughout a sport that believed Monahan had already effectively blown away the proposed revolution.
Last northern hemisphere autumn, when the PGL went to the European Tour with what Keith Pelley, the Tour chief executive, described at the time as “a very compelling offer to take the Tour to another level but in a different direction”, Monahan moved quickly and supposedly decisively.
A “strategic alliance” was formed with the PGA Tour buying an estimated $125m stake in the media arm of its European counterpart.
Monahan also set up an annual $55m “Player Impact Programme” which does not reward the pros for results inside the ropes but rather for how much positive publicity they garner in the media and through social media. The top players had thus been assuaged in their belief that they were due a bigger slice of the pot than the rank and file.
Yet, it seems, the demise of the PGL has been greatly exaggerated. It is thought that as well as an initial fortune, the contracts offer half a share in their “teams”. Each of these team leaders would be joined by three other players in the 48-man fields and the prize money would be, in the words of one insider, “astronomical” in 18 worldwide events.
However, Monahan empathically re-emphasised it would come at a seismic cost to their careers.