‘War council’ to prepare response to LIV threat
The chief executives of the main tours and the leaders of the majors will meet at The Match in Florida next week to discuss the ever-rising threat of LIV Golf.
It will not just be the result of an encounter involving Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy that will be at stake, but perhaps the future of the elite professional male game itself.
As well as Jay Monahan and Keith Pelley, the heads of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour, R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers will also attend the Pelican Golf Club, along with Mike Whan, the chief executive of the United States Golf Association, and Seth Waugh, the chief executive of the PGA of America.
It is as yet unclear if Fred Ridley, the chairman of Augusta National, will also be at the upscale course near Clearwater, but with the other three majors all sending their top brass, the Masters may not want to miss out.
They will not be there to watch the 12-hole made-for-TV encounter featuring Woods and McIlroy versus Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas, but instead to draw up plans on how to respond to the Saudi-funded circuit.
The Greg Norman enterprise is due to announce its 2023 schedule soon, with the 14-event league set to tee off in Mexico in February. Norman has promised to announce the signing of more big names, to join the likes of Open champion Cameron Smith, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and Phil Mickelson.
The game’s landscape has been radically altered since LIV launched with its first £22 million event in St Albans in June and with the new campaign offering £335m in prize money alone — on top of up-front signing-on fees up to as much as £200m — the rebel set-up is clearly not going away.
Thus the formation of this golfing “War Council” that could signal the beginnings of a drive for a peace deal.
Woods and McIlroy have been vocal in their opposition to LIV. They gathered the top players to a summit at the BMW Championship in Delaware in August and this inspired Monahan to overhaul his schedule for 2023, increasing purses at selected tournaments to £16.5m on condition that the best performers appear. That was seen as an effective, if knee-jerk, solution to stop the talent drain, but the key factor remains how the majors will react.
Slumbers has pledged not to ban any LIV players from the Open, but has been vague concerning how difficult it will be for the defectors to qualify for Hoylake next July.
The same largely applies to the US Open and US PGA, while the Masters is also tight-lipped over whether it will impose any sanctions.
It could emerge that they want the tours to broker some sort of negotiation with LIV.
The Saudi overlords have been considering moving Norman upstairs and, two weeks ago, McIlroy said the Australian should “exit stage left”.
“No one’s going to talk unless there’s an adult in the room that can actually try to mend fences,” the world No 1 said.
Insiders have indicated that they believe it would be far more realistic to bring Monahan to the table with LIV, if Norman was out of the picture.
Considering the influence of Woods and McIlroy, it is no surprise to see this hush-hush confab being conducted in their presence, although the Northern Irishman is adamant he would not want to be involved.
“Frankly, I wouldn’t really want to be part of it [negotiations],” he said. “That would be for whoever the top people are. I’m a golfer and I’m trying to stick to that line of work.”
But for this exhibition, McIlroy has finished his competitive year.