The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

PGA Tour chief says designated events aren’t copying LIV

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Fresh off a seven-hour board meeting that reshaped the PGA Tour’s future, Commission­er Jay Monahan was standing in a breezeway at Bay Hill last week when Adam Hadwin walked by and asked him what was coming.

Monahan assured him there would be good news on the way. “For everyone?” Hadwin asked. Monahan put some of those concerns to rest Tuesday that radical changes to the schedule would create a divide among the stars who play in small fields for big money and everyone else.

And he took exception to the notion that the PGA Tour copied Saudi-funded LIV Golf by having 11 designated tournament­s that don’t have a cut.

“Do you think we really look the same?” Monahan said. “The players that are competing in our events in this new format next year will have earned the right to compete in them.”

Still to be determined are eight of the designated events that will offer a $20 million purse with a field of no more than 80 players. Jack Nicklaus said two weeks ago that Pebble Beach would be one of them, and the tour has said events with tournament hosts — Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods — would be among them.

Monahan pointed to a signature difference to LIV Golf, which has 48 players who make up 12 teams for the entire season. He said every PGA Tour member would be able to gain access to elite events by competing in all the other tournament­s.

“The model right now would suggest that roughly a little north of 60% of the players in the top 50 will retain their position, so more than a third will not,” monahan said.

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