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It’s time for another update on the lack of progress of the proposed merger between the PGA Tour and the Saudi-backed LIV Golf group.
LIV Golf will conclude its third season (has it really been that long?) this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at the Maradoe Golf Club in the north Dallas suburb of Carrollton, Texas. The final event of 2024 will be the culmination of LIV Golf’s year-long 4-man team competition.
Meet Team LIV
In my opinion, the most interesting differentiating factor about LIV Golf has been the team competition. In addition to the golfer’s individual score at LIV events, each player is part of a four-man team which also competes for significant weekly prize money.
Beginning Friday, the opening round of the LIV Golf Team competition will bring ten of the 13 teams (4 players each) to play individual matches and foursome matches.
On Saturday, the #1 seeded team named the Crushers (captained by US Open champion Bryson DeChambeau) will take to the course along with #2 seed Legion XIII (Jon Rahm) and #3 seed Ripper GC (Cameron Smith) to face the highest seeded winner from the Friday matches.
On Sunday, the four surviving teams will play individual one-on-one matches in the semifinals and finals.
The CW app will have the Friday matches. The Saturday and Sunday matches will be televised nationally on the CW Network beginning at 11AM CDT.
Meet Team PGA
In June, 2023 (15 months ago), the PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan surprised professional golf by stating that the PGA Tour was going to merge with their upstart new rival, LIV Golf, by no later than December 31, 2023.
Oops! That deadline passed with no deal in sight.
Then in late January, 2024, the PGA Tour announced a new financial partnership with a private equity firm called Strategic Sports Group (SSG). The company will invest up to $3 billion into the PGA Tour. That group includes the owners of the Boston Red Sox, New York Mets, and Milwaukee Brewers baseball teams along with Arthur Blank, owner of the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons.
A new for-profit entity called PGA Tour Enterprises was born. The new group is promising to set aside up to $1.5 billion for PGA golfers to participate in becoming equity partners in the venture.
The top PGA players will receive a yet-to-be-determined share of the new company as an incentive not to leave for LIV Golf.
What happened to the proposed merger?
Talks have been slow and featured very little common ground. There’s no urgency being felt by either side.
LIV Golf has already spent several billion dollars and will never turn a profit. The Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) apparently doesn’t care, though. With billions of dollars in oil profits, the Saudi group has effectively purchased sports notoriety on the world stage.
The 54 LIV golfers have accepted various degrees of signing bonus money to jump from the PGA Tour to the new league. Though bonuses were generally in the $10-$20 million range (not exactly chump change), a few of the top names have pocketed $100 million and more. The 2023 World #1 golfer, Jon Rahm, bagged the largest signing bonus worth $300 million before jumping to LIV Golf in 2024.
The PGA Tour (which was a not-for-profit organization until earlier this year) has now found its own “Sugar Daddy” in the Strategic Sports Group. The PGA Tour players have already benefited from higher tournament payouts in 2023 and 2024. Due to the competition for top players, the PGA Tour golfers are earning significantly more money today after LIV Golf hit the scene three years ago.
The PGA Tour knows that LIV Golf’s finances are virtually limitless. The established PGA group won’t admit that it is scared, but LIV Golf will be able to continue to pilfer more top talent away from the PGA Tour by offering the right price to the right golfer at the right time.
From the golfer’s viewpoint, a bad back or other injury could end your professional golf career next week. Why shouldn’t a golfer consider a new place to work offering guaranteed signing bonus money? Though some leading PGA stars may say “No, thanks”, others say, “Where do I sign?”
Didn’t LIV Golf and the PGA Tour groups just meet again last week? What is the problem now?
LIV Golf
LIV Golf players want their tournament finishes to receive credit toward the Official World Golf Ranking points. The OWGR currently fails to give LIV golfers any points for competing in their events – presumably because LIV plays just 54 holes instead of 72 holes on the PGA Tour.
As of September 19, 2024, the Official World Golf Rankings show the top rated LIV golfer to be #10 Bryson DeChambeau (winner of the 2024 US Open) with 2023’s #1 golfer, Jon Rahm, falling all the way back to #15 this week.
Jon Rahm didn’t play poorly in 2024. His debut season with LIV Golf featured two victories and never finishing out of the top ten in any tournament. Rahm earned $16.7 million for the season plus an $18 million bonus for finishing #1.
So why did Jon Rahm did fall from #1 in the world golf rankings last year (while on the PGA Tour) to #15th a year later? The ranking system is broken and must be addressed immediately.
PGA Tour
Today, the PGA Tour clarified a way for current LIV golfers to become eligible for the next Ryder Cup which is scheduled to be played in September, 2025 at Beth Page Black Golf Course in the New York City area.
The LIV golfers will be required to obtain and maintain what the PGA Tour calls an “A-3” type of membership. The annual dues are only $120 per year.
The PGA of America issued a statement saying, “To ensure the PGA Championship will continue to deliver the strongest field in golf and that the U.S. Ryder Cup team will continue to have access to the best American players, the PGA of America board has determined that LIV Golf players will be eligible for both.”
Next year’s U.S. Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley loves this.
“I’m going to have the best 12 players,” said Bradley recently. “We’ll make sure if some of those guys that we think might make the team, we’ll make sure that they are a member.”
Otherwise, the PGA Tour players remain adamant about not allowing golfers who bolted for LIV Golf (with a bank full of signing bonus money) to return to their tour. PGA Tour golfers want to establish some rules to make it difficult (financially) for those golfers to return to their tour.
Golf Fans
All-but-forgotten in this PGA Tour vs. LIV Golf drama are golf fans like us.
Our support will determine the future success or failure of professional golf – whether the PGA Tour, LIV Golf, both, or neither.
Most golf fans want to encourage growth of the game beginning at the junior level as this is a lifelong sport. That means that professional golf needs a place for young talent to be seen on national television competing against the established stars.
Golf fans prefer to see the top professional golfers playing at the same events as often as possible. At the moment, that generally only occurs at the four majors.
LIV Golf’s reduced schedule allows for nearly all of their best players to show-up for fans at each tournament. The PGA Tour should develop a better idea to get their top 50 golfers to appear in the field at the majority of its tournaments.
Most golf fans would agree that the PGA Tour has too many weekly events with watered-down fields.
Personally, I like LIV Golf’s smaller fields and team competitions.
SwampSwami’s Solutions:
1. With so little common ground at the moment, it is time to end the PGA Tour / LIV Golf merger talks.
The LIV Golf players will not (and should not) return their signing bonus money as part of any future deal. Believe it or not, some top PGA Tour players expect that to happen. It won’t. This is a dead issue.
The Saudi-backed LIV Golf group cannot be outspent by the PGA Tour. The PGA Tour needs to operate within its own economics and continue to nurture a golf pipeline for its young stars, loyal veteran players, and seniors (as being done today).
Let LIV Golf find its own way on the world stage. There appears to be enough room for both major golf groups to satisfy fans in the US, Europe, and around the world.
2. LIV Golf is being severely penalized by having its events omitted from the Official World Golf Rankings. The OWGR system influences the eligibility for golfers to receive future invitations to play in the four major golf tournaments plus the biennial Ryder Cup and President Cup matches.
The current system is broken. If the Official World Golf Rankings fail to make changes to their current system prior to December 31, 2024, representatives from LIV Golf and the PGA Tour should come up with their own ranking system to be used going forward.
Here’s an idea. The current 54-hole LIV Golf tournaments would count for 75% of the points won during a traditional 72-hole PGA Tour event. This gives a PGA Tour player more credit for a playing 18 additional holes against a larger starting field.
Bonus hint – The PGA Tour might even want to consider reducing some or all of their tournaments to 54-holes in the future with smaller fields.
3. Golf fans want to see a new “PGA Tour vs. LIV Golf Challenge Match” event styled after the Ryder Cup. Perhaps a team event would be played on Day 1 with a singles (individual) competition happening on Day 2.
A joint committee from both tours should select the venue and playing dates. I think this event should be held on the Saturday and Sunday on the weekend prior to the NFL Super Bowl (early February) for maximum visibility. It would also avoid conflict with September’s Ryder Cup and President’s Cup events every fall.
The event would feature a “Winner takes (nearly) all” purse with the winning team receiving no less than 75% of the total prize money. Players on the losing team would receive a guaranteed minimum amount sufficient to cover expenses and some compensation for participation.
Along with the player payout, a matching dollar amount (provided by a national sponsor, perhaps) on behalf of each player (both teams) could be donated to the designated charity(s) of each participant.
The 2024 golf season ends on Sunday. Let’s hope that both sides will resolve a few of these matters before teeing-up again in 2025.