The topic won’t go away.
How will the PGA Tour handle the new Saudi Arabian-backed Super Golf League, which recently announced it plans to start this year and possibly have events in the United States.
Even the Tour players themselves are keeping it in the spotlight. Last week in Phoenix, Tour players Charley Hoffman made a post on Instagram after getting penalized and implied that penalties like the one he was called for — the ball on a dropped penalty shot rolled into a hazard — were among the reasons players were looking to jump to another league.
That just made all of the noise even louder in Phoenix than on No. 16. And it’s still reverberating.
At Riviera this week on the tour, multiple players have been asked about it. For example, Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm have said they’re where they want to be, while Adam Scott left the door open. Tiger Woods spoke in favor of the PGA Tour.
At the Chubb Classic, the PGA Tour Champions event this week in Naples, the 50-and-over players aren’t in the marketplace the Super Golf League — which is led by CEO Greg Norman of LIV Golf Investments — would be looking at.
“I don’t think they’re knocking on anyone’s door out here,” said Jim Furyk, the tour’s Rookie of the Year last year, jokingly. “I haven’t had any contact.”
But if the chance to make millions, with no cut so basically appearance fees, and playing in 40-player fields were brought up while these guys were in their 30s, for example, well …
“$150 million is generational money,” Jerry Kelly said. “That’ll make you think.”
Not for him, though.
“This is the dream,” he said of playing on the PGA Tour and Champions. “I don’t think, I’m not saying this, I don’t know, but if I got $150 million to go play I just don’t know how much I’d feel in here (pointing to his chest) about playing. You see guys sign big contracts and have a hard time actually drumming up the adrenaline and playing.”
All of the negatives associated with Saudi Arabia, from its treatment of women to possible ties to the 9/11 terrorist attacks (many of the hijackers were Saudi citizens), create their own minefield that a golfer carrying a big bag of money would have to navigate.
They’re growing the game, some of them have said.
“That’s nonsense, just utter nonsense,” Tour players Paul Goydos said.
On the other hand, while Phil Mickelson also recently created a bit of a firestorm with comments bashing the PGA Tour and its “obnoxious greed” while playing in the Saudi International a couple of weeks ago, Goydos said he does have a point.
“It was inelegant the way that he said it,” Goydos said. “His media rights are worth $5 million. My media rights are worth nothing, literally nothing. If you look at what I contributed to the PGA Tour with my name and likeness, the fans I brought out, television ratings, and then you compare that to what I made, it’s astronomical.”
Said Rocco Mediate, speaking without specifically naming Mickelson: “You don’t need to badmouth where you made your money.”
Goydos then made quite the analogy.
“The obnoxious greed to me is not the PGA Tour, it’s the people like me who don’t bring anything to the table other than somebody to beat up,” he said. “I’m the Washington Generals in a sense. How good are the Harlem Globetrotters without the Washington Generals? They have to have somebody to beat. We don’t really bring any money in but you need somebody to beat.”
On the other hand, while Phil Mickelson also recently created a bit of a firestorm with comments bashing the PGA Tour and its “obnoxious greed” while playing in the Saudi International a couple of weeks ago, Goydos said he does have a point.
“It was inelegant the way that he said it,” Goydos said. “His media rights are worth $5 million. My media rights are worth nothing, literally nothing. If you look at what I contributed to the PGA Tour with my name and likeness, the fans I brought out, television ratings, and then you compare that to what I made, it’s astronomical.”
Said Rocco Mediate, speaking without specifically naming Mickelson: “You don’t need to badmouth where you made your money.”
Goydos then made quite the analogy.
“The obnoxious greed to me is not the PGA Tour, it’s the people like me who don’t bring anything to the table other than somebody to beat up,” he said. “I’m the Washington Generals in a sense. How good are the Harlem Globetrotters without the Washington Generals? They have to have somebody to beat. We don’t really bring any money in but you need somebody to beat.”
“As nice a guy as (PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan) comes across as, unless you have leverage, he won’t do what’s right.
“And the Saudi money has finally given us that leverage. I’m not sure I even want [the SGL] to succeed, but just the idea of it is allowing us to get things done with the [PGA] Tour.”
Mediate sees both sides of the argument, as far as the tour players who don’t want to play in the Saudi league, and the ones who are at least giving it consideration.
“There’s a huge amount of money,” Mediate said. “There’s only 40 (players) and it’s a zillion dollars.”
That part of it has Mediate at least hoping the tours can find a way to work together, although there is at least some speculation that the Saudi tour will make an announcement during The Players Championship, the PGA Tour’s crown jewel, next month.
“I think it would be great if it could work together,” said Mediate, while adding he’s not sure if that’s possible. “They could just say ‘Just go ahead and play (the Saudi league), but just tell us you’re still going to hang with us.'”
Goydos hopes the players and the PGA Tour can work something out, and he sees some of the new initiatives as ways that could do that.
“They’re slowly doing certain things,” he said. “They’re going to start their own series of events and try to get more players in the top players’ hands.”
Peter Jacobsen and the golfers who played in the PGA Tour’s AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, which went up against the Saudi International (which isn’t the same thing as the proposed Super Golf League), did get sort of a preview though. Many top players, including Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson, skipped Pebble.
“Players earn the right to get releases from tournaments,” Jacobsen said diplomatically. “They have to play a certain number to acquire a certain number (of releases) and they’re well within their rights to request the releases.
“It’s up to the commissioner at his discretion to decide if it’s going to weaken the field that week. Everybody has a right to do that. I’m just disheartened that a lot of the players don’t grasp the fact that the AT&T (a major sponsor on the tour, period, not just for the Pebble event) is so important to our PGA Tour, our lifeblood.”
The number and quality of golfers who played in the Saudi International also opened another opportunity by being there.
“I think obviously having 21 players playing that event overseas, that was a good opportunity for the organizers of that tour to close the door, have some talks, try to woo more players into signing with them,” Furyk said. “… My thoughts on that are really that I would be in full support of the PGA Tour and what we’re trying to accomplish. Hopefully the players — I don’t know how many of them there are, but I think there has to be more than one I would hope; it’s hard to run a tour with just one — players that are involved hopefully can sit down with (PGA Tour commissioner) Jay (Monahan) and get things hashed out and move forward in a positive light.”
David Duval was a little more succinct.
“I think you would be an absolute fool to go play on that tour,” he said. “Simple enough.”
If only it were that simple.
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