ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Not much disturbs the perma-tanned panache of Seth Waugh, the Wall Street banker-turned-CEO of the PGA of America. He strolls through the buttoned-up golf world in white britches and boat shoes, projecting the insouciant air of someone bound for a dockside jamboree in Palm Beach. So when he was asked on Tuesday at Oak Hill Country Club if it was stressful being on the board of the Official World Golf Ranking as it processes the application of LIV Golf, Waugh was sanguine in his dismissal.
“I’m just one board member, and I’ve lived through 9/11 and a financial crisis or two,” he said. “No, I think we can handle it.”
The only furrow on Waugh’s brow came later when a questioner asked if the OWGR is slow-playing LIV’s application by clinging to a 12-month timeline for the review process when the circuit — unlike many developmental tours — has stout resources behind it. The inquiry assumed the ready availability of financing, but also a willingness to spend it. And it overlooked a pertinent reality: a tour that owes its existence to the whim of one mercurial man has a dubious future if those whims change. Stability can be fleeting if one’s sole anchor is a Saudi oligarch facing legal jeopardy.
“That’s a total mischaracterization,” Waugh responded, the words carrying more bite than his tone or manner of delivery. “What I’ve said and what I’ll say now is there has been healthy back and forth. It has not been acrimonious.”
There may well be a patina of harmony in the top-level interactions between the OWGR’s board and LIV executives, but that comity is not shared by LIV’s surrogates, who are eagerly engaged in an effort to short-circuit the approval process and undermine the very credibility of the rankings. Last month, Bryson DeChambeau declared the ranking “obsolete,” while insisting that LIV needed to be included in a system that is, um, obsolete.
Phil Mickelson has accused most every entity in the game — the PGA of America, the USGA, the OWGR, the PGA Tour and Augusta National Golf Golf Club — of “colluding” against LIV and its players, not least by denying ranking points that would eventually help exclude many LIV competitors from major championships. It’s the kind of conspiracy seed that Mickelson knows will be ardently watered in the social media jungle by the MAGA trolls and manufactured bots that comprise so much of the LIV support network. He has not yet accused LIV’s broadcast partner, The CW, of conspiracy for cutting away before the end of their tournament last weekend to air, variously, reruns and skincare infomercials.
“It’s a natural process. There is no magic to 12 months. All of these, I think, certainly since I’ve been around, have taken more time than I think was assumed early on,’ Waugh explained. “That’s where it is. This is not an us versus them. I think the OWGR, if you take a step back, the whole point is to create a level playing field, a yardstick by which to measure the game. Our job is to measure tours. Not players but tours and how they perform on those tours to come up with that yardstick. That’s what we’re all attempting to try to do.”
That was a subtle pushback on an argument oft-mounted by LIV players, that DJ or Brooks are entitled to world ranking points just by virtue of being DJ and Brooks, regardless of where they ply their trade. This sleight of hand neatly sidesteps a fundamental issue: the structure and integrity of the tour on which they compete. Not in terms of its funding source, but in the relative meritocracy of its competition.
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LIV’s structure poses a dilemma for Waugh and his fellow OWGR board members: how to fairly certify for ranking points a tour on which some players are contractually exempt from the consequences of poor performances? While Greg Norman has talked about a system of relegation and promotion, his circuit’s biggest stars can’t be sent to the minor leagues, thereby potentially ensuring them a slice of a ranking points pie at every event, no matter how lousy their showing. Most weeks on most tours, someone who finishes 48th has bested 100-plus rivals. The man in 48th at a LIV event has beaten no one.
Going back to the PGA Championship at Kiawah Island two years ago, Waugh has publicly voiced misgivings about the long-term viability of LIV’s business model, a valid observation that is deemed by LIV acolytes as evidence of innate hostility that his words don’t actually imply.
“As a former businessman who looks at things, I think disruption is a good thing. I think good things have happened from that,” he said. “But when asked, I struggle and I have since the beginning, even before the beginning, with understanding how it’s a sustainable business model.”
Almost lost in the questioning is that Waugh’s side hustle on the OWGR board is secondary to his role this week in running the PGA Championship, where he says the goal is civility.
“Everybody who’s here this week is our invited guest, and we’re happy to have them and we’re going to treat them all the same,” he said. “A lot of these folks are people that I’ve known for a long time that are friends that I still talk to, so none of it is about that. It’s about being, as I said before, having the true north of what’s in the best interest of the game.”
Of course, as a veteran of Wall Street, Waugh knows all too well that people tend to believe true north is always the direction they’re headed.
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