Tag: Eamon Lynch

Lynch: Chris DiMarco picked a dumb time to make a dumb argument that even his senior buddies won’t like hearing

The flat-bellies might dismiss veterans with ‘get off my lawn’ memes, but theirs are important voices.

In the Oscar-winning Indian movie “RRR,” there’s a bleakly comedic scene in which a tyrannical politician berates an officer for training his gun on a woman from the lower orders, telling him that the cost of his ammunition exceeded the value of the life he intended to take with it. Adopting that ghoulish standard, one wonders why the overworked firing squads of social media even bothered taking aim at Chris DiMarco, who this week joined a lengthy list of professional golfers giving voice to unspeakably deluded notions.

“We’re kind of hoping that LIV buys the Champions Tour, to tell you the truth,” DiMarco said on a visit to the Subpar podcast, as he unfavorably compared prize money at the Players Championship with purses on the Toviaz tour. “Let’s play for a little real money out here. This is kind of a joke when we’re getting $2 million. There were like seven guys last week from TPC [Sawgrass] that made more money than our purses.”

He didn’t define the ‘we’ on whose behalf he claimed to speak, but DiMarco’s comments surely had his peers squirming in the Champions Tour locker room, itself a verdant pasture of conspiracy theories so kooky that even a Lyndon LaRouche-ite might think the crazy train had passed his stop.

It’s easy to cite DiMarco’s performances — a T-33 his best finish in 2024, and no better than a T-15 in 23 starts last season — and ask just how much value he thinks he adds to the Champions Tour, beyond being an amiable pro-am companion for a group of middle managers. Doing so would be a disservice to what was a respectable if fleeting career on the PGA Tour, and would overlook the actual point he was making. DiMarco didn’t say he personally deserves more from the cash spigot now watering every lawn in Jupiter, rather that the tour on which he competes does. But that’s an argument not even his most avaricious senior colleagues are making right now, with good reason.

Talk to most any player on the Champions Tour and you’ll find they are pissed at how the PGA Tour they helped build is being treated by the current generation as wholly their asset to remortgage, at how naked greed is trumping any sentiment about the greater good of the game. The flat-bellies might dismiss veterans with ‘get off my lawn’ memes and eye rolls, but theirs are important voices in any conversation about the Tour’s future. Which is why some experienced hands will find it frustrating that one of their own mounted a dumb argument—that senior purses aren’t adequately financed—and chose a dumb time to do it.

The new for-profit entity, PGA Tour Enterprises, is going to reshape men’s professional golf. Along the way, every budget line in the Global Home will be subjected to close scrutiny and value assessments not rooted in sentimentality. That will include all the tours operating under the mothership’s umbrella. The degree to which the Champions Tour is subsidized by headquarters is often exaggerated. According to one source familiar with internal accounting, it’s no more than a few million dollars annually. That’s pennies for an organization now valued at $12 billion, but pennies are snatched back first in pursuit of dollars, and this is not the time to suggest that even bigger handouts might be in order.

There’s an understandable disconnect between what the Champions Tour is commercially and what many of its members imagine it to be competitively. Players see a cutthroat circuit where every buck is hard-earned, which is fair enough. But the business of the Champions Tour is essentially that of an elevated pro-am circuit, with 200-odd amateurs paying to play both Wednesdays and Thursdays, with another 100-ish on Mondays, if there’s demand. Television viewership is meager, worryingly so since a decent percentage of those watching could be in danger of expiring during the broadcast window. The value of the Champions Tour lies in being an on-site entertainment platform that can support itself (albeit in orthopedic shoes), not as a product with a monetizable audience of scale and global growth potential.

That might change after December 30, 2025, when Tiger Woods turns 50 years old and becomes eligible to join the circuit. If he can’t or won’t play, then the Champions Tour will never have been less relevant. If he does compete, even sparingly, Woods could boost the Tour’s value well beyond pro-am receipts. But until such times manifest, those who play out there are paid sufficiently within the parameters of what their tour is.

The ‘git me some’ attitude in DiMarco’s comments — which goes in tandem with dismissing fans as an afterthought — is easily derided, but a 55-year-old struggling pro with loose lips, 20-plus years removed from his last win, is a conveniently soft target. If folks want to take aim at professional golfers who express entitlement to greater rewards while adding little to the product or fan experience, there are plenty of Chris DiMarcos on the PGA Tour doing just that.

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Lynch: The PGA Tour is facing the toughest decision with LIV Golf. Should players be making that call?

Despite the pablum about unifying the game, many Tour members are disincentivized to see that happen.

Only in politics and professional golf can one hear an arsonist share his impassioned vision for the rebuild he rendered necessary. So it was Monday when player-directors on the PGA Tour’s board met Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who as head of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has single-handedly financed the ravaging of the sport. A day later, two golfers on either side of the schism he created indicated how they’re reconciled (or not) to the consequences of their decisions.

Jon Rahm, one of Al-Rumayyan’s more expensive firestarters, offered a positive pitch for the Tour he left. “It was fun to watch, and what a finish. Jesus Christ, that was one that was fun to watch,” he said of the Players Championship, before admitting he has watched other tournaments that he’s no longer eligible to play, three of which he won last season. “It’s gut-wrenching to watch, but it made for great TV, and it was really fun.”

Picture the reigning Masters champion watching the action from home, then juxtapose that with the widely-circulated image of him playing a LIV event in Jeddah with not a spectator in sight. Asked about a subsequent LIV stop in Hong Kong, Rahm praised the people and the food. He is a competitor reduced to a concierge. His brave face notwithstanding, there was a poignant note in his comments about moving to LIV Golf. “It’s done. It’s past. It’s a decision I made, and I’m comfortable with it,” he said. “But I’m hoping I can come back.”

Rahm gives the impression of someone convinced he was going to be a one-man catalyst, that his departure would be a shock so seismic that every faction in golf would hasten toward reunification. By now, he must realize that a path back to the PGA Tour is not yet paved and that, bar four weeks a year, he will be competing before sparse galleries for the foreseeable.

His words struck a dissonant chord against those of Xander Schauffele, a leading man in the Players drama Rahm enjoyed from his couch. ”I’m very content with where I sit right now,” Schauffele said. “I don’t have any regrets of what I’ve done or what I’m doing, so I’m sleeping just fine at night knowing where I stand.”

Their respective comments illustrate the only constant in recent years: golfers making decisions based wholly on self-interest and where they are in their careers, not for any more noble motive, and certainly not for the well-being of the tours from which they earned a stout living. As competitors, golfers ought to be selfish and focus on themselves. But that trait is also why they shouldn’t be positioned to heavily influence decisions that have enormous ramifications for the PGA Tour’s broader business.

Just such a decision is nearing.

I asked someone who was in the room for the Al-Rumayyan meeting in the Bahamas to characterize it. “Weather today was partly sunny with scattered but significant clouds,” came the response. No cloud looms more ominously than the issue of how (or if) LIV golfers return to the PGA Tour in any peace deal. It’s a divisive topic, even among Tour loyalists.

Rory McIlroy’s suggestion that they come back without sanction was quickly poo-pooed by Justin Thomas and Rickie Fowler, while Scottie Scheffler — not a man prone to pettiness — said that a welcome might never be extended to guys who litigated against the Tour. Tempting as it may be to exclude Phredo Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau, lines can’t be drawn around individuals based on their popularity in the locker room.

This dilemma isn’t just procedural (What status would LIV guys have? Must they re-earn eligibility? Are they to be excluded from bonus pools for a period?) it’s also personal. Not in the sense of animosity, but in advantage. No Tour member has to best Rahm or Cameron Smith to win a tournament these days. No one is seeing a FedEx Cup bonus that might otherwise be theirs go to Brooks Koepka or Dustin Johnson. None of the rank-and-file struggling for starts are missing out because Graeme McDowell or Sergio Garcia got the call instead.

If you ask John Henry — the leader of Strategic Sports Group, which just invested $1.5 billion in the Tour — he might argue that his product would be measurably improved if the aforementioned defectors were in the fold again. But despite the pablum about unifying the game and seeing the best compete together again, many Tour members are disincentivized to see that happen. Which is why active players should not be on this jury. What’s best for individual members — even a large constituency of them — isn’t necessarily best for the Tour’s commercial prospects. But convincing members of a “member-led” organization that their interests are not the same as the Tour’s interests is akin to persuading Irish republicans that their best future lies in allegiance to the British monarchy.

The equity being distributed to players is an opportunity to reset the parameters of their role in Tour governance. They are shareholders, not owners. Activist shareholders, sure, but not the ultimate decision-makers. That distinction was lost when players used discord over the secretive Framework Agreement to demand a built-in majority on the board, which they also hold at the new for-profit entity, PGA Tour Enterprises. Ask folks if they’d rather see Jay Monahan or Patrick Cantlay make decisions about the direction of a multi-billion dollar enterprise, you’d likely hear a chorus of ‘Neither!’ Players will be compromised in many future decisions, executives were compromised by past calls. But at least executives don’t have their own competitive skin in the game.

“I don’t think anyone has sort of the right answer to keep everyone happy,” Schauffele said a few days ago. He’s right. But that’s an argument for avoiding a scenario in which players prioritize their happiness over what’s best for the Tour and the greater game. We’ve seen more than enough of how that usually works out.

Lynch: Rory McIlroy wants a more cutthroat PGA Tour. So, um, who’s gonna cut the GOAT’s throat?

“I’m all for making it more cutthroat, more competitive.”

On Friday evening, six men—five of them major champions—were tied for the lead at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, so it must have been sobering for them to see their impressive performances generate less buzz than news that Tiger Woods will be taking another week off work.

That coverage gap can’t be attributed only to the click-thirsty herd mentality of golf media. It’s a reminder of Woods’ transcendent stature—he’s more newsworthy on his couch than most guys are on the leaderboard. But the current and future status of Woods also spotlights the PGA Tour’s unresolved identity crisis: is it a ruthlessly competitive sports league, or is it an entertainment product?

Rory McIlroy was asked Friday whether he has misgivings about there being just 69 players in the field at the API. He does not. “I’m all for making it more cutthroat, more competitive,” he said. “Probably won’t be very popular for saying this, but I’m all for less players and less Tour cards, and the best of the best.”

It’s a defensible argument. The Tour has long operated with the sole objective of creating playing opportunities for members, which in practice means too many tournaments paying too much money to too many journeymen for too little impact. But a desire for a more competitively focused and streamlined Tour—a view McIlroy is far from alone in holding among top players—is incompatible with eligibility carve-outs for sentimental favorites. Like Woods. But who is going to cut the GOAT’s throat? Who will tell fans and sponsors that Tiger hasn’t earned a spot?

API: Rory McIlroy cuts corner, drives 401-yard par-4 10th green at Bay Hill

This is Woods’ last year of eligibility for the Players Championship, which he is skipping. He has no eligibility for signature events, including the Arnold Palmer Invitational, which he has won eight times. Had he signaled a desire to compete at Bay Hill, there’s no doubt he would have received one of the sponsor exemptions not already donated to Adam Scott (a Policy Board member who has had three straight free passes into lucrative events he wasn’t otherwise qualified for). And not a single player would have questioned that call, despite Woods being five years removed from his last victory, which was also his last top-10 finish.

So if the PGA Tour is to be cutthroat, to place more emphasis on competitive relevance, where is the line to be drawn by the blade? How long is the grace period before a struggling player is consigned to the lower decks and told to fight his way back up? Or is popularity sufficient to bypass any performance requirements?

Woods draws more attention to an event by WD’ing on Thursday than most players do by winning on Sunday. Yet in a cutthroat sport where form is the only metric that counts, he is yesterday’s man. In an entertainment product, however, he remains tomorrow’s hope. Woods is hardly the only player whose form is irrelevant when it comes to adding value to the Tour’s product. Jordan Spieth and Rickie Fowler had four-year win droughts, with only sporadic appearances on leaderboards, but both continued to enhance the tournaments they graced. If McIlroy were to experience a similar slump, he’d continue to be good for business, even if his scores aren’t good.

Which is to say there’s a balance to be struck: be cutthroat for players, be entertaining for fans who want their favorites, and be conscious of the many constituencies who have valid commercial concerns that might be impacted by reductions in the numbers of events or players (charitable beneficiaries, operators who need full fields to maximize the window for concession sales, broadcasters who need to show a lot of action, host communities that have goals untied to the global ambitions of players). Regardless of whether the PGA Tour thinks itself a cutthroat league or an entertainment product, it is first and foremost a business.

McIlroy’s comments will hit a nerve with rank and file Tour members who already feel marginalized—a culture shock for those accustomed to an organization run on creating opportunities to them to play. But if there’s a reckoning to be had on how much the top guys should be compensated, then it ought to extend all the way down the food chain. How much is too much for too little? The average prize money won on the PGA Tour last season was $2,361,908. The 100th best player on Tour by earnings was Nate Lashley. He made $1,749,031 from 32 starts with three top-10 finishes. By comparison, the 100th earning player on the ATP tennis tour made $735,698. That’s no rap on Lashley. He’s grinding and making a nice living, but he’s not making an impact to the Tour’s business, and there are dozens of other Lashleys doing the same.

Perhaps there are too many players in the field most weeks (but not this week), too many tournaments, too many players who are exempt on the circuit, but these aren’t simple issues for the Tour to resolve. Elite players want fewer snouts in the trough. Journeymen want to keep the jobs they’ve earned under established rules. Sponsors have wildly varying ideas of what constitutes an ideal event for them. And fans want to be entertained by stars (and uncompetitive legends), while leaving open the possibility of being charmed by a Cinderella story (or a shock comeback by the aforementioned uncompetitive legends). In navigating this, the Tour will need to wield the blade carefully to ensure that it doesn’t cut its own throat.

Lynch: The nasty hangover from TPC Scottsdale is being felt at Riviera. Is it time to call last orders at the Phoenix Open?

One spectator was upset when beer sales were suspended. “There was nothing else to do but watch golf.”

LOS ANGELES — It’s difficult to find more disparate experiences in consecutive weeks on the PGA Tour calendar than the WM Phoenix Open and the Genesis Invitational.

One is held at a modern course designed with spectator flow in mind, the other isn’t. One is at the center of every sporting conversation in its host city that week, the other isn’t. One is viewed by some Tour players with an aversion usually reserved for gas station sushi, the other isn’t. One attracts and engages fans at a level that’s the envy of most tournaments on the schedule, the other doesn’t. One stretchers out more inebriated, vomit-flecked fans than LIV draws in, the other doesn’t.

On the grounds at Riviera Country Club, much of the chatter remains focused on events at TPC Scottsdale, where the viral social media videos included Tour pros in terse exchanges with spectators, a pair of Two-Can Van Dammes brawling, shirtless belly slides in the mud, and a barely-conscious chap perched on a stool, blissfully unaware that he was also urinating.

It’s golf, but plastered.

The WM Phoenix Open is a known quantity. Tour players understand that the party vibe at TPC Scottsdale isn’t just tolerated, it’s welcomed. Merchandise offerings celebrate the boozy bro culture, like T-shirts proclaiming the wearer got hammered at the 16th hole. One friend at Riviera said he heard from a spectator in Scottsdale who was upset when beer sales were suspended. “There was nothing else to do but watch golf,” they griped.

That scene isn’t to all tastes, so many players choose to skip it. But the festivities last week proved two things: that giving free rein to jackasses doesn’t end well, and that the Tour’s new reality will force an uncomfortable reckoning for its most popular event.

The social media era has spawned a disease in many sports, in which a handful of spectators believe buying a ticket makes them part of the entertainment, apparently convinced there’s an audience dying to hear their slurred witticisms or watch them guzzle beer from a shoe. In most venues, that group is blessedly small. Not so at the Phoenix Open. To an extent  —certainly more than they’re accustomed to — Tour players need to suck it up and tune out oafs riding the rope lines while offering commentary. That’s just part of being a professional athlete. The issue in Scottsdale is that the rope line is no longer the final frontier. Players won’t — and shouldn’t — tolerate people running onto the course to make snow angels in the bunkers, or yelling during the hitting of a shot with the intent of distracting competitors.

The standard defense offered by WMPO loyalists — if you don’t like it, stay home — is no longer fit for purpose. Only the stars can vote with their feet and walk. For everyone else, starts in Tour events are tougher to come by than ever, so staying home is a luxury they can’t afford. And if the Phoenix Open sees the quality of its field decline because of boorish fan behavior, that’s a problem. If women working on-site feel unsafe because of groups of leering drunks, that’s a problem. If spectators are emboldened to go inside the ropes, that’s a problem. When fans gleefully initiate and record conflict with competitors, that’s a problem.

Whose problem? The PGA Tour’s, partially, since that’s the brand being damaged. But moreso for the Thunderbirds organization that runs the event.

It’s not like the Phoenix Open needs to be taken over by the temperance movement — and the game certainly needs reminders these days that fans matter just as much as players — but there has to be a line on appropriate conduct that is policed effectively, and right now that line hasn’t so much been blurred as entirely erased. The alternative is more elite players choosing not to compete, more fans opting not to put their kids in the middle of a bawdy piss-up, and more reluctance on the part of the Tour and its partners to embrace the entire experience.

Perhaps Riviera needs a little more TPC Scottsdale, but TPC Scottsdale needs a lot more Riviera. Perhaps it’s futile to ask spectators in search of a party to act responsibly, but it’s sure as hell not too much to ask of the tournament organizers.

Lynch: The PGA Tour’s new billions will further enrich players, so when will fans see a return?

This deal likely portends a radical (and long overdue) reassessment of the Tour’s product and operations.

The 239 days that have elapsed since June 6 proved the Framework Agreement between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund was more armistice than peace accord, so it’s tempting to interpret the announcement that a group of sports industry titans have invested $3 billion in the newly-formed PGA Tour Enterprises as rearmament for more conflict ahead. It’s more accurate to read it as evidence that parties to the game’s civil war are closer than ever to their desired outcomes.

Except you, dear golf fan. You can pound sand, at least for now.

The unveiling of the Strategic Sports Group investment wasn’t intended to answer fundamental questions about the future of golf but rather to assure the only constituency that really matters that their interests are being tended. That constituency is star players, and their only interest is personal enrichment, which they’ll see in equity grants and purse guarantees, even if it’s unclear how the market works for them to realize the value of their equity by selling it. For most, it’s not LIV Golf money, but it’s enough to hold off the wolves that are apparently gathering at every door in Jupiter, Florida.

But Wednesday also offered a measure of clarity on what other parties are getting.

The deal restores to the PGA Tour a little of the leverage that had seemed lost, especially when LIV poached Jon Rahm last month. It now has the resources to go it alone without the Saudis, but then that’s always been true. The Tour is just no less dependent on the loyalty of its members, many of whom have shown themselves to be Benedict Arnolds in soft spikes.

SSG’s investors get a minority stake in the only major league in the U.S. that didn’t have conventional owners, one that is ripe for private equity’s most cherished combination: expansion and cost-cutting. They also gain proximity to Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of PIF and the idealized Ken doll of investment partners.

Ostensibly, PIF is not part of this deal — its negotiations with the PGA Tour are far from the finish line — but there’s a clear victory here too for Al-Rumayyan. SSG’s backers include owners from every American league (NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA) and PIF, like many wealth funds in Gulf States, is eager for access to those opportunities. Golf is merely the Saudi pathway to greater prizes.

All of the aforementioned parties are incentivized to see the Saudi component finalized. As for regular fans, the only thing they’ve gotten so far is turned off and pissed off. The SSG announcement provided broad strokes on the financial and governance structures of PGA Tour Enterprises, but nothing on the actual product that will be served to its audience. That will come with the finer brushwork, which remains a ways off.

Today was all about the carrot, but the stick surely cometh as pressure for a return on investment creates a drive for efficiency that runs counter to the culture in Ponte Vedra.

“I’m a tough manager. I question almost every assumption in what are hopefully pragmatic ways. The more you question, the more you learn and the more the person you are questioning learns,” John W. Henry once said. He’s the principal owner of Fenway Sports Group and the manager of the SSG partners.

This approach portends a radical (and long overdue) reassessment of the Tour’s product and operations. That will go well beyond culling the swollen ranks of VPs, SVPs and EVPs, precious few of whom are MVPs. It means ceasing the dilution of its own product, a result of executives being bonused on creating playing opportunities, mostly for players who aren’t essential to the business. That trains the crosshairs on opposite-field events, the fall schedule in which the lower orders jockey for status, and even the number of players exempt on Tour — anything thought to detract from the core, star-driven product. It’s increasingly obvious that Q4 is the area of opportunity on the professional golf calendar, and where involvement by PIF might be seen most, whether in team tournaments, the elevation of DP World Tour stops, or the leveraging of the Presidents Cup as an international road show.

The addition of domestic investors will help defuse political concerns about a foreign wealth fund taking over a U.S. institution, but perils remain. A Congressional investigation into PIF investments in America (outside of golf) is growing more fractious as Saudi targets of subpoenas refuse to bow to U.S. law, while the current conflagration in the Middle East could shred the best-laid plans. Antitrust regulators will also be watchful for a competitor being “taken off the board,” to quote the commish. That leaves the fate of LIV uncertain. Why would PGA Tour Enterprises want it? Other than PIF, who can afford to sustain an execrable product with no traction that loses hundreds of millions of dollars annually, and with laughably overpaid talent who need to be re-signed in the coming years? LIV is an ongoing liability for PIF, not a potential asset for PGA Tour Enterprises, but it will likely trundle on for at least another season or two until Al-Rumayyan settles its fate.

The SSG investment won’t prevent the Saudis from owning a stake in golf’s more respectable precincts — that dreary outcome seems inevitable since commerce has trumped conscience throughout this episode. What it does ensure is that an authoritarian regime won’t outright own the elite level of the sport, which seemed possible for a time. That’s not nothing, and it’s about all we can point to, at least until the players back away from the trough and offer something to the fans.

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Lynch: Disgusted fans aren’t deserting golf, and still have guys worth rooting for amid the greed and grumbling

There’s a tendency to overstate the importance of individual golfers while underestimating the resiliency of golf.

These days it’s almost impossible to scroll by insipid influencers without crashing into some pearl-clutcher’s pieties about how golf fans are being driven from the sport. Apparently, the masses are angrily rending polo shirts as they mourn a once-noble game that has been lost to the relentless rise of dollars, division and douchebaggery.

Perhaps there is a more palpable air of melancholy surrounding golf — or at least the men’s professional corner of it — but as with most assertions peddled on social media, the notion that fans are drifting away in droves seems more anecdotal than evidential. Many of those who claim to have disengaged continue to comment on golf’s every storyline in the manner of those who are, well, enthusiastically engaged. There are plenty of folks who find the current state of affairs disheartening and are eager to scold those they hold responsible — chiefly greedy players, incompetent executives, shilling media and, occasionally, moneyed human rights abusers.

But leavin’ they ain’t.

Take last week’s Sentry tournament in Maui. The full event broadcast of Chris Kirk’s victory averaged only 4,000 viewers fewer than Jon Rahm’s in ’23 despite the obvious disparity in star power atop the leaderboard. Ratings were the second-best since 2017 while weekend network coverage was a tiny notch higher than last year. Viewership of last fall’s slate of PGA Tour events — presumed doomed by the general absence of stars — showed negligible difference year on year. Small samples for sure, but it makes one ponder a point made Tuesday by Tour veteran Paul Goydos on Golf Today, that there’s a tendency to overstate the importance of individual golfers while underestimating the resiliency of the collective golf product. Or, in layman’s terms, everyone is replaceable, and often forgotten.

Still, the PGA Tour’s product has been undeniably weakened by the defection of a handful of meaningful players, and even loyal fans might be ambivalent on the subsequent contortions the Tour made to maintain the loyalty of others. The myriad issues roiling the sport will get messier yet, but the opening fortnight of the ’24 season has at least proved to even the most disgruntled fans that there are guys worth rooting for. One of them leaves Hawaii with a trophy, the other with something much more precious.

Chris Kirk’s lows are well documented — battles with alcoholism and depression that forced him to take a leave of absence in 2019 — and earn a rote retelling with his every high, including wins at last year’s Honda Classic and this month’s Sentry. He’s fine with that, knowing his successes might offer an example that turnarounds are possible to others struggling with similar problems. Kirk’s commendable openness about his journey has made the personal parabolic.

2024 The Sentry
Chris Kirk celebrates with the trophy after winning the 2024 Sentry at Plantation Course at Kapalua Golf Club in Kapalua, Hawaii. (Photo: Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

The same holds true for Gary Woodland, who returned to the Tour this week at the Sony Open after undergoing surgery in September to remove a lesion from his brain. In his media comments, Woodland provided a glimpse of just how dark those days were. He spoke of a leaden fear of death that shadowed his every waking moment, of being too scared to travel without his wife because he was afraid the end lurked around every corner. That he was able to function, much less compete, after the diagnosis is impressive, and his willingness to detail the oppressive emotional trauma even moreso.

Woodland is widely regarded as one of the more amiable, everyday guys in a sport where self-absorption and entitlement have run amok. He’s still fiercely competitive, so he’ll pour over statistics from Hawaii to analyze what needs work. But the metric that mattered most won’t be found on a spreadsheet accounting for his week at Waialae Country Club. Woodland’s candor in revealing what he went through — not so much physically as psychologically — made him the undisputed winner of the week, regardless of who gets the trophy. “It’s been a hard time for me and I was able to overcome it,” he said after missing the cut, his voice catching with emotion. “I’ll be back. There was a time when I didn’t know if this was going to be possible.”

Coverage of professional golf has tended toward mawkish sentimentality since Young Tom Morris lost his wife while playing an event in 1875 and shortly thereafter died himself at age 24, of a broken heart, it’s often said (it was actually a pulmonary hemorrhage). The penchant for narratives that tug heartstrings notwithstanding, the last few months have gifted fans numerous opportunities to celebrate examples of character that seem less apparent than ever in this sport.

Kirk and Woodland are two. Camilo Villegas is another, long absent from the winner’s circle but improbably back now three years after losing his daughter Mia to brain cancer. And Erik van Rooyen, who won and on the final green wept openly for an ailing friend, who died a few days later. The themes common in these stories — adversity, resilience, loss, triumph — are the very DNA of sport, of life itself.

‘Perspective’ has become the cheapest word in golf’s lexicon, too often deployed in the context of an inconvenient break between the ropes. When we see the real thing, in real life, it ought to be acknowledged and applauded. Golf fans might justifiably feel that chances to do so are fewer when so much of the conversation is marred by money and selfishness. As the Tour leaves Hawaii, Kirk and Woodland have illustrated the truth in author Brené Brown’s oft-shared maxim, that what separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude. May we see more of their kind.

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Lynch: The power flex by star players could reshape more than just the PGA Tour

What if the players, and the Saudis, want more? Who’s to say a remaking of elite men’s golf ends at the PGA Tour?

Numbers are the highest degree of knowledge, if Plato is to be believed, but also the lowest form of thirst for social media gobdaws whose fanciful figures are now considered reliable, or at least repeatable. Take the $600 million widely “reported” as the value of Jon Rahm’s contract with LIV. That sum began as nothing more than speculative slobbering, was amplified by anonymous aggregators, then legitimized by traditional media outlets happy to exploit unsourced rumor in pursuit of traffic. Pity the historians of this period who will someday have to distinguish eyewitnesses from ‘I heards.’

The decay of golf media notwithstanding, comma-heavy contracts that grab headlines tell us only the rough cost of weapons, not what the landscape will look like after the truce. For all of the uncertainties in the sport as we pull the shutters on 2023, ’24 will go a long way toward revealing its future shape, which will largely be defined by a number that’s unarousingly small: 25, or thereabouts — approximately the number of weeks that elite players are willing to work each year.

Everything intended to leverage the presence of top players — major championships, signature events, team competitions — must be shoehorned into that couple dozen weeks, which is why negotiations between the PGA Tour and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia are focused more on matters of practicality than philosophy. Those familiar with the thinking of PIF’s governor Yasir al-Rumayyan say that his ‘baby’ is team golf in general (rather than LIV in particular), and he’s insistent it be a significant part of the future. Whatever structure that eventually emerges will by necessity be global, making stops with every stakeholder, including Saudi Arabia. Al-Rumayyan isn’t paying to be bypassed and will need a show-and-tell for the Crown Prince, who isn’t a chap that courtiers are casual about displeasing.

Accommodating every desired component — four majors, the Players and a handful of premier PGA Tour stops, a scattering of events ex-U.S. and a handful of team affairs — effectively means creating a silk-stocking circuit that exists above the tours as we know them, and the ramifications of that are enormous. For regular tournaments that will struggle to draw elite fields. For sponsors paying penthouse prices for what may be perceived as ground floor events. For media partners expected to pay another $6 billion or so through 2030 for a product that the Tour would no longer be delivering, since players pushing for change won’t wait years to realize their rewards. Even if the reimagined product is improved, a tremendous amount of revenue would be in jeopardy, any loss of which is likely to be felt most among the broader membership. No wonder journeymen have taken to circulating a petition demanding accountability from executives who are now really only answerable to the most rarified strata of stars.

But what if the players, and the Saudis, want more? Who’s to say that a remaking of elite men’s golf ends at the PGA Tour?

“The management has not done a good job,” Viktor Hovland said recently in criticizing Tour leadership. “They almost see the players as labor.” Leaving aside the fact that the managerial alternative sees golfers as indentured servants, there’s clearly a hazardous gap between how players feel they are seen (as grunts) and how they see themselves (as owners). So what happens if emboldened stars expand their definition of “management” beyond Jay Monahan’s inner sanctum?

A sense of entitlement allied to actual power might convince them that they have the muscle to reshape majors and demand a much greater share of that revenue too. Multiple sources say that one leading player told Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley last year that the Masters needed to cough up more coin to its competitors. Nor is it wholly implausible that a new entity flush with capital could acquire the Ryder Cup from the penurious PGA of America, just as the DP World Tour is doing with the legacy associations that are part-owners on that side of the pond. The Ryder Cup is the only important asset Europe brings to the deal being forged. Adding ownership of the American half would be hugely attractive since the guys likely to see equity in the new joint venture are the same guys who comprise the teams. The festering dispute about whether team members should be paid for laboring in the Cup could be moot if the players decide they deserve an ownership stake instead.

It’s needlessly generous to assume that al-Rumayyan’s endgame is mere acceptance, a seat at golf’s head table. If players continue to assert their newfound power, bankrolled by his billions, al-Rumayyan may end up with a meaningful stake in every significant event.

The power dynamic in men’s professional golf has shifted profoundly and irreversibly. The coming months will bring more specifics on how things will be structured, but we know with certainty that it will be to the liking of the game’s dominant players right now. At some stage, it might be worth considering whether that is actually a positive development.

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Lynch: Jon Rahm’s greed isn’t the PGA Tour’s biggest problem. It’s the guys who want Saudi-sized money for staying

The departure of Rahm is more a loss for the PGA Tour than a gain for LIV.

It’s a hollow exercise to parse levels of cowardice in those eager to be stooges for autocratic sportswashers, but some of the players who went to LIV Golf when there was a cost for doing so — to reputations and careers — must now look at Jon Rahm as being the most gutless among their number, a golden parachutist who jumped for the greatest reward with the least risk, confident that a promised settlement of golf’s civil war would assure him a soft, lucrative landing.

Thursday’s announcement was drearily predictable, right down to LIV’s inept gaffe in trumpeting its recruitment of “John.” In citing his need to feather the family nest for future generations, the appeal of innovative formats and an overwhelming ambition to grow the game, Rahm checked every box in the bullshit bingo that attends all LIV signings.

Yet his is unlike any that preceded him.

Poaching Rahm is less about product than politics, aimed not so much at strengthening LIV as weakening the PGA Tour. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, chief bagman at the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund that bankrolls LIV, delivered a timely elbow to the ribs just as the Tour negotiates the extent to which PIF will factor with private equity in shaping its future. Rahm was vociferous in rejecting LIV, to the point of demeaning its format and value.

Buying that guy proves Al-Rumayyan can buy almost anyone. Tour members who consider him an unpalatable ally were reminded that he might be an even more unappetizing enemy.

LIV has consistently exposed the fatal weakness in professional golf: It is built on member organizations whose members are not contracted, and often not loyal. Cash offers go a long way when many of the targeted constituency have proven that their word isn’t worth a puddle of stale piss.

Rahm won’t suffer the excommunication and scorn that other LIV players experienced from former Tour colleagues. He’s too competitively relevant, he’s too well-liked, and the end is too near at hand. Witness Rory McIlroy saying that Ryder Cup eligibility rules would need to be rewritten to accommodate Rahm in ’25, a call he didn’t make on behalf of the likes of Sergio Garcia.

The departure of Rahm is more a loss for the PGA Tour than a gain for LIV. One of the world’s best will be absent from Tour events for the foreseeable. But it’s debatable how positively he impacts LIV beyond providing propaganda catnip for trolls and deal-making leverage for Al-Rumayyan. One can reasonably argue that Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and Phil Mickelson were more effective at engaging fans than Rahm, and they haven’t given LIV audience traction. The Spaniard’s jump could be more of a game-changer for the Tour’s internal debate than for the trajectory of LIV.

Jon Rahm of Spain and Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland walk the second hole during a practice round prior to the 2022 U.S. Open at The Country Club on June 13, 2022, in Brookline, Massachusetts. (Photo by Warren Little/Getty Images)

It’s easy to cry hypocrisy given everything Rahm said previously, but that ignores the PGA Tour’s culpability. Rahm isn’t a LIV golfer just because the check got big enough. He’s there at least in part because the Tour signaled it was okay to be there, that one can do business with the Saudis. The June 6 Framework Agreement did two things that made for a lousy combination: it demolished all trust between PGA Tour leaders and members, and it legitimized the Saudi hijacking of golf, giving players a green light to kick the tires on LIV. The Tour may as well have rolled out a red carpet and pointed it toward the exit. Players will not be held to a standard of loyalty that the Tour itself failed to meet.

Rahm’s leaving shouldn’t be a surprise. Players guaranteed to be in majors, who are unconcerned with qualification criteria or world ranking points, are the most susceptible to LIV entreaties, especially when the Tour has already expressed a desire to end the division. Why not Wyndham Clark too? Or Brian Harman? If recent major champions don’t have ethical objections to LIV, what other risks do they face? The Framework Agreement is their permission slip.

Crunch time is coming for the player directors who drive decision-making on the Tour’s Policy Board. Will they now conclude that an imperfect peace with the Saudis is their best option, or does Rahm’s poaching harden sentiment against PIF among those who didn’t cash out? Whatever direction they chart, choppy waters lie ahead.

The PGA Tour is stumbling toward a business model that cannot be sustained simply because too many players are convinced their value is a multiple of what any market has ever dictated. There is a disheartening correlation between the irrational spending of the Saudis and the parallel expectations of PGA Tour members. Some players feel entitled to NBA or NFL money and — in a complete inversion of how the economics have always been in golf — they want to make that money on the course, not off, regardless of their engagement level with fans and sponsors.

Less than 24 hours after Rahm left the PGA Tour, so did Wells Fargo. The bank was unwilling to pay what is now demanded of sponsors to meet the expectations of players. The exit of a longtime sponsor — one that wished to remain in golf — should be more of an alarm call to Tour players than losing Rahm. It’s a deeply worrying sign that the PGA Tour is consuming itself because greed is masquerading as worth.

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Lynch: A Jon Rahm leap to LIV will force a messy, make-or-break moment for PGA Tour and its top stars

LIV has a finite amount of time to succeed, which is why a get like Rahm is appealing to the point of necessity.

One man’s agenda is the starting point in negotiations, no matter how determined he is to view it as the destination. The coming months will provide ample reminders of that reality as the process of reshaping professional golf stumbles toward an increasingly sloppy and contentious endgame.

For two years, we’ve seen skirmishes claimed as decisive victories. The moves by Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka to leave the PGA Tour for LIV were no more conclusive than the decisions of Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy to remain. A jump to LIV by Jon Rahm – the subject of intense speculation – will be no different, whatever the banner-wavers and pearl-clutchers on either side say. But it would represent something significant, beyond being an example of what happens to a man of supposed character who remains in the mephitic orbit of people like Phil Mickelson and Sergio Garcia.

A Rahm departure would be more impactful mostly by dint of timing, hastening a reckoning for the competing agendas that have all but paralyzed the PGA Tour’s Policy Board.

Among players on the board, there’s a faction opposed to involving the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund in the future of the Tour, preferring to partner with one of several interested private investors. Their motivations are varied, whether it’s patriotism, a desire to see LIV continue for leverage or simple aversion to a Framework Agreement foisted upon them without consultation. Jay Monahan, however, is adamant that the Saudis be included, presumably because he’d rather not have a free-spending rival approaching apostate members who promise fealty only until the offer swells sufficiently.

This standoff makes any poaching of Rahm an astute leverage play by PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who is scheduled to meet Monahan this week. It would be a sharp reminder to resistant player directors of the damage he can inflict, potentially guarantee PIF participation in the Tour’s future, and secure terms more favorable than had seemed likely. If a peace deal is consummated, Al-Rumayyan might never have to make a Year 2 payment to Rahm. And if it isn’t? Well, he bought the Masters champion and world No. 3 as a high-profile plaything for his league.

One school of thought says losing Rahm would finish Monahan, reinforcing a perception that he is being outmaneuvered. Alternatively, he could emerge stronger if hesitant players embrace his case for détente. Of course, player directors might also be galvanized against PIF as an untrustworthy partner and entirely torpedo the Framework Agreement. That too has ramifications. Do the Tour’s private equity suitors, who thought they were going into business with the Saudis, have the stomach to go to war with them instead?

Like an artfully designed golf course, there are plentiful options, each with its own perils.

While all of this is pondered at professional golf’s penthouse level, there are rumblings in the basement. A petition began circulating this weekend among Tour members demanding a meeting with leadership to address grievances about how they’re too focused on the stars at the expense of the ensemble. This pitching wedge uprising will find support among the rank and file since valid criticisms are being leveled, but the Tour will never again govern the elite according to the concerns of the proletariat. This is more than ever a member-led organization. Just not those members.

The fundamental problem in this quagmire is that players want to be paid now on value that hasn’t yet been created, or on value they won’t contribute to creating. For too many people, this is a moment in time to advance selfish agendas. Like a player who has assured access to the majors and wants to cash-in with no regard for past proclamations or loyalties. Or players who want to pillage the Tour for whatever they can get during their window of competitive relevance, with no regard to future-proofing the business. Or journeymen who see riches agonizingly out of reach and demand a share, with no regard to their comparative irrelevance in the product. Witness the cretinous complaint of Chris Stroud. “The Tour has never tried to give back to the players,” quoth the one-time winner – of an opposite field event – with more than $13 million in rewards to show for his mediocrity. It’s enough to drive anyone into the arms of the nearest friendly barkeep.

In every direction one looks, greed and entitlement are rampant. That risks engineering a model that is unsustainable, largely because the intent seems to be servicing the current generation of stars with only a cursory nod to what future generations might inherit. Short-term thinking is prevalent – whether panicked reactions to LIV moves or in individual agendas – and conversations within the membership are souring. Small wonder that McIlroy opted to pack his briefcase and leave the board.

Al-Rumayyan and LIV have a finite amount of time to succeed in golf, which is why a get like Rahm is appealing to the point of necessity. But the PGA Tour isn’t going anywhere, and its focus ought to be less on raising as much money as possible now but on bettering the product for those deeply invested in it, including its forgotten fans. The board would do well to consider the wisdom of Charlie Munger, the famed investment partner of Warren Buffett, who died last week. “The world is full of foolish gamblers,” he said, “and they will not do as well as the patient investors.”

Lynch: The PGA Tour’s winter of discontent is upon us, and a thaw isn’t coming soon

The most enduring and ruinous narrative peddled by the Tour was that every event mattered equally.

Reasons for thankfulness are scarce on the PGA Tour in the waning weeks of 2023, seasonal sentiment and Tiger’s impending return notwithstanding. Even feel-good winners like Erik Van Rooyen and Camilo Villegas furnished us with only a brief respite from the discord and distrust shadowing professional golf as it teeters toward a new dispensation, the structure and funding of which remains undetermined.

As the most tumultuous year in the Tour’s history draws to a close (if not a resolution), the portico principles that supported decades of the organization’s marketing are quickly crumbling. Like the ideals of comity and charity, for so long neatly packaged in a mantra — ‘These Guys Are Good’ — that was repeated with a fervor worthy of the Beijing politburo. Comity has been undermined by griping —  about fellow players, about executives at HQ, about the media — while the unrelenting chatter about money encourages a perception that too many Tour members think charity ends where it should begin: at home.

The most enduring and ruinous narrative peddled by the Tour was that every event mattered equally, as did every man in a member-led organization. It was a sustainable storyline only as long as everyone on the boat was aligned to row in the same direction. To the extent that they ever were, they are no longer. A clear caste system now exists on the tournament schedule and the voices carrying most weight belong to a distinct minority of the membership.

Major sports leagues, like motion pictures, are powered by superstars but staffed by extras. On the PGA Tour, there’s a rapidly expanding schism between cameo actors and leading men, between those who contribute (and often steal) scenes, and those who drive box office. Players at the apex of the food chain think the Tour is overly concerned with feeding the rank and file, creating too many events that pay too much for too little, while journeymen believe themselves squeezed by management’s desire to indulge the demands of the elite. It’s politics, with a smidgen more civility.

Lanto Griffin hits his tee shot on the eighth hole during round two of the Shriners Children’s Open at TPC Summerlin on October 08, 2021 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Alex Goodlett/Getty Images)

As the Tour moves to fundamentally reshape how it does business, the divide has never been more glaring. Consider Lanto Griffin’s comments earlier this week when Rory McIlroy resigned from the Policy Board. “Rory was great because he was approachable by everybody, but at the same time he was bought by the Tour,” Griffin said. “The head of the board has the same sponsors as the Tour and the Players, there’s influence there — I’m talking Workday, I can’t remember all of them, Golfpass. The guy who’s running the board is being paid by all the title sponsors, it’s a little sketchy to me.”

The errors of fact in Griffin’s statement rival the frequency of bogeys on his scorecards, but what’s noteworthy here is that McIlroy’s success and marketability has been weaponized against him as cause for suspicion, as evidence that he’s compromised. It won’t be the last time we hear this specious claim leveled against a prominent star. A consequence of players taking control of board decisions is that they are now deemed blameworthy by any of the Tour’s steerage passengers who think those on the upper deck are leaning on the tiller for selfish reasons. That divisiveness is likely to increase since the time is nearing for decisions that will upset many who feel their concerns are being ignored, their grievances not redressed, their future employment not assured.

About the only thing uniting locker room factions is a mutual distrust of Tour leadership. Much of that owes to June 6, when Jay Monahan squandered every atom of trust and goodwill he had accumulated over six years as commissioner. It is exacerbated by the slow pace of progress with the Framework Agreement negotiations — “deliberate,” to use Monahan’s word in a memo to players — and the absence of concrete detail. There may be progress soon on the private equity component — to the inevitable disgruntlement of some — but any Saudi involvement faces potential regulatory scrutiny, a time-consuming process. And whatever the future landscape of the Tour and the broader men’s professional game, the steps to get there will be painstaking. The Tour has roughly $6 billion in media rights revenue guaranteed through 2030, and any substantive alterations to the product it delivers before then could imperil that cash. Which leaves plenty of time for grievances to fester.

This painful reckoning for the PGA Tour has been a long time coming, a winter of discontent with many seasons yet to run. It’s all enough to make one give thanks to Woods (perè et fils) for the promise of a few days in which to appreciate things on the other side of the ropes.

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