“If I take 62 out of the top 70 out of a field, do I have a better shot of winning? You’re damn, right I do.”
AUSTIN, Texas — As the unveiling of a framework agreement between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund approaches its first anniversary without any major subsequent announcements, one major champion said it’s going to be nearly impossible to get the Tour and PIF-sponsored LIV Golf back on the same page.
Mark Brooks, who won the 1996 PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club among his seven PGA Tour victories, called the current golf landscape “chaos” during a recent interview, adding that repairing any rifts between the two sides will be difficult, especially as both sides have become accustomed to their current arrangements.
Brooks was part of a movement to pull players together back in the 1990s called The Tour Players Association, of which he was the treasurer. Although it wasn’t a full-blown union, the idea was to bring players together to collectively bargain.
Mark Brooks kisses the Wanamaker trophy as photographers capture the moment after he beat Kenny Perry in a one-hole playoff to win the PGA Championship Sunday, Aug. 11, 1996, at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky.
He thinks such a group could have helped avoid the current issues.
“I’m surprised it took this long for some kind of splintering to happen,” Brooks said, in advance of this year’s PGA Championship.
But while he understands how the signature events and LIV Golf events, both of which do not have a cut, came to be, he’s concerned with how weak it’s left some PGA Tour events on the current calendar.
“Some of these events are, let’s just call it, top 70 shallow,” Brooks said. “Below that they’re heavy. They’re not going into, you know, past champions like me. I’m not showing up on the eligibility list, they’re not going that kind of deep. But probably 15 events this year will be very light in terms of the top 70 and you go, well, does that mean anything? Absolutely it means something. Are you kidding me?
“If I take 62 out of the top 70 out of a field, do I have a better shot of winning? You’re damn, right I do.”
Although some have insisted progress is being made behind the scenes in ongoing conversations between PIF and the PGA Tour, those arrangements are strictly financial.
Brooks said he doesn’t see an avenue for players to fully reintegrate into the PGA Tour, and he added that he thinks most aren’t interested in such a move.
Also, now that the new league has changed the game, he doesn’t see how it ever becomes one again.
“I do think it’s absolutely chaos. I think putting pieces back together, putting humpty dumpty back on the wall, it’s going to be pretty tough,” he said. “Guys don’t want to come back. They don’t have a desire to come back.”
The Transaction Subcommittee’s anodyne name belies its importance.
Committees often have about as much utility as ashtrays on motorcycles, and in golf usually serve only as a mechanism to butcher great courses and honor the milquetoast. On occasion, however, they can be impactful. The three-man panel that negotiated the PGA Tour’s Framework Agreement with the Saudis last summer certainly made an impression, not least because other Policy Board members didn’t know of its existence nor much care for its output.
The backlash to that secretive process sparked a time-consuming and overdue governance review that is essential as the Tour shapeshifts from an indolent non-profit with complacent members into a modern league with shareholders and investors. A handful of oversight committees have now been established at PGA Tour Enterprises, the for-profit entity that runs the business. Most are standard operating procedurals, but one panel in particular suggests the Tour is about to move beyond childish bickering and begin letting grown-ups shape its future.
The Transaction Subcommittee’s anodyne name belies its importance. It will handle talks with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia on a potential deal and make a recommendation to the full Policy Board — one the politburo is unlikely to reject from its hand-picked negotiators. Committee members include Enterprises chairman Joe Gorder, commissioner Jay Monahan and John Henry, the principal of Strategic Sports Group, which just invested a billion-five into the product. There are also four players: Joe Ogilvie (retired, and now a humble money manager), Tiger Woods, Adam Scott and Rory McIlroy. In short, a lot of people unaccustomed to making business calls by committee.
No one is on the panel to present moral arguments about being in business with a despot. Those who harbor any such reservations will check them at the door and treat negotiations as a matter of commerce, not conscience. But it is at least a committee of adults, something sorely needed in this sorry mess.
The PGA Tour has been consumed with dual crises, one internal, one ex-. The latter is obvious — the LIV threat, caused by the depth of Saudi pockets and the shallowness of character among the Tour’s own membership. The internal dispute mostly remained behind boardroom doors until spilling into the open this week when a faction of player-directors (Woods, Patrick Cantlay and Jordan Spieth) blocked an effort to reappoint McIlroy to the Policy Board he left six months ago.
The rebuff wasn’t unjustified. There must be a legitimate and transparent process governing board appointments and having Webb Simpson nominate McIlroy as his successor ain’t either. Still, there was no hand-wringing when Woods was added to the board in the middle of the night, the only member without (still) an expiration date for his term. The Pope of Ponte Vedra serves at his own discretion, it seems. But the stiff-arming of McIlroy exposed how personal grievances have masqueraded as governance concerns.
There are ample misgivings about how the Tour is run and most are genuinely held and valid. But some guys just remain angry at being blindsided by the Framework Agreement, while others are pissed because they left LIV’s millions on the table and know their moment has passed. They want the heads of those who architected the June 6 deal — Monahan, Ed Herlihy and Jimmy Dunne — and the thirst for retribution has paralyzed the organization at a perilous time.
That faction sees McIlroy as too close to their nemeses, but in balking at his return to the board they might have overplayed their hand. A public perception now exists that the Cantlay camp wields power, which means that credit for progress — or, more likely, blame for a lack thereof — is destined for the same desks.
Thus McIlroy now finds himself used by both sides. Having long been a proxy for executives in fighting the public battle against LIV, he is now seconded to the Transactions Committee as a convenient means of providing cover for the players who didn’t want him to have a board vote, but who fear even more scrutiny for having rejected him. The Tour is fortunate that he’s sufficiently toughened (or soft) to endure its maladroit bungling in his effort to contribute to a solution. McIlroy’s relationships with stakeholders on both sides will be useful to the committee, but not enough to single-handedly forge a settlement in golf’s civil war. Even a good-faith effort might still mean the Tour moves forward without a toxic association with the PIF.
Whatever the outcome, the spectacle of backroom squabbling has focused a harsh light on the role of players in management. The to-ings and fro-ings of recent years prove that most players will make decisions based upon personal priorities, not the broader good of the sport or a tour. That tendency is incompatible with the executive functions they now feel entitled to exercise.
If nothing else, perhaps this committee will hasten a day when all of them can get back to adding value where they do it best — inside the ropes — and leave the actual business to those qualified for the challenges.
The PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund missed their agreement deadline. So … now what?
After a year of uncertainty, 2024 was meant to usher in a new era of professional golf following the shocking announcement last June that the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund – the financial backer of the rival LIV Golf – had agreed to merge their commercial assets to create a new, for-profit golf entity.
Golf fans have come to realize over the last six months that the framework agreement was nothing more than a good way to end litigation and a bad way to announce plans to form a new venture, known as PGA Tour Enterprises, to reunite the professional game.
A Dec. 31 deadline was set to reach an agreement, but on Sunday night, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan sent a memo to players that stated “active and productive” negotiations would continue into 2024 with the PIF based on the progress made to date. Monahan also claimed the Tour has “made meaningful progress” with the Strategic Sports Group (SSG), an outside investment group headlined by Fenway Sports Group.
So … now what? As the PGA Tour returns to action this week, golf fans are still left to wonder what the future of the sport will look like. The New Year’s Eve update provided little information and left fans with numerous unanswered questions that need to be addressed, sooner rather than later. Until then, let’s put on our speculation hats and look at the impact extending the deadline may have on the pro game.
“This is a pivotal moment in time for professional golf and the PGA Tour.”
Although he hasn’t played competitive golf in two months, Jordan Spieth has been busy.
He and his wife, Annie, welcome their second child Sophie in September. He also aggravated a wrist injury he dealt with in the spring. And last week, Spieth had another big task put on his plate: PGA Tour Player Director.
The three-time major winner is in Albany, Bahamas, ahead of the 2023 Hero World Challenge for his first stroke-play tournament since the Tour Championship. The time off has given Spieth plenty of time to work on his game. In those spare moments, he figured out what was actually going on with his wrist, and with the news of him replacing Rory McIlroy on the Tour’s policy board, now he has to figure out what’s the best path forward for the PGA Tour.
“I’d been pretty involved since June in a lot of stuff going on and so I didn’t — doesn’t really change a whole lot of what I’ve been involved in other than kind of officially being able to know, be in the know a little bit more,” Spieth said. “And I thought the other player directors and a lot of other players had to pretty much have the confidence for me to kind of be the guy to help be that sixth vote, that majority the board to help see through what the next at least few months looks like.
“And then for me it’s nice because it’s not a full term, which I had said that I wasn’t interested in for the time being given two little ones now and trying to get my game where I want it. But I think that this is a pivotal moment in time for professional golf and the PGA Tour and I felt like I could be of help.”
Spieth said there’s nothing but optimism among the player directors and collectively, they feel they’re going to get something great done for the Tour.
A week after the Ryder Cup, Spieth said he injured his wrist, which forced him to withdraw from his hometown event, the AT&T Byron Nelson, in May, and lingered for nearly two months.
However, he and his doctors were finally able to diagnose the issue.
“It ended up being a nerve thing, which is nice because I wasn’t doing anything either time that I hurt it that should have caused what happened,” Spieth said. “Both MRIs were very similar and shouldn’t have been in the pain and lack of mobility that I had initially after it happened. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense off the MRIs, and so then just did a bunch of tests and some work. Turns out it was my ulnar nerve, which is not anything to mess with, so I’ve been trying to take it very, very carefully.
“As long as I’m on top of it treating, it’s kind of all through neck, chest, over and down, so it’s loosening things up. It’s not really a rest or ice thing. It’s not an inflammation thing, which is how I treated it in May thinking it was an acute injury to the wrist. It’s more use it, but don’t overuse it. Listen to it. But I’ve been at full practice for weeks now and here or there when I feel like it gets close to being overdone, gym, practice, combination of a day, then I stay off of it. But I have no reservations on my abilities to just do what I need to do going forward given the progress that’s been made over the last month and a half.”
Jordan Spieth plays the second playoff hole from the 18th tee during the final round of the 2023 RBC Heritage. (Photo: David Yeazell-USA TODAY Sports)
In the 2022-23 season, Spieth didn’t collect any victories on Tour but did fall in a playoff to Matt Fitzpatrick at the RBC Heritage, where he was the defending champion.
With his wrist figured out, Spieth said his confidence and game are getting back to levels and feels he had during some of his prime runs. He’s hoping for a solid showing this week, similar to when he won in 2014, to springboard him into the 2024 season.
However, a big part of his schedule the next month will be being entrenched with the PGA Tour Policy Board. He said no one reached out to him directly to take McIlroy’s spot when the latter resigned, though Patrick Cantlay was one who pushed him to take the position.
Now, the focus turns to the framework agreement with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, where Spieth and PGA Tour members have to find the right path forward.
“There would have to be some — there’s some kind of like non-negotiables that I think the players of the PGA Tour should have, and I’m not sure that that could be met with PIF,” Spieth said. “And maybe it could, and I’m not sure. I think it’s going to come down to what the players want.
“Me giving an opinion is not my job. If you’re just asking me a regular question, I can give you my opinion elsewhere, but if you’re asking me as a player director that’s not my job to answer. But second part was do I — what would my vision be ideally? I think there’s — I don’t think there’s one answer to that either. I think that there are options that I think could be super beneficial, but I don’t know if they’re possible.”
There has been no shortage of conversation about the agreement between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the main financial backer of the LIV Golf League.
On Thursday, the New York Times reported a key piece of that agreement has been dropped.
The PGA Tour nor LIV Golf would be able to recruit players from the other circuit, but that clause is no more, according to the Times report.
The U.S. Department of Justice reviewed the framework agreement, and concerns over the antitrust implications, and the potential for the DOJ to use it as reason to block a deal caused the PGA Tour and PIF to remove the framework.
William E. Kovacic, a former Federal Trade Commission chairman, was quoted in the story saying the language appeared “to be right in the field of vision that the Department of Justice has staked out for its no-poaching enforcement program.”
The PGA Tour informed its policy board members of the decision on Thursday, the report states.
