Mackenzie Hughes is the clubhouse leader for the best press conference of 2024. Sure, it helped that he gave the first one of the year on Tuesday at the Sentry in Kapalua, Hawaii, but he also delivered a rant on the state of the professional game that will be tough to beat all year.
Hughes, a 33-year-old Canadian with two PGA Tour titles to his credit, posted a thread on social media late last year to remind fans that not every pro golfer was obsessed with the money infiltrating the game. He seems almost nostalgic for the pre-COVID, pre-LIV Golf days before $20 million limited-field, no-cut Signature Events became the norm.
“2019 was, like, all about golf, you know? Our economic model was sustainable. The LIV threat came along and all of a sudden we started to double the purses, and we’re asking sponsors to double their investment, and we’re giving them the same product,” he said. “Fans also, I think, are left wondering, like, do guys even love playing golf anymore, or are they all just concerned about money. All these guys going to LIV have made it pretty clear that it’s all about money. I mean, growing the game, but also money. So, to me, that’s disappointing, because, like, I don’t play – like, in 2019 I didn’t pick a schedule based on a purse. But now that I’m qualified for these (signature) events, I mean, obviously it would be silly for me not to play in these events. They are great opportunities. But, like, I just don’t think it’s right. I don’t think that – again, we have the same product that we had in 2019, yet we want this, like, increased investment, not just increased, but increased in a big way.
“I just think that the product, I mean, while I think it’s great, it’s the same product. I just think fans are kind of left scratching their head thinking, like, what is going on…The fan just wants to watch golf. I think you watch sports for an escape from other nonsense, but I think golf has brought a lot of nonsense onto its plate, and now you don’t get just golf, you get a lot of other stuff going on. It’s a bit of a circus.”
Hughes didn’t sugarcoat his feelings for some of his fellow Tour pros, who have used leverage to get the Tour to make significant changes that benefit the top players in hopes of keeping them from jumping to the upstart LIV Tour. That was capped off by the Delaware player meeting during the 2022 BMW Championship, where Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy gathered the top players to discuss a unified approach for the Tour.
“There was 70 PGA Tour players there and they thought only 25 or 30 of them were good enough for that meeting? Bit of a slap in the face,” he said. “You got 70 of the best players on the PGA Tour that season, and you’re going to tell me I can’t sit in that meeting and at least listen? You can just put me in the back and say, ‘Hey, Mac, don’t speak,’ but you can at least listen to what we’re saying. It was like this closed-doors meeting for the who’s who of the Tour.
“I’m not saying that you should make a decision based on what I think, but it would be nice to even just to put your two cents in or to hear what’s going on, to be involved, to feel like you’re part of it. Because it’s not – I’m not going to say – I’m not a star of the PGA Tour, but I’m not a chump either.”
As a member of the Player Advisory Council, Hughes expressed his concerns about how some changes to the Tour were enacted with great urgency and without the full support of the PAC. As an example, he cited the signature events and the idea of creating limited fields, which he said was a topic of conversation during a meeting at the Farmers Insurance Open in late January.
“Of all the guys on the PAC, I mean, it was a 50/50 split, probably. I mean, guys were all over on their opinions on it. The Tour was pretty steadfast in saying that they felt their data and their research backed up the fact that these were going to be better events, better products for the Tour to sell going forward, but there was just not buy-in across the board for guys in that meeting,” Hughes said. “Then we got to Bay Hill (in March), and I remember it was, like, I think it was a Tuesday or Wednesday at Bay Hill, and it came out that, oh, we have eight new signature events for 2024, and they’re going to be limited field events with no cut. Everyone on the PAC was like, Wait, what? We talked about this a month and a half ago, and there was no discussion or no real final decision on that. Then, all of a sudden, out of the blue, we just have this final outcome.
“So, I know I expressed my frustration at the time, and talked to the TOUR about that, I’m like, Well, why am I on the PAC if I’m not going to be a part of any of these decisions in the first place.”
As negotiations continue between the Tour and Saudi Arabia’s PIF, Hughes highlighted player entitlement as one of his pet peeves.
“Like, you start to see all these big amounts of money flying around and this offer and that offer and people think, Oh, well I stayed loyal, like, where’s my money? And it’s like, you’re not entitled to play the PGA Tour. You have the right and you have a privilege to play out here and it’s an opportunity, but it’s not like anyone owes you anything. No one’s, you know, forcing your hand. You don’t have to stay, you can go play over there if you want,” he said. “So, this whole, the-Tour-owes-me-something attitude, I don’t like either.”
Asked to name the outcome he is rooting for, he said, “I don’t see LIV going away any time soon. So, the outcome I hope for is that there is a way for the tours to obviously co-exist, and there’s some sort of unity, and there’s not a huge rift between ’em. There’s like some way that there’s, not a pathway, but there’s just sort of a little more of a free-flowing pass back and forth. Not for everybody. Not everyone on LIV is exempt to play on the PGA Tour. So, it’s not like everyone on LIV should be able to play a Tour event whenever they want. But, you know, the Tour obviously misses guys like Brooks Koepka, Phil, DJ, Cam Smith, like there’s no doubt that the Tour is stronger with those guys playing. So, I think that I would love to see a way for those guys to play again, but how do you justify to a guy like, like, I’m sure the Spieths, and the JTs and the Rorys and Scotties and Will Zalatorises, who were offered major amounts of money and decided not to go and stayed, and then the guys that left, and they maybe played two years of LIV, and then you make your way back to the Tour, and it’s like all things are good again? I think those are the guys you have to worry about making the most upset.
“How do you justify to them, like, Okay, they made 150 million, and now they’re going to come back and play on your Tour like nothing ever happened. So, I just don’t know how that gets navigated. Maybe they will have to just kind of take it on the chin and just suck it up. But that’s outcome I hope for, is that those guys eventually find their way back here, and play consistently out here, and we find a way to coexist as LIV and PGA Tour and it goes, kind of that bitterness and that rivalry and that divisiveness in golf goes away, and it becomes about who is playing the best golf, who is playing the best golf in the biggest tournaments, and you start talking about major moments in golf, not just major moments in the headlines or on Fox News when Jon Rahm says he’s going to LIV Golf. I’m just tired of talking about that stuff. So, that’s the outcome I hope we get to someday, but who knows when?
“I’m sure there are guys that are in a very opposite camp to me. Guys that would say, ‘Those guys are gone, never let ’em back ever.’ But that doesn’t seem realistic or in the best interests of the game. To me, as much as I love my position here on the PGA Tour, I wouldn’t feel threatened by those guys coming back. I would feel like this Tour would just become stronger if we had the best players in the world playing here…How do you make everyone happy? You can’t. The way forward I hope is smoother, but I know it will be messy before it gets smooth again.”
Hughes for the win. Great to hear a Tour pro opening up on how he really feels.
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