Tag: PGA Tour-LIV Golf merger

Lynch: Rory McIlroy should have answered the Donald Trump question with a shrug. But he didn’t

What has made McIlroy likable is the sense that he has a sense of the world outside of his privileged bubble.

The first Wednesday of November during leap years is a perilous time for public commentary as U.S. Presidential election results are debated in a manner just as partisan as the campaign that preceded it. This one is no different. Depending on whom you ask, one political party peddled faux populism and racism while displaying an astonishing appetite for conspiracy theories, while the other is woefully incapacitated by its indulgence of identity ideologues, Hamas groupies and gender jihadists. Which is to say there was already plenty to pick over without wondering if the election of Donald Trump would help professional golfers get paid more.

During a Wednesday press conference at a tournament in Abu Dhabi, Rory McIlroy was asked about progress in talks between the PGA Tour and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. “Given today’s news with what has happened in America, I think that clears the way a little bit. So we’ll see,” he offered, before adding that it would be “a huge moment” if the Department of Justice under Trump was more amenable to green-lighting a deal than Biden’s DOJ might have been.

In our hyper-polarized moment, even comments that are both bland and obvious can be construed as endorsing the election outcome, something McIlroy didn’t actually do. But those three words — “clears the way” — earned a pointedly sour reception. McIlroy gave the impression of welcoming the prospect of Trump interfering with a regulatory process to benefit a coddled group of golfers who’ve already alienated legions of fans weary of their entitlement and greed.

A few days ago, Trump claimed he could solve the PGA Tour-PIF dispute “in 15 minutes,” which at least acknowledges that it’s a more mundane matter than the Ukraine war, which he said he’d need 24 hours to end. “He might be able to,” McIlroy said in response. “He’s got Elon Musk, who I think is the smartest man in the world, beside him. We might be able to do something if we can get Musk involved, too.”

Even leaving aside the generous encomium for Musk, who has spent months amplifying racists and antisemites in his social media sewer, McIlroy knows better — a fact he quickly admitted. “I think from the outside looking in, it’s probably a little less complicated than it actually is. But obviously, Trump has a great relationship with Saudi Arabia. He’s got a great relationship with golf. He’s a lover of golf. So, maybe. Who knows? But I think as the president of the United States again, he’s probably got bigger things to focus on than golf.”

“A great relationship” is one way to describe a $2 billion Saudi donation to a hedge fund run by Trump’s son-in-law, but at least McIlroy’s last observation is beyond debate. Executives on both sides of this negotiation will know what impact, if any, the election will have. And if either has slow-played things to see if the review process is less aggressive under a Trump administration, they now have a date on which they’ll find out. But those are questions Jay Monahan gets paid handsomely to answer, not McIlroy.

Instead, what McIlroy inadvertently did was reinforce a widespread perception of myopic entitlement among Tour players. Millions of people awoke this morning with leaden uncertainty about things that actually matter — economic stability, support in times of war, global alliances, civil rights, basic healthcare, immigration status. That environment is sufficiently fraught without a golfer idly speculating on whether the election might be a treat for those impatient to get their hands on some Saudi riyal.

Anyone who has paid attention to the narrative in golf these past few years is probably immune to surprise at hearing such sentiments expressed, but this example will be jarring because of where the comments originated.

What has always made McIlroy likable is the sense that he has peripheral vision, a sense of the world and its issues outside of his privileged bubble. But that image took a hit Wednesday, overshadowed by the feeling that everyone now just has ‘PIF vision,’ that even he sounds like just another voice in a chorus asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’

That’s an unfair characterization of a man who has proven more thoughtful than most of his peers, but McIlroy has been around this thorny issue for a long time, and around divisive politics since childhood. He knows there are some questions that are best answered with a shrug and a ‘your guess is as good as mine’ deflection. This was obviously one of those.

Yet he chose to do what he always does in press conferences (not always wisely): answer the question he was asked. In this instance, on this day, he ought to have taken a lead from his late compatriot, Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney: “Whatever you say, you say nothing.”

‘You have to break the ice’: Adam Scott says PGA Tour-PIF negotiations to heat up ‘very soon’

“Someone has to show a hand. It’s got to happen soon.”

HAMILTON, Ontario – Could progress be in the offing for the ongoing negotiations between the PGA Tour and Saudi Public Investment Fund?

Adam Scott, a PGA Tour player director, has had a seat at the table this year, and as recently as two weeks ago even he said he is perplexed at how the negotiations have stretched into June. When asked at his pre-tournament press conference at the Charles Schwab Challenge about the future of professional golf, he struggled to give a complete answer.

The problem? He said he was still waiting to hear PIF’s end game.

“I think the PGA Tour has a vision of what it wants to look like 12, 18 (months) and then going forward, five, 10 and 20, you know, or at least 10 years down the line, let’s say, and what it should evolve into,” he said. “But at the moment there’s another party that they’re negotiating with that has to believe in that vision as well, and I don’t know exactly what their vision is.”

Speaking to Golfweek at the RBC Canadian Open, Scott said he was confident he will learn that vision soon.

“I think we are getting there, for sure,” Scott said. “Eventually someone is going to have to put it out exactly what it is, and I think that will happen very soon. I think so. You have to break the ice, kind of, and someone has to show a hand. It’s got to happen soon. It’s moving along as quickly as it can.”

When Scott was pushed on if he really believed that the negotiations – which technically began nearly a year ago with the signing of the Framework Agreement on June 6 – were moving fast enough, he said, “It’s not all up to us on our schedule. The head of the PIF sits on 125 boards or something. He’s busy, too. Some would say the buck stops with him and he has to make some decisions on what he’s investing in.”

The PGA Tour already has entered into an agreement for Strategic Sports Group to invest at least $1.5 billion and as much as $3 billion into the Tour’s new for-profit entity. The Tour and PIF met in March in the Bahamas after the Players Championship for the first time. Jimmy Dunne, whose secret meeting with PIF’s Yasir Al-Rumayyan in early 2023 led to the Framework Agreement, resigned from the Tour board in mid-May citing “no meaningful progress” toward a deal with PIF to unify men’s professional golf. Tiger Woods and Jordan Spieth, both fellow Tour player directors, disagreed with Dunne and called that a false narrative.

“It’s ongoing, it’s fluid, it changes day-to-day,” Woods said ahead of the PGA Championship last month. “Has there been progress? Yes. But it’s an ongoing negotiation, so a lot of work ahead for all of us with this process, and so we’re making steps, and it may not be giant steps, but we’re making steps.”

Added Spieth: “I just continue to kind of chuckle, because I only feel positive momentum when we’re having these internal conversations, and then every time anything comes from the outside world it’s the opposite, and it just kind of makes me chuckle a bit because it’s a bit frustrating.”

A source for Golfweek said that “very soon” could be as early as next week. The Memorial, the next stop on the PGA Tour and hosted by Jack Nicklaus at Muirfield Village in Dublin, Ohio, is typically a gathering spot of leaders of the golf world, and talks could accelerate at Jack’s Place.

A source told Golfweek that the question is how much will the players on the board be willing to compromise? And how much money is PIF prepared to lose?

“It’s who blinks first,” a source said. “It’s not rosy in either camp, so empower Jay (Monahan), put him in a room with Yasir and do a deal.”

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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Congressional probe digging deeper on LIV Golf fund poses questions about American investments

Disclosures show that PIF’s public U.S. holdings have increased from $2.3 billion in March 2019 to $35.5 billion in March 2023.

As a congressional probe continues to dig into the financial inner workings of the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, some interesting facts have surfaced on the size of the sovereign fund and its growth under Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan.

On Wednesday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the chair of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, issued a subpoena to PIF’s wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary in search of documents that would pertain to the fund’s deal with the PGA Tour.

According to a memorandum from Blumenthal, D-Conn., after Al-Rumayyan took control of the fund back in 2015, it grew from 40 employees to nearly 1,500 employees (as of 2021). Also, the fund now has $776 billion in assets under management, up more than five times from the $152 billion it had under its directive in 2015.

According to Blumenthal, this growth, some through holdings in American-based companies, should make the governor eligible for questioning by the subcommittee.

“The Saudi’s Public Investment Fund cannot have it both ways: if it wants to engage with the United States commercially, it must be subject to United States law and oversight,” Blumenthal said. “That oversight includes this Subcommittee’s inquiry.”

Yasir Al-Rumayyan
Yasir Al-Rumayyan, head of the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, at the 2023 LIV Golf Invitational – DC at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia. (Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images)

According to the memo, a move for PIF to obtain a large stake in the PGA Tour is just the latest of a series of shielded investments that should be raising eyebrows.

From the memo:

Visibility into PIF’s U.S.-based investments is greatly limited. The only information that PIF must report to the public about its U.S. investments is through required disclosures of investments in publicly-traded companies to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). These disclosures show that PIF’s public U.S. holdings have increased from $2.3 billion in March 2019 to $35.5 billion in March 2023. This $35.5 billion-dollar figure does not include the disclosure of private transactions. …

This lack of visibility is troubling for a number of reasons. First, there is potential to use investment to suppress unfavorable narratives about Saudi Arabia. For example, just this week reports emerged stating that Vice Media removed an unfavorable documentary regarding Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after it merged with a Saudi Arabian government-owned media company. Determining whether there are connections between investment and the suppression of speech and guarding against their intended effects is impossible without knowing where and how Saudi Arabia is invested in the United States, and much of its investment is through PIF. Beyond outright suppression of potentially negative press, investment can also be used as a tool of influence to promote positive stories and thereby suppress or distract from negative ones.

PIF’s PGA Tour investment fits in this bucket because it appears to be a classic attempt at a practice known as “sportswashing,” a “phenomenon whereby political leaders use sports to appear important or legitimate on the world stage while stoking nationalism and deflecting attention from chronic social problems and human-rights woes on the home front.” More visibility about PIF’s U.S. investments is also needed to guard against efforts like this and to allow Americans to know the true source of favorable reporting.

Earlier this month, PIF retained a high-powered Washington D.C. lobbying firm to help shield Yasir Al-Rumayyan from having to speak publicly. The firm marked the sovereign fund’s pushback against the probe, insisting that some of the inquiry is subject to immunity.

In June, the PGA Tour announced groundbreaking news that it was forming a new commercial entity with the goal of unifying golf with the help of PIF.

From the PGA Tour’s release: “The parties have signed an agreement that combines PIF’s golf-related commercial businesses and rights (including LIV Golf) with the commercial businesses and rights of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour into a new, collectively owned, for-profit entity to ensure that all stakeholders benefit from a model that delivers maximum excitement and competition among the game’s best players.”

PIF was expected to make an investment into the new entity “to facilitate its growth and success” and will initially be the exclusive investor alongside the PGA Tour, LIV Golf and the DP World Tour. PIF will also have the exclusive right to further invest in the new entity, including a right of first refusal on any new capital that may be invested in the entity.

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LIV Golf signs on high-powered D.C. lobbying firm amid congressional probe

A representative of Akin Gump said Al-Rumayyan should not be forced to take part in any future hearings.

As a congressional probe into LIV Golf and the Saudi Arabia-backed Public Investment Fund (PIF) continues to press for testimony from the fund’s governor, a high-powered Washington D.C. lobbying firm has been retained to help shield Yasir Al-Rumayyan from having to speak publicly.

According to Politico, Akin Gump Strauss & Feld has been retained by PIF as the sovereign fund pushes back against the probe, insisting that some of the inquiry is subject to immunity.

In June, PGA Tour Chief Operating Officer Ron Price and board member Jimmy Dunne were sworn in at a Senate subcommittee hearing in Washington D.C. to discuss the proposed deal between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and PIF.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., is the chairman of the committee and has been publicly critical of the deal, which is expected to unite the two once-warring factions in golf under the same commercial umbrella.

According to Politico, a representative of Akin Gump said Al-Rumayyan should not be forced to take part in any future hearings.

Raphael Prober, a lawyer at the firm, wrote to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) on behalf of the Saudi’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), arguing that the governor of the fund “cannot participate in any public hearing that is part of an unbounded inquiry into the PIF’s past, present, and future interests and investments.”

Blumenthal, who chairs the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, has requested testimony from PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan since June.

“An unprecedented effort by the Subcommittee to compel [Al-Rumayyan’s] appearance and testimony would not only disrupt the delicate balance of foreign relations and international diplomacy, but would also compromise the prerogatives of the Executive Branch,” Prober wrote in the letter.

Prober, a partner at Akin Gump, co-heads the firm’s congressional investigations division.

His letter, dated Aug. 23 but filed with the Justice Department on Aug. 30, is the latest volley in PIF’s back-and-forth with Blumenthal’s subcommittee over Al-Rumayyan’s potential testimony, as part of an inquiry into the wealth fund’s U.S. investments. The subcommittee launched a probe after the announcement in June that the PIF-financed LIV Golf league and PGA Tour planned to join forces after months of bitter infighting between the two ventures.

LIV Golf Chicago
LIV Golf Series CEO Greg Norman stands with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Governor of Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, at the LIV Golf Series Invitational event in Chicago on Sept. 18, 2022, Rich Harvest Farms in Illinois. (Photo: Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press)

According to previous reporting, the Tour sent a six-page document to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, previous to the hearing that outlined the potential framework of the deal. here are some of the main points of the deal:

  • LIV Golf’s future will be decided by the new entity’s board that will be controlled by a Tour majority.
  • A “Communications Committee” will be created that will “help facilitate a smooth business transition” and “coordinate and manage communications” between PIF, LIV and the PGA Tour.
  • The PIF will be “a premier corporate sponsor” of the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and other international tours, and will be a title sponsor for at least one event.
  • More from the agreement to create a new global golf entity, which they reference as “NewCo:”

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Lynch: Jay Monahan opens up on his health, but stays positively mum on his Saudi deal

Monahan’s shareholders in the locker room primarily have one yardstick (money) and one concern (how they’ll get more of it).

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It’s been 25 years since Tom Wolfe published “A Man in Full,” the novel in which an Atlanta good ol’ boy, Charlie Croker, sees the high times grind to a halt as the reserves of cash and goodwill so long extended to him finally run dry. Eventually, even his allies turn. “His botching things was malfeasance. It made them look so goddamned bad!” Wolfe wrote of Croker’s fleeing friends. “Half a billion! Now his heedless deadbeat squandering was making them all look like fools! Suckers! Patsies!”

For a time this summer, it seemed Jay Monahan was destined for his own “Cap’m Charlie” reckoning as the PGA Tour commissioner’s issues mirrored those of Wolfe’s character. There was the apparent need for a cash infusion to meet bills, laid bare in the announcement of a Framework Agreement with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund. There were the legal headaches, LIV’s withdrawn litigation having been replaced with a Justice Department antitrust probe and U.S. Senate subcommittee theatrics. There were the people who thrived in the good times who began to sour when the going got tougher, in Monahan’s case the players, whose anger at the secrecy around the Saudi deal — and the associated moral backflip, but mostly the secrecy — threatened his future.

In retrospect, the least surprising moment of Monahan’s long, hot summer was his taking a month-long leave of absence to address his mental health.

The Monahan of ’23 is markedly different from what we saw twelve months ago at the Tour Championship, when he announced plans for designated events, increased purses and bonuses, and rookie subsidies. He was laying out a vision. Sure, it wasn’t his — it was largely the creation of Colin Neville, the Raine Group partner brought in to advise players by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy — but it was an actionable concept. There were specifics.

This year, there were none.

He relied on boilerplate remarks and repeatedly stiff-armed inquiries about the ongoing negotiations with the Saudis. “We continue to reinforce the fact that the framework agreement ultimately is the path that we’re on and when we’re able to share more information, we will,” he said.

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Even when Monahan touted figures highlighting the robustness of the PGA Tour’s business — viewership, engagement, revenue, demographics — it felt like a perfunctory concession to metrics that only matter in a rational business environment, a conventional standard by which he is no longer judged. His shareholders in the locker room primarily have one yardstick (money) and one concern (how they’ll get more of it).

Which explains why the commissioner was at pains Tuesday to remind us for whom he works. Monahan never could muster the imperious swagger of his predecessors, but what little he had was extinguished by the recent revolt in which players demanded more say in governance. I asked if he saw that move by players as an indictment of how the organization has been managed.

“I did not,” he replied. “I look at this as not an indictment, but a very positive message… We’ve listened, we’ve responded, and now we have the right people, the right process in place for us to be able to move forward and determine that future. But I look at it as a positive and something that I and we embrace.”

Something else Monahan has embraced is this phrase: “a positive outcome for the PGA Tour,” words he relied upon several times today. What constitutes a “positive outcome” is, of course, wholly subjective. Some people within the Tour contend that a positive outcome has already been accomplished — the ending of litigation. Others point to the Tour’s creation of a for-profit entity to expand its product, an investment vehicle in which the Saudis need not be passengers, or at least not the only ones. There’s also a group for whom a positive outcome is no Saudi partnership at all, a position bolstered by reports this week from human rights groups that their putative business partners machine-gunned hundreds of migrants and asylum-seekers.

Monahan acknowledged that there is other investment interest — clean capital, as it were — but that he is focused on talks with the Saudi PIF. “I think the realization that there is an entity that can be invested into at the PGA Tour and the uniqueness of being able to invest into a professional sports league of the caliber, quality and sustainability of the PGA Tour, obviously has generated a lot of interest,” he said. “But in terms of alternatives, right now, you know, the sole conversation that we’re having is the conversation we’re having with PIF.”

Right now. Or until an alternative definition of a “positive outcome” has the votes.

The only area in which Monahan provided clarity was his health. “I have never felt better mentally and physically than I feel right now. And obviously, I had to take some steps to go from where I was to this position. But I’m a work in progress,” he said. “So I’m working on the things that I’ve learned that are going to help me in my life and help me in this role. That’s how I feel, but more importantly my doctors, my wife, and girls, ultimately, that’s how they feel about how I’m doing. They are my arbiters. I feel as strong as I’ve felt in a long, long time.”

In that too, Monahan echoes Wolfe’s Charlie Croker, who found comfort in his version of stoicism, albeit too late in his case.

While he didn’t offer much in the way of policy particulars, Monahan gave the impression of someone for whom professional stresses now seem less important, less defining. Whatever his other shortcomings this summer, that’s not a bad place to arrive at for a man charged with laying out a sumptuous banquet for people with competing views about the menu, the timeliness of the service and the sourcing of the food.

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Lynch: Jay Monahan and Greg Norman won votes of confidence at the Open today, but will either one really count for much?

Tuesday at Royal Liverpool saw votes of confidence on the two most high-profile, controversial executives in golf.

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HOYLAKE, England — Votes of confidence are powerful instruments, capable of toppling once-popular governments and ending formerly flourishing careers. The last such motion of consequence in Britain, in 1979, brought down a Labour government and ushered in the bleak era of Thatcherism. The themes that prevailed then — worker unrest, claims of mismanagement, demands for reform, mockery of collective interest, promises of riches — are eerily familiar to the dynamic in professional golf now, though it would be uncharitable to draw parallels between the PGA Tour-Saudi Framework Agreement and the Labour manifesto in’79, which was dryly described as the longest suicide note in history.

Tuesday at Royal Liverpool saw votes of confidence on the two most high-profile, controversial executives in golf, neither of whom is actually present at the 151st Open Championship.

The first featured the embattled PGA Tour commissioner, Jay Monahan, who returned to work Monday after a month-long leave for an undisclosed medical issue. Shortly before his departure, Monahan had announced an astonishing pact with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund that ended, or at least paused, acrimony, litigation and harsh condemnation. At least between those two parties. But it created a similar motif internally at the Tour, where a player putsch is taking shape among a handful of elites intent on ousting the board members behind the accord and tilting the Tour toward alternatives.

British Open: Leaderboard, tee times, hole-by-hole

One man seemingly not on board with that plan is Jon Rahm. The world No. 3 was asked if his opinion of Monahan had changed since his Linda Blair-like about-face on June 6. “I wouldn’t say it’s changed … He’s a really good man,” he said. “As it comes to what he’s been doing for us and the PGA Tour, I think he’s done a fantastic job.”

The gust of wind that blew across the grounds at Hoylake after those words was a sigh of relief that began in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.

“I would say it was unexpected what happened. I think what the management of the PGA Tour, the turn they took without us knowing was very unexpected,” the Masters champion continued, “but I still think he’s been doing a great job. And right now after that happened, I only think it’s fair to give them the right time to work things out.”

Rahm’s voice has more weight than company at the Open. There’s a widespread belief that Monahan will struggle to survive the fallout of his rapprochement with the regime he consistently (and accurately) denounced while encouraging his players to do the same. But the notion that the commish betrayed his members isn’t a view that Rahm subscribes to.

“I still think they have the best interest of the players at heart,” he said of Tour executives. “All we have right now, it’s a framework agreement. It’s an agreement to have an agreement. We really don’t have anything right now to be able to say or judge what they’ve done. That’s all I can say.”

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Pressed on whether Monahan has lost his trust — which Xander Schauffele says is true with him — Rahm was unequivocal: “No. Again, he still has all this time to work this agreement to basically prove that this was the right decision. No, as of right now, no.”

Rahm is nothing if not iconoclastic in his thinking, a fact underscored by another comment he offered that won’t earn applause in the more elite precincts of the locker room. He was asked if the PGA Tour owes a reward to top players who remained loyal and rejected overtures from LIV Golf, a group that includes Rahm himself. “I wasn’t forced into anything. It was my choice to stay,” he said flatly. “Do I think they absolutely should be and there must be a compensation? No. I just stayed because I think it’s the best choice for myself and for the golf I want to play.”

“Now, with that said, if they want to do it, I’m not going to say no,” he added to laughter.

“We all had the chance to go to LIV and take the money and we chose to stay at the PGA Tour for whatever reason we chose. As I’ve said before, I already make an amazing living doing what I do,” he said, a reality that is true for so many of his peers but acknowledged by so few of them.

Today’s other referendum on a golf executive at Royal Liverpool illustrated a complex truth about votes of confidence: it is not simply about surviving them; often it’s about the enthusiasm with which survival is granted.

Brooks Koepka, who jumped to LIV Golf 13 months ago, was asked his thoughts on a revelation that emerged in last week’s U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing on the PGA Tour-PIF agreement — that LIV’s CEO Greg Norman will be bounced if a definitive deal is reached. His response was to offer a neutral, irrelevant and obvious comment about how he’s communicated more with Norman in the past year than in the five years previously and that he’s “pretty good friends” with his son.

But has the Shark done a good job?

“I think he’s done fine. It’s all perspective, right?” Koepka offered.

Fine. The fallback adjective for the angry, the disillusioned and the disappointed when asked if everything is okay, the telltale trope when you don’t want to fully express what you really think.

Pushed again, Koepka didn’t flinch. “He’s done fine.”

Two votes of confidence, both nominally positive, but not at all the same. Monahan will give thanks that the right man was asked about him, while Norman will rue getting the guy least likely to blow smoke up his gills. For all that, both know nothing said in public at Hoylake will determine matters in the coming months, and that their respective fates may turn out to be not all that different.

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Jon Rahm on being compensated for PGA Tour loyalty: ‘If they want to do it, I’m not going to say no’

“We all had the chance to go to LIV and take the money and we chose to stay at the PGA Tour for whatever reason we chose.”

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HOYLAKE, England – Jon Rahm doesn’t think he should be compensated for his loyalty to the PGA Tour, but he won’t stop anyone that wants to do so.

“It’s a tricky question,” Rahm said on Tuesday during a press conference ahead of the 151st British Open. “So I understand the PGA Tour wanting to do something for those players who helped and stayed on the PGA Tour, but at the same time – and I’ll be the first one to say – I wasn’t forced into anything. It was my choice to stay. Do I think they absolutely should be and there must be a compensation? No. I just stayed because I think it’s the best choice for myself and for the golf I want to play.

“Now, with that said, if they want to do it, I’m not going to say no.”

Laughter ensued.

British Open: Leaderboard, tee times, hole-by-hole

Rahm continued. “We all had the chance to go to LIV and take the money and we chose to stay at the PGA Tour for whatever reason we chose. As I’ve said before, I already make an amazing living doing what I do. I’m extremely thankful, and that all happened because of the platform the PGA Tour provided me. As far as I’m concerned, they’ve done enough for me, and their focus should be on improving the PGA Tour and the game of golf for the future generations.”

Jon Rahm picks up his golf ball on the seventh hole during a practice round of The Open Championship golf tournament at Royal Liverpool. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

As to the other thorny question of the day, allowing those players who defected to LIV to return to the PGA Tour and DP World Tour, Rahm contends some sort of punishment is in order but said it was above his pay grade.

“I can understand people on the PGA Tour not wanting those players back, and I can also understand why some of them want to come back. There’s some great events that a lot of people probably want to go and play again, some great golf courses, as well,” Rahm said. “I do believe that some punishment should be in order, but I don’t know what – I’m not a politician. That’s not my job. That’s for the disciplinary board and other people that are paid to do that. My job is to hit the golf ball and try to do the best I can.”

Yet, count Rahm among the many players that was blindsided on June 6 by the news that the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the financial backers behind the renegade league, had reached an agreement to end litigation and create a new commercial entity as part of a five-page framework agreement.

Rahm gave PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan a vote of confidence, saying he thinks he’s “done a fantastic job,” and noting that Monahan had texted him but they haven’t talked since Monahan was sidelined with health issues. (He returned to the job on Monday.)

Photos: Jon Rahm — through the years

“I hope whatever he had wasn’t too serious, and I hope him and his family are doing good and his health has gone back to normal,” Rahm said. “I think what the management of the PGA Tour, the turn they took without us knowing was very unexpected, but I still think he’s been doing a great job. And right now after that happened, I only think it’s fair to give them the right time to work things out.”

Rahm is a man of many opinions, but he said he’s not going to go out of his way to express them.

“If you want my opinion, ask me,” he said. “I think they should talk to the membership and get an idea of where the players are at. But it’s not about just myself. Obviously, it should be a general feeling of what the partnership wants to do. I’m not going to be calling every single day telling them what I think and what should be done. Let’s just say that.”

Cooler heads may prevail and Rahm described the next few months as a waiting game to see how the deal plays out.

“Hopefully they can reach a partnership that they both are happy what the outcome is going to be, and everybody can move on and be the best golf product we can put out there, whatever that looks like,” he said. “I think it’s obviously cooling down, and now we’re all waiting to see how this moves forward.”

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Lynch: As PGA Tour commish Jay Monahan returns, it’s a coin-flip whether he and his Saudi deal can survive

If and when Monahan falls on his sword, a successor faces an unenviable challenge.

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For all of the anticipation, the only constituency actually comforted by the U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing on the PGA Tour’s deal with the Saudis were those already convinced as to the piss-poor quality of elected officialdom in the Republic. Anyone eager for a scintilla of clarity on golf’s future was left disappointed, and with about as much faith in their leadership as the nation at large.

That was apparent in comments by Tour members who are congenitally serene. Scottie Scheffler and Jordan Spieth were pointed in expressing their impatience with the pace at which members are being informed in what is nominally a member-led organization, while Xander Schauffele only just stopped shy of voting no confidence in Jay Monahan. The commish returns to his job July 17 after a four-week medical leave, but how long he can keep it is a matter of feverish speculation.

Trust is a precious commodity in commerce, but in the present-day PGA Tour it’s more scarce than snow in the Sahara. There isn’t much among Policy Board members, most of whom were oblivious that a sleeper cell was negotiating such a consequential deal. Still less exists between players and executives, as anger about the blindside calcifies into resentment about the absence of detail and apparent failure to consider alternatives. Even among players, factionalism has taken root, shaped by personal disappointment, a loss of confidence in those entrusted with running things, or simply a loss of leverage masquerading as a loss of confidence. None of those sentiments augur well for Monahan.

Ron Price and Jimmy Dunne, who testified in the commissioner’s stead on Capitol Hill, offered two impetuses to explain the accord with the Saudi Public Investment Fund: financing litigation was unsustainable, and LIV Golf would continue to pick off key players in perpetuity. Both assertions are really assumptions. People familiar with Tour finances insist it is far from penury, while most top players — those who really matter, rankings be damned — seem to have already made their decision on where to compete. To shore up the rationales presented during the hearing, frequent references were made to the PIF’s $700 billion war chest, as though the entire resources of the regime are designated to underwrite its ambitions in golf.

A more plausible explanation for the Framework Agreement is that both parties were incentivized to end the invasive legal discovery process, so they crafted not a roadmap to a shared future but a patchwork quilt of fig leaves to conceal embarrassing shortcomings. It was sufficient (and legally necessary) to end the litigation, and like many peace accords is intentionally vague so all parties can claim a measure of victory. Yet interpretations of the text voiced by either side were becoming difficult to reconcile even before Senator Richard Blumenthal gifted us a document dump that revealed Saudi ambitions wildly inconsistent with their supposedly being a minority, passive investor in the proposed new joint venture.

Soon it will become clear if the deal that the PGA Tour signed is the same one that the Saudis believe they have.

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Even if both parties are aligned and negotiating a definitive deal in good faith — a generous grant given that one is proven to prefer bonesaws to brokering — the prospects of it being consummated are highly uncertain. A player revolt on the PGA Tour is precariously near, and likely emboldened by Randall Stephenson’s July 9 resignation as an independent director on the Policy Board. To his credit, Stephenson condemned the amorality of being in business with those who carved up Jamal Khashoggi, but it was his other calls to arms that will resonate in the locker room: for governance reform at the board level, and for examining investment options that don’t involve doffing a visor to the butcher’s bagman, PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan.

Right now, there exists no Saudi deal — only platitudes about the aspiration to reach a deal. But even that flimsy pact might become collateral damage in an internal mutiny at the Tour, regardless of whether members are amenable to it in principle, and long before it can be adjudicated by any regulatory authority. The coming weeks will prove that players have the authority and opportunity to shape the PGA Tour’s future while their LIV counterparts, well-compensated pawns, are dependent on the whim of Al-Rumayyan.

But who will guide the Tour through the turbulence? Monahan has been personally popular among members, but the goodwill he earned was entirely spent with his backflip, the secretive process leading to it, and the maddeningly opaque period since. In circumstances that are devoid of clarity, the tenuousness of Monahan’s tenure is unambiguous. If and when he falls on his sword, a successor faces an unenviable challenge.

The PGA Tour isn’t confronting an existential crisis because an autocratic regime decided golf is a cool vehicle to drive tourism and Monahan refused to take a call to discuss opportunities, but because so many players allowed petrodollars to usurp rational market values in a niche sport. The consequences are warping the economics of professional golf to such an extent that it can no longer be sustained on media rights and sponsorships, and that reality will persist for whoever is in charge.

Alternative investment exists for the PGA Tour, and while such options would demand a return, accountability is preferable to the free-range financials now running amok. Clean capital would leave LIV in the wilderness while mitigating the specter of tournament sponsors exiting rather than risk proximity to the Crown Prince’s next atrocity. And if the scorned Saudis double down, as they were threatening privately when negotiations began, so be it. Let them continue funding a failed product and let players choose sides, once and for all. The PGA Tour simply cannot continue mutilating itself to satisfy every demand for a pound of flesh.

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Documents show ‘side agreement’ to oust Greg Norman as LIV Golf Commissioner if PGA Tour-PIF deal is executed

The document was revealed on Tuesday as part of a memorandum to members of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

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If the PGA Tour’s agreement to form a new commercial partnership with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is executed, Greg Norman will be out of a job as Commissioner of LIV Golf, according to PGA Tour interim co-commissioner Ron Price.

Asked by Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal — “Just to be clear, [Norman] is out of a job?

Price replied: “If we reach a definitive agreement, we would not have a requirement for that type of position.”

Price and Tour board director Jimmy Dunne testified before Senate for three hours on Tuesday.

It’s no big surprise that Norman won’t be involved in running LIV going forward other than the fact that the PGA Tour went so far as to produce a side agreement in writing as part of the Framework Agreement, which was announced to the world on June 6.

The document was revealed on Tuesday as part of a memorandum to members of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Appendix 13 shows an email sent on May 24 from PGA Tour chairman of the board Ed Herlihy to Michael S. Klein, a representative for PIF, highlighting a one-sentence side letter that he proposed would be executed between all the parties at the same time as the Framework Agreement:

“In connection with the execution of the Framework Agreement, the Parties hereby agree that the services provided by Greg Norman and Performance 54 to LIV will cease upon the management transition to the PGA Tour contemplated by the Framework Agreement and in any event by no later than one month thereafter.”

In a separate email message sent from Price shortly thereafter, he wrote, “After reading the side letter language again, I think the ‘no later than one month thereafter’ applies to when we assume management responsibilities for LIV versus one month after execution of the Framework Agreement.” There is no evidence in the filing that the document was signed by both parties.

Norman, a former world No. 1 player, two-time major champion and World Golf Hall of Fame member, has long been at odds with the PGA Tour since he tried to launch a breakaway tour in the 1990s. That effort was rebuffed and Norman has long held a grudge. LIV Golf gave him a second bite at the apple and the financial resources to lure several top players to jump to a breakaway circuit, which is currently in its second season of operation. PGA Tour players from Tiger Woods to Rory McIlroy have been on the record stating that, “Greg must go.”

It appears the PGA Tour is attempting to make sure that will happen. Norman wasn’t involved in the secret negotiations between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and PIF until he received a phone call from Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who will become the chairmen of the new entity overseeing the PGA Tour, LIV Golf and DP World Tour, minutes before the deal was announced on CNBC.

“Under the framework agreement,” Price said, “if we are able to move to a definitive agreement and it is approved, the LIV Golf assets, for which Greg Norman is currently Commissioner, would move into a new subsidiary controlled by the PGA Tour and those events will be managed by the PGA Tour. We have a complete infrastructure in place to manage events. It would make no sense to bring in that type of executive to manage what is right now a series of 14 events.”

Price also confirmed that Norman’s removal as the Commissioner of LIV was the only side agreement, or informal understanding, that “he knew of to his knowledge.”

In Appendix 15, which details Monahan’s talking points for a call with the Tour’s Policy Board, it states, “Greg Norman will be reassigned to an advisory role determined by PIF when the PGA Tour becomes the manager of the LIV Tour.”
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