Optics matter in business, and even moreso in our current polarized moment when believing is seeing, when any detail can be twisted in support of a bias we already hold. So it is with Jay Monahan’s compensation, which Sportico reported was just over $23 million in 2023, per PGA Tour tax filings. Nothing turns ardent capitalists into Bernie Bros quite like revelations about executive salaries, and reactions to Jay’s pay didn’t disappoint. Whether Monahan actually deserves that money is a matter for the board that approved his package, and which presumably signed off on the bonus structure that accounts for the bulk of it. But to casual observers, it fits a drearily familiar narrative: people who bear at least some responsibility for the lousy state of golf (chiefly players, with executives a distant second) are earning more than ever while their business woefully underperforms by almost any reasonable metric.
Optics certainly doomed LPGA Tour commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan, who resigned on Monday. She can point to a handful of positives from her three years on the job, but Marcoux Samaan couldn’t shake an unflattering perception that comes with botched logistics, poor relationship maintenance and dithering amid crises.
It would be easy to also cite optics for the reportedly imminent departure of another industry executive — Greg Norman, as CEO of LIV Golf — given his Comical Ali-style bluster in the face of failure that only grows more glaringly obvious with each flip of the calendar. But that would be a disservice to the flaxen-haired finger puppet, who has undeniably been successful in ways that his Saudi benefactors required.
Sure, objective reality says Norman has failed to deliver a significant audience, serious commercial sponsorship or a meaningful media deal for his product. But his dexterity in signing someone else’s checkbook gave LIV the only market share it needed — enough competitively relevant players — and his inability to feel shame made him the ideal frontman to brazen out the initial disgust about sportswashing by authoritarian regimes. But while the Shark imagined himself a visionary, to his bosses he was a mere functionary. Like many a Saudi apparatchik before him, Norman has seemingly outlived his usefulness, though unlike others his severance probably won’t be literal, via bonesaw.
Norman’s eventual ouster will have nothing to do with job performance. It’s simply preparatory for the next phase of the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s golf project. If there is a deal between the PIF and the PGA Tour, Norman is too toxic a personality to lead LIV into whatever cooperative new ecosystem takes shape. And if there isn’t, well, it’s not like he’s been doing an outstanding job anyway. By comparison, his reported replacement, Scott O’Neil, is viewed as a sober and respected sports business leader, a chap without baggage who can work within any new arrangement.
So why would O’Neil take a position that might not exist in a couple of years? Either the pay is sufficient to justify the gamble, or the gig won’t be defunct. Bet on the latter.
Given antitrust concerns — regardless of who occupies the White House — LIV won’t be binned as part of a definitive deal between the PGA Tour and PIF. There will probably come a day when the Saudis cease funding their folly, but that isn’t imminent. So, just as one must offer a chair to the most objectionable family member at Thanksgiving, a place will need to be found for LIV in whatever new reality emerges.
Several scenarios seem feasible. It could continue as a standalone tour; its teams could be folded into a new team golf component on the PGA Tour schedule while LIV’s player contracts fade out; or a combination of both. If a deal is struck and LIV continues as a separate circuit, then it’s likely to do so as an ex-U.S. enterprise, aligned more with the DP World Tour schedule and not competing with the all-important FedEx Cup season. Against that backdrop, consider a Bloomberg report (albeit one dismissed privately by some in Europe) claiming the DP World Tour and LIV are discussing a possible cooperative structure. Such talks would make sense as part of a three-way deal with the PGA Tour. Outside of a trilateral agreement, a LIV-European alliance would pose an existential threat to the PGA Tour. If the Saudis are platformed by a tour with world ranking points, legacy standing and a global presence, what’s to stop every player unafraid of his passport from choosing to compete for huge purses at a select few DP World Tour stops?
In the absence of clarity in PGA Tour-PIF negotiations, everything is presumably on the table.
The continued existence of LIV isn’t the ultimate prize for PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan. He wants access to team franchises with real value in the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL when rules are eventually loosened on sovereign wealth funds buying ownership stakes. It’s not difficult to see how Al-Rumayyan and the PGA Tour’s existing investors in Strategic Sports Group are incentivized to be in business together. Greg’s dream is merely Yasir’s vehicle. In time, LIV will be viewed as no more than an inconvenient junk asset that needs to be parked until it is finally shuttered.
But optics also matter a great deal to Al-Rumayyan. For now, someone has to spare his blushes over having flushed several billion dollars on a farce. Someone has to facilitate a respectable disengagement over time from the LIV debacle. Someone has to provide an alternative avenue for his ambitions in golf. That someone is apparently Monahan, who finds himself having to simultaneously hold together a fractured boardroom, an underachieving organization and grousing members long enough to build Al-Rumayyan’s off-ramp. Perhaps he’s actually earning his money after all.
