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Exclusive: PGA Tour will deny stars permission to play controversial Saudi International

The move will be seen as an escalation in a battle that pits the PGA and European tours against the Saudi government.

The PGA Tour will refuse to allow some of its biggest stars to play in the controversial Saudi International tournament next year, Golfweek has learned. PGA Tour members must obtain a waiver to compete on other circuits and the Tour has signaled to managers that permission will not be granted because the Saudi event is no longer sanctioned by the European Tour, which also plans to deny permits for its members to compete.

The move will be seen as an escalation in a battle for the future of professional golf that pits the PGA and European tours against the Saudi government, which has been pushing a Super Golf League concept that would lure elite players to a breakaway tour with guaranteed paydays of up to $30 million.

Asked to confirm that releases will not be given to players for the Saudi tournament, a PGA Tour spokesperson replied: “You are correct. This follows a PGA Tour longstanding policy of not granting releases to unsanctioned events.”

Since its inception in 2019, the Saudi International has been widely criticized as an effort by the regime in Riyadh to ‘sportswash’ its human rights record by leveraging golf to improve its image. Despite the controversy, the event has attracted many star players thanks to lavish appearance fees — up to several million dollars in some cases — and chartered private aircraft to and from the Mideast. World No. 2 Dustin Johnson has won the tournament twice while Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka are also among those who have been paid to play.

“There is lots of rumor and speculation floating about as it relates to the Tour’s position on the 2022 Saudi International. It would be premature for me to comment on it, given that we have not yet applied for a release from the Tour,” said Johnson’s manager, David Winkle. “However, given that Dustin has played in the event the past three years and would be returning as their defending champion, I have no doubt he would be quite disappointed if the Tour potentially denied his release.”

“I also think it is important to note that he is in a unique position, having played in the tournament since its inception and has, without question, helped put golf on the map in the Kingdom,” Winkle added. “In doing so, I hope he has helped grow the game in a region where golf is still a relatively new thing.”

The European Tour officially sanctioned the first three editions of the Saudi International, but a spokesman declined to comment on whether its members would be permitted to play the fourth staging, saying the 2022 schedule and player regulations had not yet been published. However, two senior figures with knowledge of decision-making at the European Tour confirmed to Golfweek that waivers will also be denied to its players.

The Saudi International is typically held in early February at Royal Greens Golf and Country Club in King Abdullah Economic City. Tournament organizers have previously announced high-profile commitments to the field up to three months in advance, suggesting that the timeframe when players would be seeking waivers from either tour to compete is imminent. PGA Tour members who play the Saudi stop without receiving a waiver would be subject to disciplinary proceedings. One Tour source said any punishment would likely be a monetary fine rather than a suspension.

Multiple sources told Golfweek that the 2022 Saudi International could be conducted under the aegis of the Asian Tour, which is headquartered in Singapore. The Saudis recently made a significant investment in the Asian Tour — ball-parked by two sources at $100 million — in an effort to gain traction for their global ambitions in golf. When asked if waivers would be granted to players if the Saudi International is officially sanctioned by the Asian Tour, a PGA Tour spokesperson responded, “We’d prefer not to speak to hypotheticals on matters pertaining to PGA Tour regulations.”

Specifics on the Saudi investment in the Asian Tour have not been announced by either party. One golf industry executive with extensive ties to the Asian market believes the deal will likely involve guaranteeing purses at a number of regular Asian Tour stops (the prize funds of which are typically around $1 million) with the goal of eventually holding several highly lucrative events for elite stars, with purses in the $15-$20 million range.

The Asian Tour deal weds the Saudis to a global tour with a seat on the board of the Official World Golf Rankings, opening the door to potentially conferring valuable ranking points on any Saudi-backed tournaments. The Super Golf League concept would not qualify for ranking points without an affiliation with a major tour. World rankings are one of the criteria by which players can gain admission to compete in major championships regardless of whether they play in PGA Tour or European Tour events.

It’s unclear if the Asian Tour partnership signals a potential abandonment of the Super Golf League idea in favor of an attempt to corral golf’s elite stars on a more limited basis, or if it’s merely a staging post toward the ultimate goal of creating the League. While the Super League has been pitched in various forms for at least seven years, it has thus far failed to entice a single golfer to commit. Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm have both publicly rejected the splinter tour idea and PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan has made clear that any member who commits to the Saudi-backed scheme risks a lifetime ban.

Despite the threatened consequences, players continue to flirt with the concept. As recently as the Open Championship two weeks ago, at least five players — all of whom have won majors — had written offers from the Saudis, according to a well-placed agency executive familiar with the discussions.

None of those players have yet opted to publicly commit to the League and risk being benched by the PGA Tour while the legality of such a ban is litigated. That in turn has led some seasoned observers to suggest players are using the rival League threat as leverage to secure a greater share of revenue from the PGA Tour.

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Lynch: Clandestine Kiawah meeting with PGA Tour agents could be the Saudis’ Waterloo

On the eve of the 103rd PGA Championship, the chatter at Kiawah Island was if players would sign-on with the Saudi-financed Super League Golf.

The Crown Prince is nothing if not opportunistic, whether waiting until a dissident journalist enters the Istanbul consulate to have him dismembered or choosing an event with 20 club pros in the field to make his final pitch promising top players that they don’t have to share riches with also-rans.

On the eve of the 103rd PGA Championship, the chatter at Kiawah Island is less about potential winners of the year’s second major than a possible splintering of the (men’s) game if a sufficient number of elite players sign-on with the Saudi-financed Super League Golf for fees reported at $30 million or more. It’s a controversial concept that rumbled along for years in near-secrecy without gaining traction, but which seems now to be hurtling toward the decisive moment like an executioner’s sulthan.

On Tuesday night, a group of managers and agents met near the golf course with the League’s backers to again hear their pitch and assurances about legal positions. Some PGA Tour players, including several of the biggest stars in the sport, have been talking amongst themselves about jumping to the Super League and consulted lawyers about whether the Tour can ban them, which commissioner Jay Monahan has made clear he will do. They must understand that it would be an incredibly brave or foolhardy man who risks being benched while opposing counsel rack up billable years trying to strangle each other with litigation.

There are compelling layers of intrigue not immediately obvious in the Tour’s effort to quash the Saudi circuit. For example, which golf organizations will rally to Monahan’s side and what courtesy they might expect in return. PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh lent his public support to the Tour on Tuesday, saying that renegade players would likely not play in future PGA Championships and forfeit the chance to compete or captain in the Ryder Cup. Waugh’s outfit owns half of that lucrative Cup. Another sizable chunk belongs to the European Tour, in which the PGA Tour is close to having a de facto controlling interest. Waugh might reasonably expect no future attempt to squeeze his share of the proceeds.

The U.S. Golf Association has not yet articulated a firm position on the breakaway idea or said whether players who join would remain eligible to compete in future U.S. Opens. Its stance will be of intense interest to the PGA Tour, just as the USGA is surely curious if the Tour will remain adversarial on the fraught distance debate. Two entirely unconnected topics, you understand, but it’s a connected world.

Entry to major championships is largely dependent on the Official World Golf Rankings, and the board of that ranking organization is stocked with members representing those major championships. These are not people prone to voting against their own self-interest. We may be about to see just how many bylaws in golf are etched in pencil.

Interest among players for the Super Golf League is a combination of many things: simmering resentment among top players that the Tour structure is too weighted toward rewarding mediocre performers, a simple desire to secure their financial futures, naked greed, or even a pressing need for cash to ameliorate past misadventures. Live like a Saudi prince and you’ll need a Saudi prince to bail you out.

But none of them can legitimately claim to be motivated by a desire for competition.

Imagine Gretzky having quit because Dancing on Ice offered more money. Or Jordan’s Bulls deciding that joining the Harlem Globetrotters was better than winning championships. Those who join the putative Saudi circuit are acknowledging that their competitive careers are over in any meaningful sense, that they’re no longer engaged in the pursuit of history or a legacy of excellence, or in measuring themselves against the greatest ever. It’s instead an admission that they’re not athletes but entertainers, mere vessels for marketing product, even if that product happens to be the currish reputation of a brutal regime.

But those philosophical matters aren’t even the most troublesome questions players who split will face.

There would be a public relations war that rebel players seem fated to lose. They would in effect be owned by the Saudi Super League, told where and when they work. And like most employees, that comes with rationalizing or justifying discomfiting activities by your employer. For most of us, that’s usually on the order of the bosses supporting causes or candidates with whom we disagree, but in this instance, it promises press conferences that raise awkwardness to an art form. Picture it:

“Bryson. Great win today. How did you manage to not get distracted by reports of last night’s airstrike that destroyed a hospital in Yemen?”

“Phil, congratulations on a terrific round. Will you unwind later by attending the public flogging in the town square?”

“Rosie, superb par save on the last. But tell me, do your wife and daughter need to surrender their passports over here, or is it just local women who are denied travel documents?”

Signing on as an accessory to the Crown Prince’s effort to sportswash his abysmal human rights record means that golfers long accustomed to toothless questioning will find themselves fielding questions from more aggressive news media on every Saudi atrocity and abuse. It’s fanciful to think otherwise, and willful ignorance on the part of managers who think the reputations of their stars could emerge unscathed. And what of their current sponsors who suddenly find their logos emblazoned on those who launder the Prince’s bloodied robes?

One assumes the managers who attended Tuesday night’s meeting at Kiawah Island sought assurances on issues that their hosts will struggle to supply. There are simply too many unknowns—the durability of the concept, the lawfulness of the Tour’s promised lifetime ban, the sacrificing of career independence, the reputational risk. Players on the PGA Tour are given to waxing lyrical on their love of golf’s risk/reward essence. But this would be an enormous gamble, even for $30 million.

The 103rd PGA Championship might ultimately be remembered as the week when the Saudi effort to hijack professional golf finally collapsed under the weight of its own filth.

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Lynch: PGA Tour boss Jay Monahan digs a line in the sand against upstart leagues

It remains to be seen how PGA Tour shores up the two principal vulnerabilities that the upstart golf leagues have exposed.

A friend who knows him once told me that there are two Jay Monahans. “There’s Golf Jay and Hockey Jay,” he said of the mulish Boston native, “and you don’t want to meet Hockey Jay.”

It sounds as though it was Hockey Jay who addressed a meeting of PGA Tour players this week in Charlotte, at which the commissioner laid out in unambiguous terms the sanctions awaiting anyone who joins either of the splinter circuits promising gaudy sums in a bid to upend professional golf’s established order.

Multiple sources had Monahan reiterating his long-standing position: It means an immediate suspension from the PGA Tour and likely a lifetime ban. For the handful of players who thought their ship had come in with offers reported at $30 million, it must have been sobering to realize Monahan is bent on ensuring that ship – the seaworthiness of which is decidedly unproven – will have no life raft.

Whether it’s the Premier Golf League (PGL) or Super Golf League (SGL) – the former formerly financed by the Saudi regime’s blood money, the latter latterly flush from the same source – both face an identical stumbling block: persuading the PGA Tour’s best to jump. Since no one seems eager to be first over the rampart, that really means enticing a quorum to jump together. And that’s a tough sell when there’s anecdotal evidence that Monahan isn’t bluffing.

At the 2020 Genesis Invitational, there were rumors around Riviera that a prominent star might announce his support for the Premier Golf League concept. There was a contiguous debate at Tour HQ about the response should the player do so. Only two options were tabled: boot him immediately or wait until the tournament had concluded out of respect for the sponsor, much as Michael Corleone delayed whacking his brother-in-law Carlo until his kid was baptized.

While it’s clear the Tour is taking seriously the existential threat posed by these rival groups, it remains to be seen how it shores up the two principal vulnerabilities these concepts have exposed with the precision of, well, a bone saw. One involves fan perception (they don’t see the best golfers face each other often enough) while the other is a grievance among elite players (they deserve a lot more money).

Both quandaries share an underlying issue: too many rank and file dregs cluttering up the PGA Tour product. That’s a thorny dilemma in a member-based organization, but there is a pathway to placating both constituencies. More than two decades after their creation, the oft-maligned World Golf Championships can finally serve a purpose.

Leaving aside the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, which features the top 64 ranked players who can be bothered trekking to Texas, the remaining three WGCs usually have between 72 and 78 competitors in the field. All of them – the WGC-Workday Championship, the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational and the WGC-HSBC Champions – invite the top 50 in the world golf ranking then often fill empty lockers with the lower orders of other global tours. That produces more journeymen than would be countenanced in a PGL/SGL tournament.

These WGCs can be reimagined to address the twin issues exploited by the Premier and Super league conceits. By engineering elitism – if you’re not in the top 50, don’t expect an invitation – the Tour can not only showcase top players competing against each other more frequently, but use WGCs as a vehicle to bestow yet more riches upon them. It’s guaranteed money by another name, divvied up among the Goliaths while the Davids make rent at an opposite-field event.

The Tour could compel stars to play a minimum three WGCs each year or risk forfeiting ranking points earned at all of them, thus jeopardizing their top-50 status. The recently revealed Player Impact Program partially tackles the money grousing by bonusing players who move the needle with fans, but that only benefits a few. Weaponizing the WGCs against the PGL and SGL benefits all the Tour’s top players and viewers too.

There would almost certainly be objections from the incipient socialist resistance of Tour players who would not benefit from this and who have taken to insisting that money be spent for the greater good, which they define as themselves. It’s a tenuous argument. In the 2018-2019 Tour season – the last not impacted by Covid – a total of 120 players earned more than $1 million in prize money and FedEx Cup bonuses. The guy who finished 150th on the money list, on the strength of a solitary top-10, earned more than $660,000.

Those are handsome hauls for mediocrity. A reckoning on the relative worth of Tour players isn’t necessarily limited to the top of the food chain.

Hockey Jay has notified the Tour’s star players of the consequences if they split. Next up: spelling out for the rest of his membership what they must live with to prevent that happening.