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At around 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan found himself in front of dozens of media professionals at a virtual press conference. Why was it virtual? Because no one saw it coming. At least none other than Monahan himself. The second leg was on a demonstration tour.
For most of the past 90 minutes, Monahan has been in a meeting with PGA Tour players, answering their questions for the first time since launching a seismic shift into the professional golf scene. The PGA Tour (and the DP World Tour) has been merged with LIV Golf in a master agreement between Monahan, Yasser Al-Rumayyan, governor of the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, and two PGA Tour board directors. After more than a year of telling PGA Tour players not to join LIV Golf and sign contracts for tens (and even hundreds of) millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia, Monahan has been explaining why he’s now accepting Saudi investment on behalf of all of them.
“It’s hot in here,” one tour member wrote, mid-meeting. Other reports soon confirmed that the meeting, which was expected to last an hour, was extending beyond its allotted time slot. When that was done, Monahan sure took a deep breath. or several deep breaths. Because then there were ten questions from members of the media, his answers would be more public than those he shared with the tour membership. Here’s a rundown of what the PGA Tour commissioner shared on Tuesday night.
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A very small group of people brokered this deal.
The first question Monahan received was about the speed at which the merger was progressing. Manahan admitted that there have been four in-person meetings and a number of video and phone calls that have occurred over the past seven weeks. Basically, this means that all meetings have taken place since John Rahm Masters won.
The parties involved were limited: the Public Investment Fund, Monahan, and then two independent directors who serve as members of the PGA Tour Policy Council: Ed Hurlihy and Jimmy Dunn. “The direct answer to your question is when you get into these conversations, and given the complexity of what we’ve been dealing with, it’s not uncommon for the circle of information to be quite narrow,” Monahan said.
The zero players were briefed on the matter by Tuesday.
The entire deal between the PGA Tour, PIF, LIV Golf, and the DP World Tour is what Monahan called a “framework agreement.” Its binding nature at present is to drop all lawsuits between the parties. Includes the original suit between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour. It includes the anti-harmful interference claim made by the Tour at LIV. All of that was dropped, making Tuesday’s announcement a deal-breaker for the court.
The reason Monahan hasn’t brought players like Rory McIlroy or even Tiger Woods to the table is because he believes he needs a basic agreement to be drawn up – and confidentiality agreed upon among a small group – and to drop litigation before he can. Follow up by bringing in important voices to come up with additional details.
“Obviously, Tiger and Rory’s perspective is one that I understand very well,” Monahan said, “and it’s been part of my thinking during these conversations, and it’s going to be part of my thinking going forward. Now that we’re in a framework agreement, I look forward to talking to all of our players, including the two of them, To make sure this comes the right way.”
As a result, the players were very upset.
The main theme of the day was that PGA Tour players were completely in the dark. “I am completely shocked,” one senior pro wrote in a text message. Monahan issued a letter to players Tuesday morning before appearing on CNBC, but as Colin Morikawa quickly pointed out, he caught a number of players in a less intimate way: via Twitter.
Monahan met with several pros on Tuesday before At his press conference, he was naturally asked about the feeling in the room. “I would describe the meeting as intense,” he said. “Sure hot.” Monahan was asked by the press how he handled the act of explaining the news to members of the PGA Tour, especially when many of them had lost millions of dollars in LIV contracts.
“You know, it might not have been the case for them,” Monahan said, “but while I looked up to our players, these players who have been loyal to the PGA Tour, I’m confident the move they made — they made the right decision. They helped redesign the future of PGA Tour. They’ve moved us to a more competitive paradigm.”
He seems to know what everything looks like.
Monahan may have made the most significant 180-degree turn we’ve seen in modern golf history. He spent months fighting with LIV Golf and the idea of a Saudi investment. And then, over the past two months, something has changed. Unsurprisingly, the role earned him a lot of rage on social media, in addition to what he earned as a member of the tour in Canada. He’s ready for it all, based on what he looked like on Tuesday night.
“Going back to the origin of LIV, I said this, they need to have their way and we’ll go our way,” Monahan said. “We did everything we could to improve and grow the PGA Tour, and they launched LIV; they initiated LIV; they made progress with LIV. But in the end he was looking at the broader picture and saying I don’t think it’s right or sustainable to have this tension in our sport.” And to be able to orchestrate and direct this in a way that, again, we’re in control, we have an investor, a great, world-class investor, and I’m aware of everything I’ve said in the past and in my past positions.
“I realize people are going to call me a hypocrite. Anytime I say anything, I say it with the information I had at the moment, and I say it based on someone trying to compete on the PGA Tour and our players. I accept those criticisms. But circumstances change. I think given that To the big picture and looking at it that way, that’s what got us to this point.”
LIV Golf (and team golf!) will be thoroughly evaluated.
The Civil War in professional golf, as we knew it, is over. Now, LIV Golf is a PGA Tour Partner. Monahan addressed her as such on Tuesday night. It was particularly attractive, he said, “to take a competitor off the board, to exist as a partner, not as an owner.” But what does that mean for LIV itself?
Monahan mentioned the need for an “empirical evaluation” of LIV Golf. “I don’t want to make any statements or make any predictions,” Monahan said. “But what is there is a commitment to a good faith effort to look at the golf team and the role it can play in the future.”
As we understood earlier today, the 2023 PGA Tour and LIV Golf schedules will operate as expected. This includes weeks where both tours host competing events. Monahan was asked about the possibility of moving forward, such as in 2024.
“I can’t see that scenario, but I haven’t gone into the full evaluation, the full beta evaluation of LIV that I’m going to do to be able to comment on that. But I don’t see that scenario, no.
“To me, any scenarios you think of for that bridge between the PGA Tour and the LIV are going to be longer in nature.”
This was just the beginning of many conversations.
As mentioned, Monahan met with the players at 4 p.m., and then met with the press at approximately 5:30 p.m. Next up was a meeting with the PGA Tour’s Advisory Council, a group of 16 players representing the membership. Details of the merger were finalized Monday night, and Monahan indicated a framework for communication plan beginning Wednesday morning.