Everyone knows by now, unless you’ve been vacationing on Mars for the last three years, that Greg Norman finally found funding for his alternative golf tour. But four No. 1 and former No. 1 players were quick to come to the side of the PGA TOUR saying they had no intention of leaving. Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, Jon Rahm and then Tiger Woods joined the fray.
The whole situation dominated much of golf news in 2022 with controversies, name calling and lawsuits. It got unreasonably ugly, at least for golf, which is usually mannerly.
It was surprising to find that two of the most vocal spokesmen for the PGA TOUR were a Northern Irishman and a Spaniard. You could guess some all-American guys like Thomas and Woods would rise to the occasion.
McIlroy went first and he went early, back when the idea was still called the Premier Golf League, in 2020.
“The more I've thought about it, the more I don't like it,” he began during a press conference in Mexico City in February of 2020. “The one thing as a professional golfer in my position that I value is the fact that I have autonomy and freedom over everything that I do. I pick and choose (where I want to play).”
He had other problems with the proposed new league, too.
“Right now, people are looking at it purely from a monetary standpoint,” he said. “I would like to be on the right side of history with this one, just sort of as Arnold was with the whole Greg Norman thing in the '90s. Again, I value a lot of other things over money, and that's sort of my stance on it at this point.”
For a while, McIlroy was a man on an island. He was the only one who was willing to plant a stake in the ground, say no and stand behind it. But he was in a position where he didn’t need the money. He had just won a FedExCup, and it was probably a drop in the bucket compared to what he had already won playing professional golf, never mind endorsements.
However, by that time, according to Golf Channel, a memo had already been sent to all players from the commissioner. It said, in part:
“If the Team Golf Concept or another iteration of this structure becomes a reality in 2022 or at any time before or after, our members will have to decide whether they want to continue to be a member of the PGA Tour or play on a new series.”
It was a polite way of saying if you jump to this new tour, you can’t play on ours. The reason is that doing so is a violation of the rules they agreed to when they joined the PGA TOUR. (You can find the current handbook for TOUR players online. The conflicting events and marketing rights issues are outlines starting on page 136.)
Later on, Woods praised McIlroy for taking the stance he did.
“What Rory has said and done are what leaders do. Rory is a true leader out here on Tour,” Woods explained. “The fact that he's actually able to get the things he said out in the public eye, be so clear minded with it and so eloquent with it, meanwhile go out there and win golf tournaments on top of that, people have no idea how hard that is to do, to be able to separate those two things. But he's been fantastic.”
At McIlroy’s next tournament, the Arnold Palmer Invitational, he did an interview on Golf Channel reiterating that he didn’t like other people telling him where he had to play. To his previous comments he added, “I really didn’t like where the money was coming from either.”
When other prominent players were asked about it, most said what Tiger Woods said early on, which was, “There's a lot of information that we're still looking at, and whether it's reality or not, but just like everybody else, we're looking into it.”
Then came the pandemic and life as we know it changed. When Disney World closed on Friday of THE PLAYERS, everyone in Florida knew it was serious stuff. Disney does NOT close. The next day, THE PLAYERS was cancelled.
McIlroy said someone told him the previous day that today's overreaction could look like tomorrow's underreaction to COVID. And that proved to be true. COVID did a lot of bad things. But what it did do was delay Greg Norman’s new version of his old idea, the one he first put forward in 1994.
At that time, in 1994, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus called a player meeting and told everyone that they should not leave the PGA TOUR for Greg Norman. Palmer and Nicklaus were the two who actually formed the PGA TOUR in 1968. In essence, both said that they could have made a lot of money for themselves without splitting away from the PGA of America and making an organization of just playing professionals. They formed the tour for all the guys they played with who didn’t have the following or endorsements of a Palmer or a Nicklaus and for the professional golfers who would come after them.
Once the worst of the pandemic had passed, during 2021, rumors flew about who was and wasn’t going to join the new league. Toward the end of the year, it looked as though something might happen. And something did, but it was not what anybody expected. Phil Mickelson had made some statements accusing the tour of obnoxious greed. Then he insulted the Saudis with comments that were made public. It was very hard to figure out what he was doing. It was not at all Mickelson-like behavior. Later, we found out he was recruiting for the new tour as well as intending to play in it.
In late February of 2022, at the Genesis Invitational, several prominent players picked a side, joining McIlroy in the “we’re staying with the PGA TOUR” movement.
Jon Rahm said, “This is my official, my one and only time I'll talk about this where I am officially declaring, let's say, my fealty to the PGA TOUR. I'm a PAC (Players Advisory Council) member, and I have a lot of belief in Jay Monahan and the product that they're going to give us in the future. There has been a lot of talk and speculation on the Saudi league. It's just not something I believe is the best for me and my future in golf, and I think the best legacy I can accomplish will be with the PGA TOUR.”
He has since had to repeat it a couple of times for those who were not paying attention the first time, but he said more or less the same thing.
Justin Thomas piled on.
“I have a lot of things I'm focused on accomplishing out here, and I'll be the first to say that, yeah, there's plenty of things that I would love to see improved with the PGA TOUR, but that's a part of the process,” he said. “I'm very, very content with what's going on. All — I mean, the reason I play golf is to create a legacy and win as many times as I can on the PGA TOUR.”
Last season he won his second major at the PGA Championship.
Collin Morikawa, who had already won two majors in his first four years on the PGA TOUR also had no intention of joining Norman’s brigade.
“I'm all for the PGA TOUR. I've been a pro for two and a half years,” he said. “My entire life I've thought about the PGA TOUR, I've thought about playing against Tiger, beating his records, whatever, something that might not even be breakable, but I've never had another thought of what's out there, right? I've never thought about anything else; it's always been the PGA TOUR.”
Like others, he believed there are always improvements that can be made, but he saw that the best players were staying with the PGA TOUR.
“I just want to compete against the best in the world and right now that's where it is. I'm very happy, I'm very thrilled to be here,” he added. “So, yeah, there was money, but for me it's thinking about where I am in the position I am today, right? I'm 25, I've got a great life, I've got a great career so far. I'm enjoying it, I'm loving what I'm doing.”
Like many PGA TOUR players who were “recruited” for Norman’s league, he was shown nothing specific, nothing concrete.
“I need to be able to see a sheet in front of me and know what's out there, right?” he continued. “All I've heard are rumors, all I've heard is talk and that's hard to do, right?”
He said there had been no names mentioned in signings.
Rahm had a similar experience, but he was in a different position as a PAC member.
“Yesterday we had our first PAC meeting. Being a PAC member, I thought, you know, I'm in a situation where it's almost a little bit of my duty to make my stand in this instance,” he explained. “I made it very clear to my management team to don't even bother me with it until this was something that was maybe real, and it never came back.”
So, for Rahm and Morikawa, at that point in time, there was no there there.
McIlroy, by this time, could only say, “Oh, I'm so sick of it.”
But he’d been living with the questions for two years more than anyone else.
In March of last year, the week after The PLAYERS, Norman’s LIV tour announced a schedule with events starting in London on June 9. Several PGA TOUR players requested what are called conflicting event releases, which are often granted, but in this case, they were all denied.
As soon as players teed it up, Commissioner Monahan sent them notices of suspension from the PGA TOUR.
Then the second event was played in North America, at Pumpkin Ridge in Oregon. The PGA TOUR does not allow its members to play another professional event in North America when there is a PGA TOUR event that is being contested because it dilutes the value to the sponsors. All who teed it up in that event were suspended.
As McIlroy had said in February, “I can maybe make sense of it for the guys that are getting to the latter stages of their career, for sure. I don't think that's what a rival golf league is really — that's not what they're going to want, is it? They don't want some sort of league that's like a pre-Champions Tour.”
But in essence, that’s a good part of what they got. Mickelson is now 52 and will be 53 in June. Lee Westwood turns 50 this April. Ian Poulter is 46. Bubba Watson is 44. Bryson DeChambeau has been injured off and on for the last two years. Brooks Keopka’s knees are so bad that he has said he is like glass. Sergio Garcia, hard to believe, is 43. Dustin Johnson is 38. Henrik Stenson is 46. A loss was Cam Smith, winner of last year’s PLAYERS and British Open, but he has back problems, and one never knows what that means for his longevity.
“Certainly, for the younger guys, like it just seems a massive risk,” McIlroy suggested. “You look at the people that have already said no, Rahm, No. 1 in the world, Collin Morikawa, myself. Like you've got the top players in the world are saying no, so that has to tell you something.”
Justin Thomas harbored no hard feelings regarding those who did not want to stay on the PGA TOUR.
"People are entitled to choose as they wish," Thomas said. "I don't dislike DJ now. I don't think he's a bad dude. I'm not going to treat him any differently. He’s entitled to choose as he wishes.”
At the PGA Championship in May, Woods began voicing his thoughts.
“I just think that what Jack and Arnold have done in starting the TOUR and breaking away from the PGA of America and creating our tour in '68 or '69, somewhere in there, I just think there's a legacy to that,” he explained. “I believe in legacies. I believe in major championships. I believe in big events, comparisons to historical figures of the past. There's plenty of money out here. The TOUR is growing. But it's just like any other sport. It's like tennis. You have to go out there and earn it. You've got to go out there and play for it. We have opportunity to go ahead and do it. It's just not guaranteed up front.”
By comparison, LIV golfers were contract players. They were given a sum, whether upfront or over time, and then required to play a certain number of events in specific locations. The first season was eight events. They promised there would be 14 the next season, and there are. The first is a week after THE PLAYERS.
Since the LIV golfers are paid to play a certain number of events and expected to show up for all of them, it is a different kind of sporting event. It’s one without the history and tradition. It negates the long history of the Scottish players who popularized the game beginning in the 1860s and brought it to the U.S. in the 1880s and 1890s which eventually led to the development of professional events and a golf tour. LIV is pay to play golf. Plain and simple. It’s a long Silly Season.
During the summer and early fall, six more LIV events were played, and as each event occurred more PGA TOUR players who had signed were suspended. And it continued that way through their season and the PGA TOUR season.
“I think anybody that’s shocked (about suspensions) clearly hasn’t been listening to the message that Jay (Monahan) and everybody’s been putting out,” Thomas told the Associated Press. “They took that risk going into it, whether they thought it was a risk or not. I have great belief and great confidence in the PGA TOUR and where we’re going and continuing to grow to, and those guys just aren’t going to be a part of it.”
During the British Open, Woods was asked again about LIV, and he said, “I think that what they've done is they've turned their back on what has allowed them to get to this position.”
In August, Mickelson and 10 other players sued the PGA TOUR, but one by one, the rest of the players dropped out and they were replaced by the LIV organization which is basically the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF).
At the TOUR Championship, PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan explained the TOUR’s position.
“As it relates to any of the scenarios for LIV players and coming back, I'll remind you that we're in a lawsuit. They've sued us. I think talking about any hypotheticals at this point doesn't make a lot of sense,” he said.
By the end of last year, both Woods and McIlroy suggested that it might be possible to talk to the Saudis about all of this, but not unless they drop the lawsuit and fire Greg Norman who has been their CEO. It’s a stalemate at present.
As Woods summed up, “You want to compare yourself to Hogan, you want to compare yourself to Snead, you want to compare yourself to Nicklaus. You can't do that over there, but you can on this tour.”
And so now, we await the outcome of the lawsuits which may take another year to sort out. However, many PGA TOUR players have shown themselves to be staunch supporters of the PGA TOUR’s brand of golf. And for people in Ponte Vedra, for Northeast Florida and for THE PLAYERS, these guys are good has a new meaning.
