This year two-time major champion and former Golf world number one Greg Norman announced the start of a new professional golf league. The new league, dubbed “LIV Golf” is being bank-rolled by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and has been jeered as “sports washing” by the Saudi Royal Family. Saudi Arabia is long known for its history of oppression and human rights violations. LIV Golf’s critics point to the league as an attempt of the Saudis to improve their reputation and distract from its regressions by financing a “new and exciting” professional golf league. The same was alleged of China earlier this year as the host of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.
Beyond the controversial financier of LIV Golf has been the internal fighting that has ensued within the sport of Golf, pitting some of the biggest stars against one another. In February 2022, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan held a players-only meeting during which he allegedly threatened lifetime banishment from The Tour for any player that left for LIV Golf. In April, multiple players began requesting releases to play in “competing events” and in May the PGA Tour denied all requests it had received. In June, PGA star Kevin Na is the first to publicly resign his PGA Tour card after signing with the new league. Later that month the PGA Tour institutes lifetime bans on all of its players who appeared in LIV Golf’s inaugural event.
Since that time numerous PGA stars have “defected” to the new Saudi league, including four-time major champion Brooks Koepka, 24-time PGA Tour winner Dustin Johnson, and 11-time winner Sergio Garcia just to name a few.
While the PGA Tour is likely in no danger of losing today’s biggest stars like Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, or Scottie Scheffler its largest risk, in my opinion, lies in the amateur game. In September, David Puig announced he would be signing with LIV Golf. You may be asking why an amateur signing with the Saudi league matters. Simple, Puig is the ninth-ranked amateur in the world and a standout player at Arizona State University. University and college players all over the world are the lifeblood of the PGA Tour, but a player working their way to The Tour (unless you’re Rory McIlroy or Tiger Woods) is usually a long and arduous process. Most amateurs after college will either play in regional tours or the PGA’s developmental “Korn Ferry Tour.”
Most of the players on these tours are paying their way, without sponsors to pick up the tab for travel, entry fees, equipment, and other expenses. Less than half of the nearly 300 players on the PGA’s premier developmental league’s roster cleared $50,000 for 2022. As an amateur, with knowledge of your likely future working toward the PGA Tour, how do you turn down a $4 million contract from LIV Golf? If you’re smart, you don’t.
Full disclosure, I’ve not watched any of the LIV Golf action since its inaugural event. Primarily because I’m lazy and don’t feel like searching for the streams and nothing about the format has piqued my interest. However, it is my opinion that the PGA Tour sees the writing on the wall, they’ve stagnated for far too long and now that potentially legitimate competition has entered the market, they are in pure survival mode. Their “fight or flight” response has taken on the form of banishment and attempting to snuff out the competition through bureaucratic legal measures. Not only do I see this as a detriment to the game of golf, but it also is a detriment to the ideology of free markets and competition.
For reference, the fourth overall pick in the 2021 NFL draft, Kyle Pitts out of the University of Florida, signed a 4-year deal with the Atlanta Falcons reportedly worth $32 million, with a $21 million bonus just for signing the agreement.
The market pressures that the “breakaway league” has created have already spawned new life into the sport, outside of the ongoing conflict. Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, arguably the two biggest names in Golf (maybe ever), announced a collaboration in the creation of a new “tech-infused league” played inside a stadium. A marked step away from ushers holding “quiet please” signs as players set up to take their shots, this new league will be televised and loud (something that LIV Golf has also pronounced about their playing environment).
Sportwashing aside, LIV Golf is necessary for the survival of commercial professional golf and the PGA needs to get with the times or get out of the way. Golf has become a life passion for me and so many others, but if I’m being honest the majority of the population has zero interest in watching, even the best players, on television. Such viewership and television deals are the reasons that other professional sports can thrive and move forward, Golf should be no different. Indifference to an evolving consumer market can only lead to an organization’s demise.
