If you’re a casual golf fan, and you only really pay attention to the sport’s four major championships, then you probably haven’t noticed much of a change in the fields for the Masters, the U.S. Open and The Open (formerly known as the British Open.) You still saw players like Dustin Johnson, Brooks Keopka, Bryson DeChambeau and Phil Mickelson tee it up at the Old Course at St. Andrews during this year’s Open Championship, the last of the sport’s four major tournaments for 2022.
Same as it ever was.
Except for the fourth major, the PGA Championship. That field was missing Mickelson – it’s fully healthy defending champion – earlier this summer and will likely be missing several bigger names moving forward. That’s because professional golf isn’t the same as it ever was – at least not at the moment.
Golf has a new player now that’s doing everything possible to upend the beverage cart. This is no longer a gentleman’s match. Handshakes and etiquette be damned. These guys are playing for keeps.
Backed by what many call “blood” money from the highly controversial Saudi Arabian government and lead by 20-time PGA Tour and two-time British Open winner Greg Norman, the new “LIV” professional golf tour has entered the scene this golf season and proceeded to try to take on the behemoth (and previously unchallenged) PGA Tour. They’re doing so by paying large – really large – sums of guaranteed money to some of the aforementioned biggest names in golf to lure them away. That includes Mickelson, who reportedly signed a LIV contract that will pay him more than double his career PGA Tour earnings to date over the next four years. As a result, Mickelson had to withdraw from the 2022 PGA Championship and was un-invited to the Champions Dinner that precedes The Open, which he won in 2013.
Mickelson – and at least 21 of the top 100 golfers in the latest world rankings – are accepting the bigger, and often guaranteed money, and lighter schedule of the LIV (Roman numerals are for “54” and the score a player would shoot if he birdied all 18 holes of a regulation golf course) Tour over the demands of the “monopolistic” PGA Tour. They also just play three rounds, 54 holes, in their events.
Some are saying the Norman and the LIV tour are “throwing the sport into chaos.” Norman replies that “free agency is coming to golf. Finally.”
The PGA Tour has suspended 17 golfers and has threatened lifetime bans for those who defect. It could be that even non-PGA tour events like the Masters and the U.S. Open end up shunning those who choose the world-wide LIV Tour. PGA stalwarts like Jack “The Golden Bear” Nicklaus and Tiger Woods have been openly critical of Norman and his new project.
The battle is on.
The question at this point is about the staying power of the LIV Tour.
Can it last?
Can the two tours co-exist if it does?
Remember, back in the day, the well-established National Football League sort of turned its nose up at the upstart American Football League. The AFL started in 1960 by drafting the same college players the NFL was selecting and trying to outbid the old guard for talent. In a lot of cases, they were successful.
Right out of the gate, the AFL outbid the NFL for 75% of the 1960 first round picks, including Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon. Even with low attendance, it was the support of sizable TV deals that kept the AFL going early on.
After a decade of direct competition, including Super Bowl wins for upstart AFL teams like the New York Jets and the Kansas City Chiefs, the NFL and AFL merged in 1970. (The American Basketball Association, which began in 1967, also forced a merger with the NBA in 1976 for many of the same reasons.)
So…can the LIV Tour survive on Saudi dollars for a decade?
On the flip side, there’s the case study of the first version of the United States Football League, and its failure to achieve anything like the AFL did. The USFL spent big money on big names like Doug Flutie, Herschel Walker, Jim Kelly and Steve Young.
Originally designed as a spring league, when a group led by New Jersey Generals owner Donald Trump to force feed another merger upon the NFL by announcing a move to a fall schedule, they got squashed. The USFL was forced to fold after just three seasons in the mid 1980’s. The players, including that foursome of wealthy stars, returned to the NFL.
So what’s the LIV Tour’s end game here?
It’s unclear if a merger of any sort is the objective, or if as Mickelson noted, it can force changes in the way the PGA Tour operates (the PGA Tour is reportedly currently under investigation by the Department of Justice.) It could be that as Norman says, they just want a more player friendly option for some of the sports biggest names. It could also be that Norman – still reportedly with an axe to grind against the golf establishment – wants to keep poking The Bear.
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