Money Changed Everything

Professional golf was a gentlemen’s sport for most of its history before Greg Norman and the Saudis decided to take on the infrastructure of the sport.

Then came the Saudis who decided that they would buy their way into professional golf to improve their global image.  They committed to rival the PGA Tour and open a new concept of team golf.  The Saudis through their Public Investment Fund (“PIF”)  spent billions buying many of the best names in the professional game with guaranteed contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.  Some of the marque names on the PGA Tour defected to the renegade tour headed by players such as Phil Mickelsen, Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith, Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka signed on.  Additional upcoming players on Tour and some that had great reputations such as Paul Casey, Ian Poulter and Sergio Garcia were also secured.  These players cited financial security over golf, but sacrificed competitive reputation for the almighty dollar.  These decisions provided the players with that financial security but would erode their competitive instincts at a level where mental competition at the highest level of the sport determines champions and reputations.  LIV was going to change the nature of professional competition and not in a good way–54 hole tournaments, no cut tournaments, team play, music, shorts–all of which the professional golf fan had never experienced.  Somebody should have advised the Saudis that the way to have a competitive league to the norm was to promote the same competition with all of these wonderful players.  It reminds me of the success of the development of professional football through the AFL.   The AFL took on the NFL and played the same game but played it in a slightly different way of more passing, more scoring, which fascinated fans.  Eventually the AFL was able to merge successfully with the NFL and now pass baseball as America’s pastime sport.  LIV offered confusion.  The golf fan had no idea what they were watching and the TV broadcast with excellent commentators was mostly drowned out with the music blaring throughout the competition.  The biggest issue that LIV had was that they failed to educate the consumer golf fan with the product and could not get major TV access.  TV ratings were awful and in one tournament, the TV network cut away from an LIV playoff to broadcast the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”  Nobody knew who even won the event.   The Golf Channel which covers the sport to a nauseating level hardly acknowledged the existence of LIV.

Greg Norman was selected as the head of LIV at its outset, which in and of itself, was a controversial choice who lacked the collaborative skills to reconcile the LIV concept to coexist with the PGA Tour.  The PGA Tour stemmed the losses of these players with a number of positive initiatives by increasing purses and setting up the concept of a designated event.  The designated event requires participation of the major tour players for events with no cut and significantly higher purses.  The Tour also has a significant pipeline through amateur and collegiate golf producing a number of new stars such as Aberg, Fitzpatrick, Morikawa etc. which continued to propel golf and the robustness of the PGA Tour.  The Tour also has the support of the USGA and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club while LIV has nothing but oil wells spewing money into its coffers.

The Failed Merger

A number of golf’s luminaries participated in efforts to unite these tours in a merger agreement.  The sides were too far apart and weeks and months went by with no resolution.  Titans of industry, Trump, Tiger Woods were involved in these negotiations and there was a continuous torrent of “progress” towards a merger.  My sense is that the Saudis believed that money would still be the answer but golf is bigger than money.  Saudi arrogance was further demonstrated by a demand that the PIF head and avid golfer, “Yasir Al-Rumayyan” be awarded a membership to Augusta National Golf Club and the Royal & Ancient.  That demand was enough to kill any deal for sure.  Much of this was documented at the US Senate which was also privy to these negotiations.    This guy could never get on ESPN and Augusta National has never publicly acknowledged the request.  It was the height of Saudi arrogance and proof positive that the game transcends the almighty dollar.

The Players

The players could sleep well every night in their duvets replete with cash but their golf reputations disappeared.  The LIV players were eliminated from the world rankings and could not score points from LIV Tournaments.  They were ineligible to play on the PGA Tour and were expelled.  The LIV players who had won major tournaments on the PGA Tour were invited to play in those events as past champions such as Rahm, DeChambeau, Koepka and Johnson.    Only DeChambeau has played reasonably well in these events since he joined LIV but missed the cut at the Masters this year.  Rahm, formerly world number 1, is a shadow of his former self competitively in these events, which demonstrates the loss of competitive guile from his team events at LIV.  Mickelsen and Johnson have disappeared completely and both guys squandered golf fan favorite designation as they have simply faded away.  No one knows how any of these players are actually playing since there is little to no media coverage of LIV events.  Even the commentators have faded away–the highly entertaining David Feherty sold his soul to LIV and hasn’t been heard from in years depriving golf fans of his considerable witticisms.  The players are coming back gradually and paying heavy fines to return-of course all paid for by their Saudi stash.  Koepka and Patrick Reed have returned and I suspect DeChambeau will be back at the end of 2026.

The End May Be Near

The Saudi losses are staggering and the world has changed.  The war in Iran has caused damage to Saudi infrastructure and the Kingdom’s financial condition is under siege as it now has to deal with bombed infrastructure of some of its fossil fuel production capacity.  The foray into professional golf has been a financial sinkhole, very much unlike its successes in Formula One, MMA, boxing and other sports.  The Iran war has tightened Saudi finances and appears to be accelerating a pivot away from speculative sports spending back to protecting core infrastructure and domestic economic diversification.  A commitment to New York’s Metropolitan Opera House for $300M has effectively been withdrawn in a non-sports venue.  LIV is a $5B experiment that didn’t work and really had no chance of working in its arrogant approach to the sport.  You have to have a good product before you have good players and a TV contract commitment before you push that billion dollar button and grab the players.  LIV ran out of people to poach and the PGA Tour pipeline is as much as an unbombed Saudi refinery.

Money will not buy a success in the world of golf.  The game is much bigger than money.