“I joke with Kevin Kisner that I’m always home [in Aiken, S.C.] when he’s playing majors and WGCs, and he’s always home when I’m playing in regular tour events,” says Matt NeSmith, a third-year PGA Tour member who is No. 175 in the World Ranking. “There’s absolutely an A-tour out here and a B-tour out here.”

A-tour guys hand-pick their schedules, star in commercials and play in featured groups. Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, to name a few. B-tour guys take their starts where they can get them, sign modest deals with companies you’ve never heard of and have the first tee time off No. 10. The divide between A-tour players and B-tour players has been spotlighted by the recent talk of breakaway tours, which hope to entice A-tour players with massive guaranteed paydays — and by discussions about the future PGA Tour schedule.

Speaking generally, A-players want a defined offseason, which would give them the freedom to take a few months off after the Tour Championship in August without worrying about beginning the next calendar year too far behind in the growingly lucrative FedEx Cup. They want to start their seasons in Hawaii in January, as the tour did for decades before switching to a wraparound season for the 2013-14 campaign. These players hold significant sway on tour given their stature and the attention they bring to the sport. As such, there’s been a push to reimagine the fall season, which currently features nine events that all carry full FedEx Cup points.

In recent months, a number of different proposals that could go into effect as early as the autumn of 2023 have been dissected at Player Advisory Council meetings, most with one commonality: divorcing those autumn events from the FedEx Cup race. Being discussed is an idea where the tour establishes an autumnal mini-series for the biggest stars, with those not qualifying for them playing in separate fall events to improve their standing on tour. Or the tour could continue staging its current tournaments but not have them count toward any season-long points race.

While appealing to elite players, a bunch of the rank-and-file guys, however, simply aren’t down with that, which is what’s making the discussion about how to handle the autumn so tricky. These rank-and-file players view the fall season events as vital for their job security as well as a crucial avenue for up-and-comers to establish themselves on tour. They want more playing opportunities, not less.

Differing opinions have turned some discussions about the autumn “rather contentious”, according to one source familiar with proceedings. “Excluding 25 guys, it’s one of the most important parts of the year,” NeSmith says. “It’s helped me keep my card the last three years. If guys don’t want to play, that’s their choice. They don’t have to play. The option’s there. I get it — we all want an offseason. I want an offseason, too. But it’s our job. It’s what we do. It’s our livelihood. If you want to be out here, it’s part of it.

“Is playing three events in five months that difficult?” NeSmith asks, somewhat rhetorically. “I’ll always advocate for the Korn Ferry guys and the rookies. They need those starts, and they need those starts to count.”

The job, then, for the tour’s leadership is to find a middle ground that works for both sets of players. The good news for NeSmith and Co is they’ve got a willing listener at the top.

“You’ve got 200-whatever members that you’re trying to keep everyone somewhat happy,” says McIlroy, former chairman of the Player Advisory Council and one of four players on the PGA Tour’s policy board. “I guess it’s sort of trying to find a balance of that. It’s hard. it’s very hard for me to stand here and say I’d like all the fall events to go away and play three or four of these suggested tournaments that they’re thinking about because that’s good for me, but that’s not good for the entire membership.”

LIV Golf’s challenge to the PGA Tour has gifted the top players leverage, and the PGA Tour has had no choice but to respond with additional dollars — some that’s being distributed across the spectrum of players, but the bigger increases going to the stars.

Rory McIlroy says that with many new programmes on the PGA Tour benefiting top-ranked players, the fall schedule is one where the interests of other groups might need to come first.

“I have to try to look at things that are going to benefit the entire membership and the entire tour and not just what benefits me or the top players,” McIlroy says. “I think there’s enough programmes in place that benefit the top players right now, PIP program, the Comcast Top-10, the FedEx Cup bonus, all of those things are designed to funnel more money into the top players’ pockets. You play the best and the cream should rise to the top by the end of the year. That’s why Comcast Top-10, FedEx Cup bonus money is so high. And then you add the PIP in there for the people that make the biggest impact on the Tour.

“So I think the top players, we’ve gotten a lot of things our own way the last couple years and I think for us to talk about just taking the fall events away for the guys that sort of need them and need those opportunities would be very, very selfish. It’s a delicate balance. It always has been on the tour with a membership that’s this big because you’re trying to accommodate so many different people and so many different scenarios. So it’s hard for me to sit here and say this is the way I would like the fall because the way I would like the fall probably isn’t the common consensus among the membership.”

Only there is no common consensus; that is what’s making the process difficult. Perhaps, as is often the case with negotiations, the best solution is not one that pleases everyone — it’s the one that leaves all parties the least upset.

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The post Why reimagining the PGA Tour’s autumn schedule is more complicated than you think appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Daniel Rapaport
CHARLOTTE — “Hey, Rory—you got a nice butt!”

A well-served woman offered that compliment to Mr. McIlroy, who couldn’t help but flash the pearly whites. He then poured in a 21-footer for birdie, his fourth in eight holes, to get his freckled nose in front. As he parted the sea of fans bordering the walkway to the ninth tee—COVID felt a distant memory on Saturday at Quail Hollow—a chant erupted.

Ro-ry! Ro-ry! Ro-ry!

“I hadn’t heard a noise like that in a while,” he said.

It could’ve been a commercial for the PGA Tour, the type that plays over and over and over on the broadcast: A beautiful spring day, a mint golf course, with Ponte Vedra’s poster boy fist-bumping the kids.

McIlroy does not hold the 54-hole lead here at the Wells Fargo Championship; a buzz-killing double-bogey at 12 is to blame for that. Keith Mitchell has that honour, and we shall not minimize his five-under 66 on a beefy golf course in not-easy conditions.

But Rory was the star of this show. After a 68 that has him in the final group and just two back heading into money-making day, he’s in prime position to win for the first time since October 2019, to re-announce himself two weeks ahead of the PGA Championship at Kiawah, where he won the last time that place held a major. By eight.

Take that, PGL or SGL.

Four days ago, a foreign entity with a limitless chequebook sought to shake the very foundations the tour rests on. The Super Golf League, backed by Saudi Arabian interests, has emerged as a competitor to a previous potential breakaway group, the Premier Golf League. The wannabe king-slayers in the PGL first approached McIlroy in 2014, and he has rebuffed their advances at every turn.

RELATED: Rory McIlroy speaks out against Premier Golf League again, this time in harsher terms

On Wednesday, McIlroy deemed the new Saudi effort a “money grab” and perfectly articulated the tour’s argument against the encroachers. He made it extremely clear that he’s happy where he is.

Why wouldn’t he be? He is, absent Tiger and maybe Phil and double-maybe Jordan, the most popular guy out here—the rare superstar who’s as popular with his peers as he is with the fans. He chairs the Player Advisory Council and has Commissioner Jay Monahan’s ear whenever he wants it. He is adored by young and old, traditionalists and new-schoolers, left and right. The guy you want to bring home to your mom, and the guy your dad can’t wait to play golf with.

And yet, coming into this week, he’d missed three straight cuts and dropped to No. 15 in the world. It’s hard to fathom if you’ve been so lucky to see him swing a golf club. Rory will tell you that golf is important to him but not that important, especially since he became Dad last summer. He has … drumroll please … perspective.

But Rory McIlroy is a golfer through and through, a man who feels most alive when he’s walking through a crowd that’s chanting his name. He sulked as he left TPC Sawgrass and Augusta National on those Friday afternoons, the slightest hint of sadness in his eyes.

You had to look hard to see it, but it was there. On Saturday, he bounced around Quail Hollow all day, almost childlike. He relished every single second of it. The fans love him, and he loves them right back.

“I’ve missed it,” he said. “I didn’t think I would miss it as much as I did, but I really have.

“I felt that I’d actually enjoy the quietness, but I sort of realized that it’s hard for me to bring the best out of myself without that atmosphere that we had today.”

He could very well win on Sunday. It’d be his third victory at Quail Hollow, where he won his first PGA Tour event back in 2010 and added another in 2015. This being one of the handful of tour events that has not been jerked around the schedule merry-go-round, he celebrates his birthday in Charlotte year after year. (No. 32 fell on Tuesday.) He has a membership here, though it’s not quite clear whether he asked for it or they gave it to him.

“People can draw those conclusions that I’ve came here to Quail, one of my favorite places on tour, that I’ve had a birthday, everything feels good,” he said. “I’m sure there’s partly something to do with that, but I would say there’s still quite a bit of coincidence.

“If we were at Colonial this week instead of Quail, I still think I’ve been playing good enough golf to get myself in contention. I’m happy that it is here because it’s a golf course that I am comfortable on, and going into a final round tomorrow with a chance to win, I feel like I need everything I can get to try to get over the line. For me to be in contention for the first time in a while and for it to be here is probably beneficial.”

He could also very well lose. Read between the lines of the statement above, and it’s clear he knows this. The game remains a work in progress. He brought in a new coach less than two months ago, and his goal at the beginning of the week was as modest as it gets: make the cut.

He’s done a bit better. Rory used the word “coincidence” to describe the timing of this sudden resurgence. He was talking about the venue, but he just as well could’ve been talking about the PGL business. Of course, McIlroy is not playing well because some Saudi-backed suit reportedly offered Dustin Johnson $30 million dollars. There is no extra motivation. It is indeed a coincidence. But coincidences lend themselves to irony, and there is an unmistakable irony in all this: Days after the tour confronts an existential crisis, its frontman—the embodiment of all that is right with the current order—awakens from his slumber.

“I’m excited to be in the position I’m in,” he said. So are the fans, and the TV executives, and the PGA Tour.

RELATED: Bryson flies home to Dallas, flies back to Quail Hollow, shoots 68

The post PGA Tour frontman Rory McIlroy awakes from slumber—and the timing couldn’t be better appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Daniel Rapaport
CHARLOTTE — Rory McIlroy knew the questions were coming. We last saw him four weeks ago at the Masters, where he looked out of sorts and fired up the private jet from Augusta on Friday afternoon. In the time between then and this week’s Wells Fargo Championship, two major developments have surfaced in the world of golf—the Player Impact Program and the re-emergence of the Premier Golf League. And he’s now the chairman of the PGA Tour’s Player Advisory Council, and the chairman of the Player Advisory Council simply has to speak on such matters. It’s part of the gig.

On the Player Impact Program, the PGA Tour’s newly announced $40 million yearly fund that will be distributed to the 10 players who bring the most positive publicity to the sport, McIlroy threw his support behind commissioner Jay Monahan.

“I think that Justin Rose made a good point, he said a rising tide lifts all ships. I think with the top players being more engaged in the tour and the goings on, it will help the rest of the membership. I think that’s how I feel about it.”

No surprise there. McIlroy was the first to toss cold water on the PGL idea last February, when he said he didn’t like the source of the money and valued his ability to make his own schedule. But he also said the offer exposed shortcomings in the tour’s payment model: Mainly that the superstars weren’t properly compensated for the eyeballs they attract. It’s no secret that the PIP was enacted with that goal in mind, to reward guys like McIlroy.

McIlroy, meanwhile, once again rejected the notion of the PGL a day after reports surfaced that the Saudi Arabian-backed venture had sent offers up to $30 million in hopes of luring Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka and Justin Rose to join the team-based league.

“Look, they first contacted me back in 2014,” the four-time major winner said, “so this is seven years down the line, and nothing has really changed.

“Maybe the source of the money’s changed or the people that are in charge have changed, but nothing has happened. No sponsorship deals, no media deals, no players have signed up, no manufacturers have signed up. There’s been so many iterations at this point.

“I think people … you go back to what happened last week in Europe with the European Super League in football. People can see it for what it is, which is a money grab. Which is fine if that’s what you’re playing golf for is to make as much money as possible. Totally fine, then go and do that if that’s what makes you happy. But I think the top players in the game, I’m just speaking my own personal beliefs, like I’m playing this game to try to cement my place in history and my legacy and to win major championships and to win the biggest tournaments in the world. That’s why I’m playing this game.”

McIlroy has recently brought on swing instructor Pete Cowen in hopes of getting his game back to his expectations. He arrives this week to Quail Hollow, site of his first PGA Tour victory in 2010, ranked No. 15 in the world—the lowest he’s been since November 2009 when he was 20 years old. Now 32 after his birthday on Monday, he has missed the cut in each of his past two stroke-play starts: at the Masters and the Players Championship before that.

“I feel better about my game than I did flying home from Augusta on Friday night, put it that way,” he said. “I’ve worked a little bit on it, sort of just tried to understand what I do well. I guess trying to sort of focus on my strengths. I think I’ve neglected my strengths a little bit the past couple of months, and focusing more on those and focusing on what makes me a good golfer.”

The post Rory McIlroy speaks out against Premier Golf League again, this time in harsher terms appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

1. Reigning in distance by rolling back equipment.

2. The establishment of a world super circuit that would relegate the PGA Tour to second-class.

At this point they are just that, notions, and both claim the best interests of the game as their guiding light. While the first has gathered steam with transparency—the USGA and R&A made their voluminous report available to all and is seeking comment before announcing their next wave of specific research topics next month—the second has played out more like a theatrical happening. Is the Premier Golf League for real?

Aside from one announcement from an anonymous email account, the presumed author(s) of this coup have communicated primarily through the puzzled, cautiously interested voices of players they’ve courted.

Well, the press room ventriloquism is over.

Andrew Gardiner, a British attorney and businessman whose association with PGL has been known since he teed it up with Phil Mickelson at the Saudi International, has come forward as the league’s chief executive officer. After three weeks hanging under the radar at events on the PGA Tour’s West Coast Swing, he says, “I figured now was probably time. I’m aware of enough people saying we have to speak, and I wanted to make sure people had the ability to know where we’re coming from.”

If Gardiner wants to make one point clear, it’s that he wants to be seen as a facilitator, not an overthrower. “The planning is all done, the platform is built, the financial backing is in place. Now, this will only happen with the support of the players, the sponsors and broadcasters, and the fans.”

He thinks his proposal, an 18-event schedule of 54-hole tournaments with shotgun starts the first two rounds—with 10 tournaments in the United States, with swings through Europe, Asia, Australia and one stop in the Middle East, plus the majors—could commence in January 2022. Teams of four players would simultaneously compete for an individual and team prize, with a captain deciding before each round which two players’ scores will count for the team. “It’s easier to become emotionally engaged with a team, and it will generate other dimensions of storylines and content,” Gardiner says. As a fan, he likes the idea of being able to make Rory play against Brooks every round, or until a more interesting matchup develops.

An eloquent Englishman and a keen golfer, Gardiner says he’s developed relationships with executives and sponsors of the European Tour throughout his career in finance. And it was 10 years ago, he says, that over an impassioned three-day spurt he wrote a 100-page manifesto on what professional golf could be like if it started over. Many times he shared his fan “flight of fancy,” and almost as many times was surprised not to be called an idiot. Financial backers of the game, he says, wished there was more certainty around when and where the best players in the world would be squaring off. He started to realize that the barriers to pulling off what Greg Norman couldn’t, perhaps, weren’t as tall as he imagined.

One doesn’t arise to the position of chief executive officer of anything by divulging more than intended in an interview. After my phone conversation with Gardiner this morning, many questions remain, but here are my takeaways in no real order.

• Gardiner doesn’t regard Rory McIlroy saying this week, “I’m out,” as particularly damaging. “It brought to mind the Mark Twain quote, ‘Rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated,’ as if this were some fatal wound,” Gardiner says. Gardiner acknowledges Rory as one of the few golfers who truly capture fans, and is intrigued by Rory’s desire to be on the right side of history. “Everything we’ve done in the past six years was meant to be on the right side of history,” Gardiner says. Like being discreet about it all until now. The fact that McIlroy mentioned Arnold Palmer, who was a leader in the PGA Tour breaking from the PGA of America in 1968, Gardiner views as a window in the trees.

• What about the fact that the emotional allegiances to sports teams are generally sown over generations, not organized in an instant around golf equipment makers or agents? Gardiner sees both as potential organizing principles, in addition to geography. “You’ll see the personalities of the teams start to present themselves, and the teams will develop as brands as we go through the process, perhaps rather quickly. … One of the first thoughts that occurred to me as I sat down to write the manifesto was this idea of friends waiting for each other to finish on the 18th green.”

• Is Gardiner familiar with the term sportswashing, or the supporting of sporting events by a country associated with human rights violations to improve its reputation? He is, same as anyone else. “Well, if you’re referring to the financial support we have, our shareholder base is extraordinarily diverse, just north of 60 partners, and we’ve been very selective about each. … The Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia is incredibly passionate about golf and its future, and I’m delighted to have them involved.”

• What about the golfer who isn’t exactly a star, ranked 40th in the world or so, who participates in the PGL for a season and then falls out? Where does he go? “That depends whether we achieve collaboration [with the PGA Tour]. And it’s possible we don’t. There will be a draft system in place and an opportunity for that golfer to play his way back in. If he doesn’t, he then becomes like any other golfer who has the freedom to apply to become a member of any other tour.” Gardiner also notes there will be “parachute payments” to ensure no golfers suffer financial hardship as the result of falling out. “When we speak about collaboration, we envisage a stronger structure where everybody is plugged in and the Premier Golf League merely forms the top of the pyramid. … It’s hard to imagine a situation where a player who is regarded as one of the best in the world is prevented from plying his trade wherever he chooses, but I’m not in a position to make that decision now.”

• And the title sponsors of PGA Tour events who also sponsor individual players, like Farmers Insurance and Rickie Fowler, just to name one. Surely, these are strong ties to dismantle. “Should we come to pass, you won’t necessarily see any change in any sponsorship worn by any player,” Gardiner says.

• And just how strict is the 18-event schedule, which with the majors and a Ryder Cup is more than some stars may care to play? Pretty strict, Gardiner says, although there would be the ability to substitute players due to injury.

• The venues?! Aside from the humans who are good at golf, the courses are part of the allure of any great broadcast. Gardiner apologizes for being unable to disclose the names of any venues at this time.

• And the distance debate? Where does the new face of the Premier Golf League stand on the distances elite players are driving it? I’m promised we’ll discuss that next time.

For now, Gardiner concludes that the decision whether this super circuit will come to be “will hopefully be made in the not too distant future.”

Good day.

The post The man behind the Premier Golf League emerges to reveal some—but not all—of his vision appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

The mooted ‘Premier Golf League (PGL)’ has the royal and ancient game abuzz after British-based World Golf Group confirmed they hope to launch the world tour in 2022. While details remain unconfirmed, multiple news and golf media outlets are reporting that the PGL would be an 18-tournament circuit featuring 48 of the world’s biggest names playing for $10 million purses at each event.

Adding further intrigue, sources say the PGL could have both individual and team ‘league’ components with 12 teams of four players vying for a world championship.

Ten of the proposed events are to be played in the United States. According to the Australian Associated Press, the Desert Classic, the oldest event on the European Tour outside continental Europe, has been approached to be part of the PGL’s international schedule. The 116-year-old Australian Open, the Alfred Dunhill Championship in South African and the Singapore Open are also named in the AAP report.

However, Falcon Golf & Associates, owners of the Desert Classic, insist they have not been approached by World Golf Group.

“There has been no discussion,” CEO Greg Sproule said in a one-line statement to Golf Digest Middle East on the sidelines of the $3.25 million tournament, the 31st edition of which is headed for a windswept climax at Emirates Golf Club on Sunday.

Tommy Fleetwood during the second round of the 31st Omega Dubai Desert Classic. (Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images)

Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy have already offered opinions on the proposed circuit which, given the money involved, is set to be a seductive lure to the world’s best players and a major headache for the PGA and European Tours.

Mickelson said he was “intrigued and listening” while McIlroy, currently T-3 at the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines in California, said the PGL “might be the catalyst for something a little bit different out here as well, who knows.”

“It might be a catalyst for some changes on [the PGA Tour] that can help it grow and move forward and reward the top players the way they should be,” the world No.2 continued.

An unsolicited statement sent to Golf Digest Middle East from the “PGL Comms Team” said: “It is our intention to work with, rather than challenge, existing tours.” However, that seems a way off given the response from European Tour chief Keith Pelley.

“I think they’ve been trying to move forward for eight years, but I wouldn’t comment on the business of the PGA Tour or certainly one that is not real,” Pelley said.

The PGA Tour also released a dismissive statement after commissioner Jay Monahan held a meeting with players on Tuesday night at Torrey Pines, during which he addressed the rival circuit. “We don’t comment on the business of other tours, real or hypothetical,” the statement read.

Whether the tour is feasible remains to be seen on an already-crowded calendar with PGA Tour players needing a “release” from its commissioner each time they want to play an event outside their home tour.

However, the PGL says the current professional structure is outdated, APP reported.

“If you want the world to watch, you have to showcase your best product, week-in-week-out. Golf doesn’t do that currently,” it said in a statement.

Two-time major winner Greg Norman first proposed a world tour in 1994 but it was squashed by the U.S. Tour, under then-commissioner Tim Finchem, which threatened to suspend players who took part and later set up the World Golf Championship (WGC) series events.

“The arrows can hopefully now come out of my back and we can all go forward,” Norman said at the time.

Here is the full statement from the PPL, emailed to Golf Digest Middle East on Saturday:

“There has been significant media speculation relating to our plans to launch The League, a new professional golf format that will be comprised of 18 events per season. Some of that speculation, including details of the proposed format and our financial backers, is inaccurate. While we do not wish to comment further at this time, we would like to say that it is our intention to work with, rather than challenge, existing tours for the betterment of golf as a sport, pastime and media property, and we have partnered with the Raine Group to help make this vision a reality. We appreciate the interest and look forward to providing everyone with further details.”

The post Reports linking Dubai Desert Classic to new global pro tour unfounded say Falcon Golf appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.