“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 Joel Beall
As a showdown looms between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and the Saudi-backed LIV Golf series, another entity is trying to remind the golf world it wants in the mix.

That entity would be the Premier Golf League, a group once viewed as a potential rival to the PGA Tour and DP World Tour and originally backed by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. However, the PIF eventually went its own direction and formed LIV Golf Investments, overseen by World Golf Hall of Fame member Greg Norman. The PGL first attempted to achieve a partnership with then-European Tour but failed, with the Euro Tour eventually agreeing to a “strategic alliance” with the PGA Tour.

Currently, the PGL concept still exists — an 18-tournament series of 48-player, 54-hole events with a team concept — and officials behind the venture have reached out to the PGA Tour about forming a partnership, but its prospects have faded with the emergence of LIV Golf.

In hopes of reviving its efforts, the PGL has drafted a letter to PGA Tour members — dated for Thursday, May 5 — imploring them to vouch for the PGL to the tour’s policy board.

“Your profession is approaching an historic crossroads. The ‘International Series,’ funded and owned by LIV Golf Investments, represents an existential threat, not only to the PGA Tour’s dominance but also its mode,” the letter reads. “Change is not only inevitable, it is happening — and no amount of purse rigging, head-burying, ban-threatening, alliance-making or ‘moving-on’ will derail it.

The PGL asserts players could make $20 million each in their proposal, highlighted by $2 million received upfront. The PGL claims it could eventually be valued at $10 billion.

The letter also calls out Rory McIlroy, who has previously dismissed the PGL’s proposal.

“The Policy Board has, however, refused to discuss our proposals. Based on a presentation by Allen & Co, it disputes the PGL’s ability to generate $10BN+ of value. As Rory McIlroy recently messaged, ‘We had Allen and company present to the board in Orlando about the PGL proposal. They don’t think 10BN by 2030 is feasible at all. They said you’d need to create 20 Ryder Cups a year from now until then to get to that number.

“In the corporate finance world, this is technically known as ‘bull.’ But, then again, Allen & Co has never spoken to us, nor had access to the information it would require in order to produce an accurate valuation.”

The letter ends by telling players to ask for an independent valuation of the PGL’s proposal.

“You should not fear the wrath of Jay Monahan, he is not on the Policy Board and works for you,” the letter reads. “You should exercise your rights. Despite it being ‘your’ PGA Tour, you do not own it (nor will you own LIV or the Super Golf League). You could own half of the PGL.

“Act now or spend a lifetime wondering: ‘What if…?’:

As of writing the PGL has not responded to a Golf Digest request for comment. A PGA Tour spokesperson told Golf Digest the organisation has no comment.

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The post Reports: Premier Golf League drafts letter to players seeking ‘call to action’ toward PGA Tour appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Dan Rapaport
RIVIERA MAYA, Mexico — Greg Norman is fronting a group that will pump money into the Asian Tour, but its eventual goal is to start a new tour that will compete with the PGA Tour, and it’s complicated because it’s Saudi money, and there’s also another upstart tour without Saudi money, but its backers want to work with the PGA Tour rather than overtake it.

Got all that?

RELATED: Saudi investment company confirm Greg Norman as CEO, plough $200m into revitalised Asian Tour with promised Middle East events

Yes, if one shadowy challenger to the establishment wasn’t enough, there are two. Last week, Greg Norman was officially named CEO of LIV Golf Investments, a Saudi Arabian-backed organisation that will invest $200 million and host 10 events on the Asian Tour beginning next year. Some of that money will go toward prize money, but perhaps, even more, will go towards appearance fees, which are not permitted on the PGA Tour.

Not wanting to cede the spotlight, Andrew Gardiner outlined to ESPN his vision for the Premier Golf League, a separate group also looking to change the dynamics in men’s professional golf. A main difference between his organization and Norman’s, as cheekily referenced above, is that Gardiner’s vision is for the PGL to host 18 events that would exist under the PGA Tour umbrella, rather than seek to overtake it. The events would reportedly each have $20 million purses—which equals the new purse for the Players Championship, the highest on the PGA Tour schedule this year—and, crucially, pay the last-place finisher $400,000.

The common denominator in both proposals is a white whale tour players have coveted for decades: guaranteed money. It’s the reason these proposals remain alive despite the PGA Tour’s repeated attempts to squash them, and at the heart of a debate that seemingly is only getting more heated.

Professional golf is perhaps the most meritocratic of professional sports, at least in terms of money doled out by the league itself. How much a player makes per week is a direct result of his on-course performance. It’s been that way for decades and it’s part of the game’s appeal; every man is equal on the first tee Thursday morning.

Contrast the model with team sports, where a player signs a contract to play for a certain amount of money. In the NBA and MLB, these contracts are mostly guaranteed regardless of performance or injury status. If James Harden has a terrible season, he still makes the $40 million he was promised. It’s slightly different in football, where teams are rather stingy with their guarantees to protect against injury risk. But players fight for every dollar of guaranteed money they can get, and the best ones get enough to take care of multiple generations.

And yet in golf, 82-time PGA Tour winner Tiger Woods and one-time winner Joel Dahmen receive the same paycheck for finishing 10th. Which, according to Joel Dahmen, is patently ridiculous.

“On course, the top guys don’t get enough,” Dahmen said on Wednesday ahead of this week’s World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba. “Look, I’m not selling a single ticket. Maybe to a couple buddies, but I probably gave them free tickets anyway. I’m not bringing anyone here. I’m not adding a ton of value outside of maybe some Twitter stuff. The top guys who actually move the needle, who get people to watch, absolutely do not make enough.” Indeed, the player who received the most money directly from the PGA Tour—$7.6 million plus $15 million more for winning the FedEx Cup—during the 2020-21 season was Patrick Cantlay, a top-10 ranked player but not a global superstar.

It’s a point that Norman himself hammered home in an interview with Golf Digest on Monday.

“Every time I went to play somewhere around the world [outside the PGA Tour], I got an appearance fee because I’m an independent contractor,” Norman said. “You get paid appearance fees for what reason? You can put buns on seats, you can increase TV ratings, and if you can do that you bring in hospitality and sponsorship dollars. It’s a win-win for everybody.”

The play-for-pay, as opposed to pay-to-play, model is entrenched in the tour’s legal relationship with its players, who are, all together now, independent contractors. Whereas James Harden is an employee of the Brooklyn Nets, Brooks Koepka is an employee of no one. “Being my own boss is nice,” he says. “I like that.” The good part of that is players can, with certain restrictions, make their own schedule. The bad part of that is players run their own businesses.

“We have to pay for all of our travel. We pay for our physical therapy,” Dahmen says. “We pay for our food. We pay for lodging. [Team-sport athletes], they fly on their team jet. They use their team’s trainers. They have trainers provided by the team. It’s all in-house. They have basically no expenses. We have so many.”

Mike Ehrmann
Joel Dahmen, who has one win in his PGA Tour career, acknowledges that other players on tour draw far more fans than he does—and should be paid accordingly.

Which is palatable, so long as a player’s game and body remain in decent enough shape to play well and earn a good chunk of the purses available each week. If he misses a bunch of cuts, no paychecks from the tour. If he gets injured, his status is protected but the checks do not flow in. And so the prospect of guaranteed money—and lots, lots of it—gets Norman and Gardiner sit-down meetings with the big-boys agents, which have been going on throughout the year.

The PGA Tour responded to these flirtations by creating the $40 million Player Impact Program, a way to compensate the 10 biggest stars for something not directly related to their on-course performance. The tour is also giving each player who competes in at least 15 events this season a $50,000 bonus. Dahmen believes there is much, much more where that came from.

“The PGA Tour has really deep pockets. They magically come up with $40 million for PIP and then there paying us all 50 grand to play 15 events, which is another X million dollars. That’s like, $50 million that they just magically found laying around overnight. The money is there. There’s a way to do it.”

Justin Thomas, a strong candidate to receive some of that PIP cash, was asked Wednesday if he agrees that stars are not properly compensated on the PGA Tour.

“Maybe in the past, but I think with stuff like the Player Impact Program and purses and everything going up, I think it’s becoming that way,” Thomas said. “It doesn’t matter what you do or what sport you play or whatever it is, there’s always going to be a handful or a group of guys that push the revenue or push the interest. There’s plenty of guys and plenty of stories out here, but for me to come out here and say that I hold the same weight as Tiger Woods or I hold the same weight as Phil Mickelson, that’s just not realistic. Guys should be compensated for that … I think that was something that maybe wasn’t addressed as much in the past, but is a lot now.”

The PGL’s ambitious vision includes a proposal to convert the PGA Tour from a 501(c)6 non-profit organization to a for-profit PGA Tour Inc.—and, notably, to make the players 50 percent owners of the league. Multiple players say this would be an increase from the current arrangement in which they claim they see somewhere in the 25-percent range of the tour’s income. (A PGA Tour spokesperson says that the tour pays out 54 percent of its “consolidated” revenues to players.) But the PGL would likely require players to compete in all 18 events, which could jeopardize their status as independent contractors.

These are the types of issues guys are now discussing with each other on driving ranges and in practice rounds. It’s why their agents are taking crash-courses in labor law. With alternatives on the horizon, at least potentially, the players have a very powerful weapon at their disposal: leverage. Often the only way to motivate a king to act is to threaten his reign.

“I think that’s kind of been the main thing that’s come out of this,” Thomas said, “is, look, we can better our product and we can get better because of stuff like this. We can learn from it. I just think that a lot of it was honestly the players not knowing and also maybe the Tour not understanding that it could be done differently and that the players even felt that way.”

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By Daniel Rapaport
KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. — The current golf order has congregated on this idyllic island for the second major championship of the year. The disruptors, however, are here as well.

On Tuesday evening, just 36 hours before the first tee shot of the PGA Championship, representatives for the Super Golf League hosted a number of agents for a meeting at a home on Kiawah Island. A source who attended tells Golf Digest that the purpose of the gathering was to make clear that the project continues full-speed ahead—and that a number of additional players would have ready-to-sign offers within four to six weeks.

“It all happened pretty quick,” the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said. “It was like, We have everything sorted, it’s all going to work out.”

The group seems undeterred by concerted efforts to stop its progress, and it hopes to host its first event as soon as January—an idea the source described as “highly ambitious.”

Present for the meeting were lawyers from a high-profile American law firm that is handling the venture’s contractual work. These attorneys assured agents that they were combing through any potential legal hiccups and that their process, too, would be completed sooner rather than later.

“I left the meeting more confident than I was before that this likely won’t go forward,” the source said, and suggested he feels others in attendance share his sentiment. “I think they’ll realise there are too many hurdles, too many obstacles.”

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the SGL’s proposal is the prospect of guaranteed money—players will be paid a yearly salary, $30 million or more for some, and be required to play a specific set of events. The PGA Tour gives players great freedom to make their own schedule, but compensation is contingent upon on-course performance.

To address that issue, the PGA Tour recently established the Player Impact Program, a $40 million prize fund that will be distributed at the end of the year to the 10 players that bring positive exposure to the game. The PIP was widely seen as a response to the guaranteed-money issue; a way for the Tour to pay its biggest stars even if their games fall on hard times.

As Alan Shipnuck of the Fire Pit Collective reported, the Super Golf League is a separate operation from the Premier Golf League, whose backing comes largely from Europe and the West. The group that hosted the meeting on Tuesday is funded largely by Saudi Arabian interests, and a high-ranking official from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund—which invests money on behalf of the Saudi government and includes more than $300 billion—video conferenced into the meeting.

The SGL has been a frequent topic of discussion at this week’s PGA Championship. On Tuesday, PGA of America president Seth Waugh seemed to suggest any player signing with the SGL would not be eligible for his organisation’s events.

“If someone wants to play on a Ryder Cup for the U.S., they’re going to need to be a member of the PGA of America, and they get that membership through being a member of the tour,” Waugh said. “I believe the Europeans feel the same way, and so I don’t know that we can be more clear than that.

“Particularly for younger players that are going to have a 20-year career out here, I just don’t think they’re going to be better off in that format than they already are,” Waugh continued. “I’ve talked to a bunch of them. As you can imagine, you look them in the eye and you just say, ‘Be careful what you wish for, because short-term gain feels good for a little while, but long-term gain is what makes lives.”

On Wednesday, however, U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau said it was something he was considering. “I’ve got a lot of people in the background working on it for … my agent, we’re all dealing with that. I think at the end of the day there’s interesting concepts, but that’s all I really have to say about it. There’s not much I can do personally. I’m out here just playing golf trying to win a major championship. You know, I think at the end of the day it’s people in the upper management that has to be taking care of that compared to me. I really can’t do unfortunately much about it. I wish I had a bigger say in things, but I don’t, I just play golf.”

Jamie Squire
Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau have both said they are curious about the SGL concept and have people in their camps exploring options.

News of this latest potential challenger to the PGA Tour began early last year, but a number of big-name players quickly shut down the possibility of leaving behind the current golf ecosystem for something entirely new. The idea seemed dead until earlier this month, when a report from The Telegraph suggested a number players—namely Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Justin Rose and Brooks Koepka—had been offered $20 million or $30 million or more to sign with the new league, which feature smaller fields and a more global schedule than the current PGA Tour structure.

Dustin Johnson’s agent, David Winkle, confirmed to the Associated Press that Johnson had been approached.

“He has listened to their presentation, like all the other top players,” Winkle said. “No commitment whatsoever.”

The news dropped just hours before the PGA Tour held a mandatory players’ meeting at Quail Hollow. During that meeting, commissioner Jay Monahan reiterated the stance he took when the first PGL noise surfaced last year: it’s us or them. Any player that signs with this new league, Monahan conveyed, would face immediate suspension and likely expulsion from the PGA Tour.

A number of players, highlighted by Player Advisory Council chairman Rory McIlroy, again threw cold water on the idea.

“People can see it for what is, which is a money grab,” McIlroy said. “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 — 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.

“I’m very much against it. I don’t see why anyone would be for it.”

Other players seemed a bit more open to the possibility. Rickie Fowler called the idea “definitely interesting,” while Phil Mickelson outlined what he sees as potential benefits for fans.

“I think the fans would love it because they would see the best players play exponentially more times,” Mickelson told ESPN. “Instead of four or five times, it would be 20 times … I don’t know what the final number is.

“But that’s a big deal to give up control of your schedule. I don’t know if the players would be selfless enough to do that. But every other sport, the entity or teams or leagues control the schedule. The players kind of play where they are told to play. Whereas here, we’re able to control it.”

The post Super Golf League officials meet with agents at Kiawah, say more player offers to come in 4-to-6 weeks 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.”

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Indeed, the venture formerly known as the Premier Golf League has, according to a report from The Telegraph, progressed to the offer-making stage. Representatives for Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Justin Rose and Brooks Koepka are reportedly in possession of multi-million dollar offers—$20 million or $30 million or more, depending on which report you read—to leave behind the PGA Tour ecosystem for a new league that promises guaranteed paydays.

The proposed system, which is backed by Saudi Arabian money and reportedly hopes to be operational by 2022, would look completely different from what golf fans have come to know over the past century. Instead of 72-hole, 144-plus-player every-man-for-himself tournaments, it would incorporate team competitions with much smaller fields.

In the most basic sense, this isn’t really news. The league first made waves in early 2020 but was, at least it seemed, successfully fended off by the PGA Tour. Commissioner Jay Monahan made clear that any player who went down the PGL route would lose his PGA Tour membership, and star after star said they were out on it. Months later, the tour even devised a way to reward its star players for something other than their on-course performance, and that was that. But representatives for the PGL continued to hang around the game’s powerbrokers, often looming around PGA Tour events and in the pro golf epicenter of South Florida, sources tell Golf Digest, unwilling to let the ambitious project die—not when they have the type of financial backing they do.

“Players and agents are just listening to their vision and pitch,” one agent said. “That’s about it at this point. Just a lot of listening.”

Well, if the reports are to believed, the group has put the ball in the courts of four players who are essentially being asked to take a leap of faith, to leave behind the organization that made them multi-millionaires in favor of something new. Representatives for Johnson, Koepka and Rose declined to comment to Golf Digest.

As news spread around Quail Hollow, plenty of players were hearing of the PGL for the first time in months. The PGL folks seem to have honed in on potential targets, bypassing any conversations with rank-and-file tour players (as well as multiple top-20 players). For those outside the PGL picture, the latest news was met with more than a few eye-rolls.

“I hope it doesn’t happen,” Harris English told Golf Digest. “This is the best tour in the world. The best players are making tons of money. Why don’t we just focus on continuing to improve this tour?”

The timing of the report dripped in irony, dropping just a few hours before the PGA Tour’s first mandatory player meeting of the year. The gathering had been on the schedule since at least last week, and there are typically at least one per year. One usually happens at the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, but COVID-19 restrictions have made any such meeting impossible until now.

Ben Jared
Webb Simpson is sceptical that the PGL can survive if only a handful of top players are on board.

According to a player in attendance, the meeting lasted just 30 minutes or so and was more a State of the Tour than anything else: Budget talks, financial breakdowns, that sort of thing. No players spoke. The PGL news was acknowledged only briefly, with Monahan saying that the PGA Tour and the European Tour, which joined together in a strategic alliance last November, were united in their position on the league, and reiterating that any players who signed with the PGL would lose their PGA Tour membership. The legality of such a threat remains unclear, as does the position of the four major championships, none of which are owned or operated by the PGA Tour.

“I personally don’t think that it’ll happen,” the player said. “This is the tour’s stance, and I feel like major championships will feel the same way. I don’t think this thing is going to go ahead, to be honest.”

The parallels to the European Super League are unmistakable. In April, an upstart venture promised to upend the soccer universe by presenting an alternative to the in-place system, which requires teams to qualify for the Champions League each year by having success in their domestic leagues. The ESL would feature the same teams every year, and secured commitments from 12 of the top clubs from Italy, England and Spain.

The ESL news was met with outrage from the outset. Rumors swirled that players who played in it would be banned from representing their countries in the World Cup, and fans took to the streets to protest what they believed to be a shameless money-grab that callously ignored clubs’ history and culture.

And while you shouldn’t hold your breath to see golf fans protest on a putting green near you, the same age-old barriers to change that helped doom the Super League—at least for now—exist in golf. A sense of nostalgia, if you will.

The majors and the Ryder Cup and the PGA Tour are all part of a professional golf ecosystem that has evolved over the past 70-odd years. Signing with the PGL, then, would not be purely a financial decision, but a willing departure from the framework the shaped the careers of Ben Hogan and Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. Simply put, it would shake the game to its foundations. How would the World Ranking work? How would we compare players from different eras?

“Are the best players in the world really going to go to this tour if only eight of the top 25 in the World Ranking are going to go?” Webb Simpson said when asked during a Tuesday press conference. “I think as a top player, I want to play against the best. At the end of the day, you have a career-long enough, I think most of these guys, they’re financially set. They want to break records, they want to win. Be like Dustin, win 20 times, be a life member, whatever it might be. You create a new tour, all these records get kind of thrown out the window, I think.

“I just think too many things like that are going to come up. I don’t think throwing X amount of money at guys is as appealing now as it maybe once was because of how great the opportunities we have on the PGA Tour. Whatever the number is, $350 million we’re playing for this year, and what FedEx has done, there’s so many opportunities for guys to make a great living here.

“If I’m a guy who’s on my way to make history like a Dustin or, you know, a few other top guys, I’m going after—I want to go after records, not a dollar.”

Cliff Hawkins
PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan reiterated in a players meeting on Tuesday at Quail Hollow Club that golfers who join the PGL would lose their PGA Tour membership.

One agent, who agreed to speak anonymously, pointed out that while players who join the PGL may enjoy a lucrative initial payday, they’d risk losing long-term sponsorship dollars from companies who do not want to associate with a Saudi Arabian-financed venture.

“Go look at the pictures of Dustin Johnson holding the trophy in Saudi Arabia,” he said. “See if you can find the RBC logo there on his sleeve.” He’s correct—Johnson did not have the RBC logo planted in its normal spot on his left sleeve during the Saudi International in February, but did have it in his starts immediately before (Sentry Tournament of Champions) and after (Genesis Invitational).

And while the PGA Tour seems intent on taking a hardline stance on the PGL—us or them—executives have shown a willingness to respond to top players’ desire to be compensated for the eyeballs they draw, albeit indirectly. Last month, the tour confirmed it has enacted the Player Impact Program, a $40 million year-end prize fund that will reward the 10 players who bring the most positive publicity to the Tour. It was widely seen as a response to the PGL, a way to guarantee a payday for its biggest stars no matter how they play on the course. Perhaps the re-emergence of the PGL possibility will trigger yet another change tweak to its payment structure.

But will the PGL be successful in comprehensively upending golf? One top-100 player assessed the chances rather bluntly: “There’s no chance anyone has the balls to go over. Absolutely no chance.”

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By Daniel Rapaport
CHARLOTTE —The upstart golf league that seeks to challenge the PGA Tour has progressed to the offer-making stage and hopes to be operational by 2022, according to a report from the British outlet The Telegraph.

The report claims the venture, initially launched in 2020 as the Premier Golf League, has delivered offers as high as $30 million to representatives for Dustin Johnson, Justin Rose, Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka, with a handful of other stars on its radar. The group, which is backed by Saudi Arabian money, hopes to lure away some of the golf’s top stars by offering them guaranteed money, in contrast to the PGA Tour’s prize-money model that’s determined by on-course performance.

The PGA Tour is set to hold a mandatory meeting for players in the field on Tuesday at the Wells Fargo Championship at 4:30 p.m. EST, and this topic—as well as the recently announced Player Impact Program—is sure to dominate the conversation. When the PGL made its initial splash, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan made it clear that any player who signed with the PGL would no longer be a Tour member, and the Telegraph report claims players may be forced to decide between the upstart venture and classic competitions like the Ryder Cup, which is partially owned by the European Tour.

The meeting, it should be noted, has been scheduled since last week and is normal protocol for tour players; there are typically one or two such gatherings per year, with one often occurring at Torrey Pines, but COVID-19 protocols have prevented one from happening yet in 2021.

It would seem the PGL’s conversations have been limited to the elite players—multiple players told Golf Digest they had virtually no information on the matter, and multiple reports suggest the PGL hopes to have limited-field events that could be as small as 16 players.

“It’s been an interesting couple of years with this other league. I don’t really get into the details at all, I let my agent handle everything, but from the beginning, it seemed like something that seems pretty far-fetched to actually happen. You know, to come in and shake up the way golf’s always been,” tour veteran Webb Simpson said Tuesday at Quail Hollow Club. “If I’m a guy who’s on my way to make history like a Dustin or, you know, a few other top guys, I’m going after—I want to go after records, not a dollar. So we’ll see what happens, but that’s kind of where I sit on it.”

The PGL appeared to be a failed concept when multiple top-line players, headlined by Koepka and Rory McIlroy, publicly rejected the advance last year. McIlroy, who has since been elected to lead the Player Advisory Council, cited discomfort with the source of the money and his preference to make his own schedule, rather than being contractually obligated to play in a set number of PGL events.

But one agent for a top-20 player confirmed that the league has not been vanquished. “Players and agents are just listening to their vision and pitch,” he told Golf Digest. “That’s all it is at this point—just a lot of listening.”

A different agent told Golf Digest that representatives for the PGL were in the golf hub of Palm Beach last month, ostensibly to lay out their vision to the game’s power brokers.

The league’s re-emergence comes on the heels of two noteworthy, and somewhat related developments: First, the PIP, which became public two weeks ago and will distribute $40 million to the 10 PGA Tour players who move the proverbial needle in a positive way. The Tour will determine who receives the money via a formula that incorporates things like social media engagement and Q-score but not on-course metrics. The PIP was seen largely as a response to the PGL, a way to reward the game’s biggest stars with guaranteed money that is not tied to their tournament finishes. The PIP announcement came just after the rise and remarkable fall of the European Super League, an upstart soccer league that secured commitments from 12 of Europe’s top clubs before fan outrage doomed the venture just days after it was announced.

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By Joel Beall
The PGA Tour has created a $40 million bonus pool for players who boost publicity and engagement. The news, first reported by Golfweek, was confirmed by the PGA Tour.

Called the “Player Impact Program,” the pool appears to be a response to some of the incentives of the Premier Golf League, a proposed tour that would compete with the PGA Tour for top players. While the PGL has hit several snags in its attempt to go from paper to reality—such as Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka and Jon Rahm turning down offers and a proposed venture with the European Tour falling apart when the Euro Tour instead choose an alliance with the PGA Tour—its foundation exposed loopholes in the PGA Tour’s framework. Chiefly, that the rival circuit promised golf’s elite bigger paydays than available on the PGA Tour. And even though McIlroy has reiterated he wanted no part of the PGL, he also hedged his bets.

“For me, I’m out. My position is I’m against it until there may come a day where I can’t be against. If everyone else goes, I might not have a choice,” McIlroy said at the 2020 WGC-Mexico Championship. “But at this point, I don’t like what [the PGL is] proposing.”

The Player Impact Program, which a tour spokesperson told Golf Digest has been in ideation stages since late 2019, compensates individuals outside weekly tournament purses, rewarding them for drawing eyes and attention to the tour product.

The $40 million will be distributed to just 10 players. These players will be chosen through an “impact score,” a number fueled by several factors including popularity in Google search, Q Rating, Nielsen Brand Rating (a metric that judges how a player delivers to sponsors based on their exposure), Meltwater Mentions (the frequency of player coverage across a number of media platforms) and MVP Index (value of engagement on social and digital channels). The player who is considered the most valuable will receive $8 million at the end of the year, with the program having begun in January.

Some of the players expected to benefit are McIlroy, Jordan Spieth (whose father, Shawn, founded the company that created MVP Index), Bryson DeChambeau, and—despite being sidelined with injury this season—Tiger Woods.

As an extension of the Player Impact Program, the tour told Golf Digest it has created a new business unit—Player Partnerships within the Player Relations Department—focused on the entire PGA Tour membership. Led by Senior Vice President Dan Glod, the Player Partnerships group will work in collaboration with all players and their respective management teams to help maximize off-the-course business opportunities.

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Ewan Murray writes that the PGL has submitted formal offer letters to “a batch of top-level players.” The Guardian states Koepka, Phil Mickelson, Adam Scott, Henrik Stenson, Justin Rose, Rickie Fowler and Paul Casey are some of the players who have been linked to the PGL, but McIlroy is not among the group.

Also of note, Murray reports that the PGL has approached the European Tour.

In late May, Golf Digest reached out to the European Tour regarding alleged discussions between the PGL and Euro Tour. A European Tour spokesperson responded on May 28, “We have had no formal discussions with this group. They have tried to instigate them over the past year or so but we have declined.”

Although the European Tour resumed operations this week, the postponement of the Ryder Cup [announced on July 8] is believed to have serious financial implications on the Old World circuit. Andrew Gardiner, the PGL’s chief executive officer, has relationships with executives and sponsors of the European Tour throughout his career in finance. Along with the PGL’s deep pockets—the league is believed to backed by Saudi interests—bringing on the PGL could solidify the European Tour for years to come, sources tell Golf Digest. For the PGL, the partnership gives it a seat at the proverbial table following a strong rebuke from the game’s upper-echelon stars, sources say. The European Tour’s heritage and tradition would give the PGL instant validity.

In a statement to the Guardian, a Euro Tour spokesperson said, “For the past couple of years we have been proactively sought out by a number of private equity companies, all of whom recognize the strength and influence of the European Tour across golf’s global ecosystem.

“We have listened to them all but our primary focus remains ensuring that the remainder of our 2020 schedule, and onwards to 2021, is robust and healthy for our membership in these constantly changing times.”

As for the PGA Tour, Commissioner Jay Monahan issued a warning to players in January about the potential fallout of joining the PGL.

“If the Team Golf Concept or another iteration of this structure becomes a reality in 2022 or at any time before or after,” Monahan said in tour-wide letter, “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.”

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