Not Everyone Will Like PGA Tour & LIV Golf Merger

View From The Fairway by Derek Clements

Are we finally heading for peace in our time? Is a framework deal in the offing at last? And if so, how is it going to look?

There have been claims that an agreement between the PGA Tour and PIF, which funds LIV Golf, is finally on the verge of being done.

On the face of it, it may seem like something to celebrate. But dig a little deeper and there are plenty of reasons to be concerned.

If reports are to be believed, PIF is preparing to pump more than $1 billion into the PGA Tour, claim an 11% stake and have two seats on its board. It has even been rumoured that PIF will be filling the role of chairman. 

Interestingly, Rory McIlroy claims to have no knowledge of a deal, which does cast some doubt on the voracity of the claims.

You can read anything you want into this but there is one inescapable conclusion: if any or all of the above should happen then surely all we end up with is a glorified LIV tour, with the Saudis pulling the strings. And I do not and cannot believe that can possibly be good for the game.

We have seen the Saudis take an ever-tightening grip on sports such as boxing, football, Formula One and tennis. It is true that these sports are now awash with money, just as we are now seeing in the world of golf. 

But at what cost? How much money do the world’s leading sportsmen really need? And you surely have to ask why most of this money is being pumped into mainly male-dominated sports. 

The Saudis claim to have changed the way they treat women, so why are we not seeing vast sums being pumped into women’s sports? You can point to the Aramco Team Series but that is a drop in the ocean and feels like little more than lip service. Charley Hull collected around $60,000 for winning the final Aramco Series event. It is hardly life-changing money.

The Saudis have been accused of "sportwashing" and seem utterly determined to buy up every mass participation sport on the planet. They are even turning their attention to darts and snooker for goodness sake.

Their motives for this seem clear enough - it remains a blatant attempt to make the world forget about their human rights record. This is not the place to go into the ins and outs of this issue. I am simply concerned with how the future of a sport I love may play out.

The PGA Tour has already announced that it is planning to cut fields for run-of-the-mill tournaments. Instead of 125 players being given tour cards, that number is going to be cut to 100.

LIV Golf boasts fields of 52 players who play 54-hole tournaments, with no cuts and massive financial rewards being shared out among the elite few.

It strikes me that the PGA Tour is also now planning to make the sport’s richest golfers even wealthier. It will reduce the opportunities for the game’s brightest young talents to break through and compete at the very highest level.

While Scottie Scheffler has grabbed the headlines with seven wins and Xander Schauffele landed two majors, for me the real bread and butter in 2024 came from seeing the likes of Kevin Yu, Matt McCarty, Nick Dunlap, Matthieu Pavon, Jake Knapp, Austin Eckroat, Stephan Jaeger, Akshay Bhatia, Chris Gotterup, Harry Hall and Aaron Rai enter the winner’s circle for the first time. 

The joy on their faces as the realisation of what each and every one of them had achieved was something to behold. All of these men did it the hard way - well, maybe not so much Nick Dunlap, who won The American Express in January as an amateur. They all went through the agony of missed cuts, they all wondered if they would ever make it.

Of course we all want to see quicker play on the PGA Tour, and the powers-that-be claim that reducing their fields will go some way towards achieving that - utter rubbish. I have repeatedly said that the only way to end that particular problem is to impose penalty shots on slow players. I am utterly convinced it would end it at a stroke.

Don’t get me wrong - I am not saying that we should stick with the status quo. I am all for change if it is for both the good of the game and those who play it. But nothing can convince me that an increased Saudi presence within the PGA Tour can be good for either the sport or the players.

Ahead of the World Wide Technology Championship, the man in 114th place on the PGA Tour money list had earned $1.018m in prize money. That man is Matt Wallace. At least 72 players had pocketed more $2m, 53 had earned more than $3m and 39 had trousered in excess of $4m. By anybody’s standards, those are impressive sums of money.

Rickie Fowler, a man who has six PGA Tour wins in 11 years has just had a new home built in Florida. It has six bedrooms and, bizarrely, nine bathrooms. And the cost? $20m! I simply use this as an example to demonstrate that golfers such as Fowler really don’t need any more money.

Prize funds will continue to increase in 2025 and if the Saudis have their way you can be sure that we will see even more money on offer. That may seem fine, other than the fact that players will become even more detached from both reality and, crucially, golf fans.