Do you like local politics? Do you like the PGA Tour? If you answered yes to both, this summer is all about you!
2022 feels like it will go down as the weirdest summer in the PGA Tour’s existence. It only got weirder this week when the Premier Golf League sent a letter to Tour players outlining why their upstart golf league is bigger and better for everyone. That means bigger and better than the PGA Tour’s current structure. It means bigger and better than LIV Golf’s alternative. The 578-word letter had plenty of attention grabbing details — bolded paragraphs, blue quotes, an italicized expletive — but amounted to a simple message: Dear Tour players, your player government needs to do a better job. Call your representatives!
It’s a serious accusation lobbed at the Advisory Council and Policy Board (totalling 20 players) and an aggressive call to action much like what we see during election years. The 11th paragraph of the letter goes as follows:
“The call to action is simple – just message your player representatives on the PAC and the Policy Board and tweet/retweet: “As a member of the tour, I instruct you to obtain and publish an independent valuation of the PGL Proposals #playerpower #transparency”. If seventy or more of you do this, it will happen.”
The ‘it’ in ‘it will happen’ is simply a more formal look at the PGL’s business model. (Check that out for yourself here.) On one hand, we’ve seen things like this before, in any industry. That’s just a social media petition.
Until it isn’t.
By asking individual players to inquire further, the PGL is implying a couple things:
1. They don’t think the current representatives have assessed their potential appropriately.
2. They don’t think the message has reached all voting members of the Tour, of which there are about 250
At first, the proposal was sent to Rory McIlroy, on the first day he was sworn in as a board member, Feb 14. Now, the message is being pushed more widespread. And if the policy board hears enough member interest, the PGL believes the board has “a fiduciary responsibility” to treat the PGL’s hopes and dreams in a more serious way.
Premier Golf League’s new letter to Tour pros claims $10 billion value, demands evaluation
Step one, they think, would be a truly independent assessment, but Tour commissioner Jay Monahan has repeatedly refused to take a meeting with any rival golf tour. The PGL’s proposal, to this point, was discussed by player government in March, at both the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Players Championship, as reported by The Fire Pit Collective. But they say the assessment included in those discussions, as performed by investment bank Allen and Co., wasn’t independent. Kevin Kisner and McIlroy, two board members, both say it was.
Who wins, when both sides swear they’re right, and none of this is done publicly? Nobody. It leads us to dumbed-down letters with aggressive tones printed on dated letterhead that eventually could be used in court.
Where can we find clarity? Oddly enough, one chapter in the PGL’s fight for relevance is playing out right now, courtesy of LIV Golf. The PGL is fighting for interest — simply a quorum of Tour players who want a second look at its proposal. What better example of uncertainty about the Tour product than 15 Top 100 players signing up to compete in the first LIV Golf event in London, the week before the U.S. Open? But if those players commit to the LIV series, they may not be available for PGL purposes. Timing is everything, because if a group of, say, 30 Tour pros swear their allegiance to Greg Norman and the Saudi-backed Tour, that’s 30 or so would-be voters essentially punching the ‘Independent’ circle on their ballots, rather than adopting the PGL vision. And besides that, to demand a different Tour structure is as precarious as Tour-based decisions get, and there’s a great hesitancy to even share a peep about it. Monahan himself has more than drawn a line in the sand — he’s poured cement and painted it highlighter yellow.
Monahan’s speech of “The PGA Tour is moving on. We have too much momentum,” from early March is actually cited in the PGL’s May 2022 briefing for player reference. It’s mocked in the briefing as a declaration of victory. It’s too early to say who’s right.
PGA Tour players, like voters in any election, tend towards the status quo. They don’t enjoy changing equipment. They rarely veer from their typical schedules. On Wednesday, Rory McIlroy was asked to weigh in on a new fall schedule initiative being kicked around by Tour government. His answer took 383 words, was transcribed into six paragraphs and could be summarized as follows: it’s hard to decide what’s best for more than 200 people.
For most of them, the status quo is still pretty darn good, and like a lot of voters elsewhere, it’ll take some mayhem to actually visit the ballot box. Promises of change — even when those promises include money, money and more money — haven’t done the trick. Not yet, at least.
Agree? Disagree? Feel free to lob praise, critiques or any commentary to the author at sean.zak@golf.com.