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After months of vitriol, trolling and a two-sided rivalry brimming across men’s pro golf, a trend has started to form among figureheads in the game. Without taking too much liberty, we can boil it down to this question: Why can’t we all just get along?

Numerous players on each side have emphasized that hopefully there can be some sort of agreement between the feuding parties in the coming months or years.

Phil Mickelson, last week: “The best solution is for us to come together.”

Rory McIlroy, last week: “It’s up to the powers that be to try to come to some sort of — not resolution, I don’t think that’s the right word — but a strategy going forward so that the game can drive at the highest level.”

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It’s natural that we’ve arrived here, now five or eight months into the LIV vs. PGA Tour debate, depending on which moment you recognize as its conception. One side is the status quo and the other is the upstart, brash tour of newness. Both are different and both want to win. Both are led by men who have peacocked in front of the mic, and who have no interest in standing down. 

So, will we ever get along? It’s extremely unlikely in the short term. Don’t get your hopes up, folks.

For starters, Greg Norman began his quest by trying to play nicely, offering to meet with Jay Monahan to discuss how LIV Golf could work within the pro golf world. But Monahan has infamously stiff-armed those offers, and now Norman is over it. “We have no interest in sitting down with them, to be honest with you,” Norman recently told The Australian, “because our product is working.”

Norman’s product is working, but that is a rather generic term. It was always going to work to some extent. LIV Golf does not yet have a TV contract, which is a huge step in its theoretical popularity. How much is LIV cutting into the PGA Tour’s product? We’re seeing a bit of it on display this week at the Presidents Cup, where at least four LIV players are not included on the rosters in Charlotte. The PGA Tour has responded to LIV Golf in various ways, some as obvious as massive purse increases and guaranteed fields with the best players in the world. Those responses alone, and Monahan suspending players from the Tour, is reason enough to believe he’s content moving on. 

Then he was asked about it Wednesday night on the set of Golf Channel’s Live From the Presidents Cup, which you can watch below.

“Listen, I’ve been pretty clear on this. I don’t see it happening,” Monahan said, reiterating a point he’s made at press conferences in the past. “When you look at where we are, there are words and actions. We are currently being — we’re currently in a lawsuit. So coming together and having conversations, to me, that card is off the table and has been for a long period of time.”

Monahan spent much of the on-air conversation talking about the future of the PGA Tour. He even admitted at times to not directly answering the line of questioning. But the end of that answer tells most of the story. LIV Golf is a defendant in a massive lawsuit being waged against the PGA Tour. Anything he says can be used by LIV in the court room, so he’ll speak carefully for many of the months ahead. The same goes for Norman and any LIV golfer. It creates an obvious willingness to talk about one’s own product and ignore thoughts about what is happening on the other side of the table. Thus, fans dreaming of a LIV Golf-PGA Tour match play event are foolish. So are hopes that LIV golfers might play in, say, the Genesis Invitational in February. It’s just not bound to happen. 

Oddly, though, the lawsuit does represent some form of conversation. Throughout the next year, ‘Mickelson et. al vs. PGA Tour’ will progress slowly but surely. There will be deposition and discovery of documents and information shared about each side, which can often help push one side to the end of its theoretical rope. Could the lawsuit end in a settlement? It’s totally plausible, and would have to take place before the end of August, 2023, as the schedule currently demands. A settlement in the court room, however likely or unlikely, could be the grounds on which a resolution between the tours begins to take shape. Just don’t get anxious for one. We have many months of this civil war ahead of us.

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The PGA Tour, through a series of changes announced this week by its commissioner, is planning to spend money. That’s the easy part. But you know money doesn’t grow on neither trees nor fairways. So the question then is this:

How is the PGA Tour planning to get money?

Jay Monahan says it will come from three sources. 

But no, the Tour will not give up its nonprofit status, the Tour commissioner said. 

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And no, Monahan said, the Tour will not go dollar for dollar with LIV Golf, the upstart, controversial, Saudi-backed series — and the impetus for the Tour’s changes. 

We’ll begin with the new ways the established brand will be spending. On Wednesday, ahead of the Tour Championship, Monahan said that 20 players will be defined as “top players” starting next year; the device in which the Tour defines those players, the Player Impact Program, will receive a purse bump, from $50 million to $100 million, to reward those players; four more tournaments, in addition to eight announced in June, will be tabbed as “elevated events” with $20 million purses; the 20 players will play in those events, the Players Championship, the majors and three other tournaments; all fully exempt players will start the season with a $500,000 stipend; and players will receive a $5,000 travel stipend. 

So again, how is the Tour affording this? This was Monahan’s explanation: 

“The money comes from three sources,” he said. “One, I would say for 2020, this year that we’re in, the Tour is having its strongest year in history of the PGA Tour and is performing well ahead of budget.

“Secondly, as you’ve heard me talk about before, the Tour through the years has been very prudent in managing its finances and building reserves and being in a position to be able to invest in programs that are going to help the Tour grow. That’s what they’re there for, and that’s what we’ll continue to use them for.

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“I would say additionally our partners, our sponsors and all of our partners who want to get behind and are getting behind the direction that we’re going in, want to be a part of the continued growth and evolution of the Tour. They recognize that with the changes we’re talking about today, the changes that we’ve made prior to today, and the direction we’re heading in, we’re going to be creating more value.

“When you create more value, you’re going to get more income coming into the business.”

There’s a lot to unpack there. In reference to the strong year, a large chunk of the money has likely come from the Tour’s new media rights deals, which went into effect on Jan. 1 and are worth billions through the end of the decade. The reserves, meanwhile, were not directly addressed on Wednesday, but they were in March; at the Players Championship, Monahan said that account was at $225 million, down from $300 million prior to the pandemic. 

Monahan’s third point — the partners and sponsors — is notable. What those conversations were like is unknown, but they’ll help fund nonetheless. For now. Which leads us into the bigger point of whether the Tour can get into an arms race with the multi-billion-dollar Saudi Public Investment Fund, LIV’s backer. 

On Wednesday, a reporter asked Monahan this question: “What’s the reaction if LIV, which seemingly has an unlimited amount of money, simply doubles what it’s offering now, or to get into a bidding war with them?”

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“I’ve been pretty consistent throughout that for us, where we’re competing is with our product, and our product is our schedule,” Monahan said. “We’ve made some strong enhancements to that for top players and for our entire membership, coming into this year and certainly as we go into 2023.

“When you look at our schedule, the value of our platform and what players can achieve off of that platform based on their competitive success and the values that are conveyed through that platform, that coupled with some of these financial programs, when you look at being a member of the PGA Tour and you look at the financials moving forward, you can earn a tremendous — you can have a tremendous career. Your earnings potential is extraordinary.

“Again, you’re doing it in a way where you’re preparing yourself to achieve at the highest level of the game. You’re competing for trophies that matter. You’re competing for history and legacy.

“Look at the schedule. You go to next year, our fans are going to look at the schedule in January and say, the Sentry Tournament of Champions, the WGC Dell Match Play, the three player-hosted invitationals. For the first time, I know now that these players are going to be playing there; plus I know that these players are going to be playing additional FedExCup events, 20 events. To me, that is tremendously exciting as a fan, and as we have more excitement from our fans, we grow our business.

“But to directly answer your question, when you’re dealing with a non-economic actor, you have to come back to the core of who you are, and if the core of who you are is providing the single greatest competitive access and opportunities for players, and pipeline, then how do you make that stronger? And that’s what everything starts with. That’s what came out of the meeting last week. That’s what comes out of all the discussions we have at the PAC level and with our board.”

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So, in fewer words, the Tour likely has a limit. And that’s even truer when you consider that Monahan would not renounce its non-profit status, which would have allowed private investors and equity firms to invest. On that subject, the commissioner did say that the Tour could create for-profit subsidiaries, and one of those is the Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy-led indoor golf series that was also announced Wednesday and will begin in 2024. 

Of course, you may also be wondering could any of these moves have been earlier. In more or less words, Phil Mickelson had thought this before moving on to LIV.  

Monahan wasn’t asked this week, though in June, after another announcement of changes, he said this: “We were planning on raising purses to these events in the future, OK? And that was part of our resource-allocation plan. The move that we’re making at the start of 2023, there’s no question that one of the things that we’re looking to do is make certain that our top events are maximized both in terms of their consequence and the financial investment, and this is an acceleration of that. So, yes, this is, that, this is something that we’re doing to respond on behalf of our members to the current environment that we’re in.”

Jordan Spieth, meanwhile, had this exchange on Wednesday. 

Reporter: “Why has it taken so long? Why did it take this kind of existential threat to get to this point?”

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“I don’t know,” Spieth said. “I’m not sure. I’m not sure what else could have provoked it or — it’s almost like things have been pretty good. Golf has been good. Right when Tiger’s dominance — he ends up injured, isn’t playing for a little while, he comes back and he wins the Tour Championship and then the Masters.

“You have new media rights deals around the same time. Covid hits, not good for anybody; golf numbers go up. It’s been in a good place. It’s almost like, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and it wasn’t broke, and it’s just now there was maybe — this seems like a time to — a really good time to make some kind of a change.

“Also, I think with the reserves, the reserve situation and Covid, having to have those, and then they get re-built up by markets being built back up and PGA Tour’s, a lot of their separate business entities being really successful, they get a situation where they can bump all these and continue to move this direction.

“I think the timing just made sense, and it was also provoked a little bit. To be honest, yeah, I don’t know.”

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The PGA Tour’s Player Impact Program is getting a makeover.

In a press conference Wednesday, Jay Monahan outlined a variety of changes coming to the Tour in the coming years in an effort to keep the game’s top talents from defecting to LIV Golf. One of the biggest changes? A multitude of tweaks to the much-scrutinized PIP.

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“Since launching last season, we’ve been committed to reassessing [the Player Impact Program’s] effectiveness in identifying and rewarding the players who drive the most impact to the organization,” Monahan said. “To that end, we are adjusting the criteria and expanding the program.”

The PIP was launched in 2021 as a way to financially reward the Tour’s most popular players, but after the program’s pilot season — and a handful of popular players leaving the Tour — changes are already underway.

Check out below for the four biggest changes to the PIP.

1. They’re doubling the player pool

Only the top 10 players in the PIP standings were financially compensated in 2021, but moving forward, that pool of players will be significantly larger. According to Monahan, the number of players being paid out will double in 2022 and 2023, with 20 players being rewarded via the PIP fund.

2. They’re doubling the money, too

Additionally, the money in the PIP fund is getting a significant boost. Last season, $40 million was doled out to the top 10 players on the list. But for 2022 and 2023, that number has increased to $100 million. Monahan previously indicated that the fund would increase to $50 million in 2022, but as the number of players in the program has doubled, the cash up for grabs is doubling, too.

3. They’re tweaking the formula

Not only have the dollars and cents been altered, but so too has the formula that the Tour uses to calculate the PIP standings. Last season, the PIP standings were calculated with five factors in mind — Google searches, Meltwater mentions, social media reach, Nielsen score and Q-score. Moving forward, that formula will be a bit different. Q-score and social media reach have been nixed, and in their place the “awareness criteria” — a player’s ability to capture the awareness from the casual and core fan base — has been expanded.

4. The Tour is adding a “Top player” distinction

Any player finishing in the top 20 of the PIP standings will now be deemed a “top player.” In the new Tour model Monahan outlined, top players will commit to 20 events each season which have elevated status and elevated purses. Those include the four majors, the Players, eight additional “Elevated Events” and three more events of a player’s choosing. Players would still need to qualify for those events — but Monahan implied that if they weren’t qualified they’d make for some good sponsor’s exemptions, too. It pays to be in the PIP.

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Should LIV Golf’s top players wish to return to the PGA Tour, they’ll need a heck of a lot more than contrition.

On Wednesday at the Tour Championship, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan announced a groundswell of changes to golf’s biggest professional tour aimed at increasing the payout and stature of the game’s top players, while improving the financial standing of its fringe competitors. The changes — which include a $500,000 annual float payment to pros, a $5,000 missed-cut check, a travel stipend, and the creation of a new series of big-purse ‘elevated events’ — mark a tremendous shift to a PGA Tour structure that has been battered in recent months by the rise of LIV Golf.

In many ways, the changes also represent those sought by many of LIV’s defectors, who cited higher payments and better living conditions among their biggest reasons for joining the new league. But if any of LIV’s players are having second thoughts about their decision after seeing the PGA Tour news, Monahan says it’s likely best for them to keep it to themselves.

“They’ve joined the LIV Golf Series and they’ve made that commitment. For most of them, they’ve made multi-year commitments,” Monahan said in a press conference announcing the changes. “As I’ve been clear throughout, every player has a choice, and I respect their choice, but they’ve made it. We’ve made ours. We’re going to continue to focus on the things that we control and get stronger and stronger. I think they understand that.”

As for whether he would consider lifting the suspensions of those on LIV who may wish to return to the PGA Tour, Monahan was blunt.

“No.”

According to court filings from both sides, the Tour has been aggressive in its punishment for LIV’s players, levying lifetime bans upon those who resigned their Tour membership in order to join the new league and suspensions of as long as a year per event to those who kept their membership while leaving for LIV.

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Of course, the outcome of those suspensions will likely be determined by the courts, where lawsuits have already been filed against the Tour on behalf of a chunk of the suspended players, and it’ll be a while until we have a firmer answer. The judge presiding over the case between the PGA Tour and LIV’s suspended players won’t hear arguments until the beginning of 2024 at the earliest.

Still, Monahan had no issue stating his intent to sustain the (in some cases, multi-year) suspensions levied by the Tour. Ultimately, he says, if the players were concerned about crossing back across the line in the sand, they shouldn’t have been the ones to draw it in the first place.

“As it relates to any of the scenarios for LIV players and coming back, I’ll remind you that we’re in a lawsuit,” he said. “They’ve sued us. I think talking about any hypotheticals at this point doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

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Up until this point, it has been a war of words.

Is it now time for a legal battle?

We’re speaking, of course, about the escalating conflict between the PGA Tour and Saudi-backed LIV Golf, which took a heated and unexpected turn Tuesday after the Tour denied a request for waivers from players looking to compete in the first LIV Golf event, in London, next month.

Greg Norman, CEO of the rival league, wasted no time decrying the decision, calling the Tour “an illegal monopoly” that is “anti-golfer, anti-fan, and anti-competitive.” If you smell an antitrust suit — or multiple such filings — you’re not alone.

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The consensus among experts is that court dates are coming.

But when, exactly? And how might they unfold?

Craig Seebald is a partner and antitrust specialist with Vinson & Elkins, an international law firm.

We asked him to tease out the most likely scenarios and some of the legal questions surrounding them.

HOW DOES ANTITRUST LAW WORK?

Antitrust law is a sizable topic, but it mostly boils down to two concerns, Seebald says: monopolization and conspiracy. Broadly defined, the first is when an entity uses unfair practices to gain or maintain a stranglehold on a market. The second is when two or more entities work together to thwart competition. Any cases filed against the Tour would rest on one or both of those fronts.

WHO COULD FILE A SUIT?

A player or a group of players would be the most likely plaintiffs. But LIV Golf could also file suit, as could the government at the state or, more likely, the federal level through the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which administers antitrust and consumer protection legislation.

As it happens, the FTC has scrutinized the PGA Tour before. In 1994, following a four-year investigation, attorneys for the agency determined that two Tour polices (one being the requirement that players get permission to compete in non-Tour events) violated antitrust laws, and recommended that the federal government nullify them. Though FTC commissioners ultimately decided not to take action, times have changed.

In its current makeup, Seebald says, the FTC is far more aggressive on antitrust matters. “I’m not sure how excited they get about a battle between golf leagues,” Seebald says. “They’re worried more about gas prices and such. But they could say, ‘Hey, we looked at this 30 years ago. Maybe we should look at it again.’”

WHEN MIGHT A SUIT BE FILED?

To file a viable antitrust claim, you need to be able to demonstrate that you have suffered harm. “I think that’s why we haven’t seen any suits so far,” Seebald says. “Because there’s hasn’t been harm yet.”

That could change.

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Now that the Tour has denied players’ requests for waivers, Seebald says, “the ball moves to the players’ court.” If they decide to participate in the LIV Golf event anyway (and indications are that at least a handful of players will), the Tour will then have to determine what, if any, sanctions it wants to impose.

The Tour could issue fines. But, Seebald says, fines wouldn’t likely carry much sting, as the deep-pocketed Saudi-backed league would almost certainly indemnify those players by covering the fees. (In fact, Greg Norman promised Wednesday that LIV Golf would do exactly that.)

If, on the other hand, Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and Co. decided to ban players from certain Tour events, or suspend their Tour membership, the plot would really start to thicken. “At that point,” Seebold says, “the players would have to decide whether to file a lawsuit saying, ‘This rule is denying me my livelihood.’”

WHAT MIGHT A SUIT SEEK?

Monetary damages. The catch is that antitrust suits can take years to resolve, which doesn’t do much good for a plaintiff seeking swift results. “If you go after damages, it can drag on and on,” Seebald says. “You want the court to do something quickly.”

The shorter-term remedy, Seebald says, would be a motion seeking a court injunction that would prohibit the Tour from enforcing its rules. Players could seek this. So could LIV Golf. Or the feds. If such an injunction were granted, it would allow golfers to continue competing in LIV Golf events without facing sanctions from the Tour, even as a longer legal battle played out in the courts.

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WHAT’S MOST LIKELY TO HAPPEN?

If, as expected, a handful of Tour pros play in next month’s LIV Golf event, the Tour is all but certain to act. But Seebald doesn’t think that it will issue fines. Suspensions and/or bans are more likely, he says, because they would be the more effective deterrent.

“From the Tour’s perspective, you want (LIV Golf) to bleed a slow death,” Seebald says. “And the way you do that is by them not having players. No disrespect to Robert Garrigus, but who is going to tune in to watch him when you can watch Jordan Spieth on the PGA Tour?”

IS CONSPIRACY AT WORK?

Another interesting question, Seebald says, is whether the PGA Tour has been coordinating its efforts with the DP World Tour. If so, conspiracy could be a valid legal complaint.

“If the suspensions cut across the PGA Tour and the European Tour [now called the DP World Tour], they would be really painful for the [Lee] Westwoods and [Sergio] Garcias of the world,” Seebald says. “The subject of coordination between the tours could be a subject of investigation.” Which, in turn, would raise European antitrust concerns as well.

HOW WILL COURTS RULE?

Impossible to know, but Seebald sees the short- and long-term landscape in different lights. “My feeling is that if they ban guys, [those players] will have a claim that won’t be dismissed quickly,” Seebald says. “Whether a couple of years down the road the players will ultimately win depends on a lot of things and is a bit more uncertain.”

WHAT SHOULD GOLF FANS DO?

Stay tuned.

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Greg Norman, as a 67-year-old commissioner of a new series of golf events announced Wednesday morning, is not that different than he was half his lifetime ago, when he was one of the best golfers in the world. As a player, he was charismatic and headstrong. Norman’s golf was emotional and reactive. He took things personally. 

And so Norman will be as a commissioner. That became clear Wednesday morning when he spoke with a small group of reporters and answered questions about this new eight-event, team-based, high-payout series of international golf events.

Norman wants you to call the series by its name, and understandably so: the LIV Golf Invitational Series. LIV, pronounced as in live long and prosper, is also a Roman numeral that, as a golf score — 54 — is pretty much perfect, if you like making birdies on 18 straight holes on a par-72 course. It also is the number of holes that will be played in LIV golf events.

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Norman doesn’t want you calling it the Saudi golf league. He does acknowledge that the majority of the funding comes from the vast investment fund called PIF, a private Saudi company overseen by Mohammed bin Salman, aka MBS, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and linked, according to a U.S. intelligence report, to the death of the columnist and Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi.

There’s so much going on here it’s head-spinning. Let’s start with the concept — 54 holes, team play and individual play, 48 golfers — and how Norman and his team came up with it. Norman attended his first Ryder Cup last year at Whistling Straits, where he was doing radio commentary.

“I’ve never seen a team event with energy like that, and that was a gobsmack moment,” Norman, a native Australian who has lived in South Florida for decades, said Wednesday from a sleek, sun-drenched office in a high-rise in West Palm Beach.

Norman’s remarks here have been lightly edited and reordered for clarity.

“To see the interactions of players who weren’t playing on the first tee, engaging with the fans? Man, it put goosebumps on me and I’m not even American or European. I saw the value of what team sport does, the camaraderie of the players, how they want to represent their team or their country or their playing partner that given day. It was a moment. I was really into it from an emotional standpoint, from a player standpoint.

“So for me, and Sean [Bratches, a LIV Golf executive], we both got hit in the forehead with this massive energy: ‘Look at the fans, this is what they want! Individual as well as team [competitions]’. And that’s what we’re having right here, with LIV Golf.”

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It’s hard to believe, but that Ryder Cup in Kohler, Wis., was only half a year ago. Tiger Woods, who was supposed to be an assistant captain there, was not on hand. He was in his home in South Florida, continuing to rehab from his horrifying February 2021 car crash.

But Phil Mickelson was there, as an assistant captain. He was also the reigning PGA Championship winner and a certifiable golf legend, the oldest player ever to win a major. He was by far, the most accomplished and experienced person in a U.S. uniform that week and was seemingly an insider on every important conversation, when he wasn’t walking hand-in-hand with his wife, Amy, down the sides of the Whistling Straits fairways.

Since then, Mickelson has turned his life upside down with, essentially, his mouth and his interest in Norman’s fledgling league. In comments he made to John Huggan of Golf Digest, Mickelson accused the PGA Tour of “obnoxious greed,” as he sought to get permission for his own golf ventures. In comments he made to a biographer, Alan Shipnuck, he said that ruling-class Saudis were “scary mother—-ers.” He has not played golf in public in months, and he has not made a public statement in weeks.

“I have not spoken to him in quite a while,” Norman said Wednesday morning. “I’ve wanted to leave him alone. He wanted to have his own space, so I just respect that. 

“He’s been great for the game of golf. He’s got a fan base that’s incredible. He’s done things that many other players wish they could emulate over their career. And I wish him nothing but the best. I really do. From a player-to-player perspective, we’ve all screwed up in our lives. We’ve all made some stupid statements and comments over a period of time that we wish we could take back.

“At the end of the day, I just want Phil to know from a player’s perspective, and as the CEO of LIV Golf, that we welcome him back [when] he wants to come back and play the game of golf.

“It’s up to him. It’s on his time schedule. And as he clears his head and gets himself back to the game of golf, the better off the game of golf will be.

“It’s sad. There’s no question about it. At the end of the day, I’m just gonna let Phil have his time to flush out what he needs to flush out in his mind and get himself back into equilibrium.”

Golf, typically the most orderly of sports, has never had a period like this one.

*Woods ran his car off the road 13 months ago, with the gas pedal almost fully depressed, incurred major injuries and announced that his life as a professional golfer was changed forever. But since then, between his comments in support of the PGA Tour and his induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame, he has looked, far more than ever before, like an elder statesman of the PGA Tour and of Establishment Golf.

*Mickelson has gone from the most public of popular golfing figures to the most silent of them.

*Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner who made his mark in golf as an affable and skillful marketing man, has become a sure-footed, take-charge leader, through the pandemic and the emergence of competing tours.

*Donald Trump, owner of numerous courses bearing his name, lost the 2022 PGA Championship at Trump Bedminster in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots. But Trump Bedminster was named Wednesday as the venue for the third of the eight LIV Golf series events, in late July.

Each of these first seven events, before a concluding team championship in late October at a venue to be named, are invitationals. Norman said that he sent emails to 250 golfers, all of them male, Tuesday night at around 10:30 and this is how described the response he received within 11 hours:

“I’ve got to tell you, from a player’s perspective, the amount of response [has been] unbelievably positive. I’m talking about single-digit ranked players in the world, emailing me first thing this morning, just so excited to hear about what we have to say and what we’ve got.”

As a PGA Tour player, Norman was a thorn in the side of his commissioners, first Deane Beman, later Tim Finchem. (Mickelson has been, too — first to Finchen, later to Monahan.) As a player, Norman wanted what many pros wanted and what they still want: more playing opportunities for more money. The PGA Tour, and other organized tours around the world, impose order where there otherwise would be bedlam. The result is order, but turf wars, too. Norman is holding fast to what he felt as a player. Professionals should be able to play where they want for as much as they can get. A TV deal, he figures, will find their way to tournaments featuring players fans want to watch. This whole thing is a work-in-progress.

“For decades, I fought for the right of a player to have the opportunity and choice to go play wherever he wants without having restrictions,” Norman said. “I remember when I was the No. 1 player in the world, trying to get the right to go back and play in my home [Australian] tour. And I fought for home-tour release rules. Why do we have to apply for a waiver for that? You know, players can apply for a waiver and get it. And I’ve heard as recently as of this year that some European tour players just went and played without even getting a release.

“The players see their opportunities. They’re independent contractors. They have this freedom of choice. I’ll just sit back and give them the new opportunities.”

One of the first questions players will ask, in the face of these new playing opportunities, is this: Will I get Official World Golf Ranking points for playing in these LIV events? LIV officials are trying to get that answered. Do you know why that question is so important? Because a player’s OWGR is his passport to the best-paying events in the world.

Viewed that way, this whole thing is not that complicated. Players will follow the money. They seldom ask where it comes from.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com

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Check in every week for the unfiltered opinions of our writers and editors as they break down the hottest topics in the sport, and join the conversation by tweeting us @golf_com. This week, we break down Cameron Smith’s win at the Players Championship, Jay Monahan’s victory lap and Tiger Woods’ latest achievement.   

1. After five days of stop-and-start golf at rain-soaked, windblown TPC Sawgrass, Cameron Smith finally prevailed at the Players Championship, closing out his career-biggest win with a gutsy tee shot to four feet on the watery par-3 17th hole followed by a shaky bogey on the par-4 closer. What jumps out at you about how Smith took down what is the strongest field in golf?

Michael Bamberger, senior writer: Smith’s golf. I knew he was good but never appreciated him at close range before. Love the way he goes about his business, the no-fuss decisiveness, the rhythm with every club, most especially putter. 

Zephyr Melton, assistant editor (@zephymelton) The oldest cliche in golf says “Drive for show, putt for dough,” and today, Smith proved it to be true. His performance on the greens was so impressive all day, and he closed it out with eight one-putts over his final nine holes. Putt for dough indeed ($3.6 million, to be exact).

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Alan Bastable, executive editor (@alan_bastable): Those last three holes will stick with me, in particular the sniped tee shot at 16 (par), the stuffed (but blocked) tee shot at 17 (birdie) and the unfathomable punch-out water ball on 18 (bogey). It wasn’t exactly a slam-the-door finish, but then again, he made just about every putt of consequence. Guy is a ruthless assassin on the greens.        

Josh Sens, senior writer (@joshsens): Putting has always been Smith’s strength and it was again this week. But you don’t win an event like this without a tough mindset. Smith showed that. That tee shot on 17 was pushed, for sure, but he was still playing an aggressive line. And then he pulls driver on 18 when he could have easily played a safer shot. Lots of confidence and swagger. I’d expect no less from a man bold enough to wear that mullet and ‘stache. 

Dylan Dethier, senior, writer (@dylan_dethier): The best putters in the world aren’t necessarily on the PGA Tour, but once you narrow down golfers based on elite ball striking ability (the true determinant of Tour pros) then the best and hottest putters will dominate. This week Cameron Smith was both an elite irons players and whatever is better than elite with his putter. He set the record for strokes gained putting at TPC Sawgrass while also ranking fifth in the field approaching the green. That more than offset an uneven performance with his driver. This is all a long way of saying that Smith blew my mind with his Sunday putting performance and I couldn’t believe where he hit his tee shot on No. 17.

​​James Colgan, assistant editor (@jamescolgan26): What jumps out to me is how bold it was. Smith never backed down from a shot — including the ones he definitely should have backed down from (17, 18 tee). I’m not sure if that makes him a genius or just very lucky, but I was impressed by his fearlessness.

2. The top end of the leaderboard was notable for its lack of star power; a host of big names — Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay and Jordan Spieth among them — didn’t even make the cut. Was the surprising leaderboard more a result of the challenging, uneven conditions or merely the big guns not bringing their best stuff?

Melton: Golfers are creatures of habit, and this week’s routine was anything but ordinary. I’m willing to chalk it up to the stop-and-start nature of the event, combined with brutal conditions when they actually did get to play.

Sens: A combo, I’d say. The draw was huge this week, obviously. But as Justin Thomas showed us, it was possible to slog through the brutal weather if you were at your absolute best. Spieth, to cite one example, looked like he was searching for something that might have been missing even in good weather. Conditions were nasty. But I doubt any of those guys who missed the cut would blame the weather alone for how they finished.

Dethier: I think they actually would have a fair case to blame the weather. The very worst micro-wave (fun term!) to be in was essentially playing No. 17 at the very beginning of play on Saturday. That meant Brooks Koepka, Xander Schauffele and Scottie Scheffler in one group; it meant Collin Morikawa, Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas in the next. Koepka, Schauffele and Morikawa missed the cut, while McIlroy and Scheffler made it on the number. We can praise Thomas’ superhuman efforts while also acknowledge his compatriots got the absolute worst of the weather.

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Bamberger: More than I can ever remember before at Sawgrass, you had to drive it in play and hit an iron hole high and pitch it and chip it with finesse. It was a time-machine tournament. 

​​Bastable: And we thought Bay Hill would be the toughest test on the FLA Swing! What a two-week stretch. It was so fun to watch the guys have to manufacture shots, and as Bamberger suggests, a taste of what a tech rollback might look like. Intriguing, right?

Colgan: Honestly, I think it was a matter of expectation. Golf’s best players expected a firm, fast test, and they were too slow to adjust to the uber soft, slow conditions that greeted them. To Dylan’s point though, the tee times did them ZERO favors.

3. When the conditions were at their wildest, windiest and wettest, the famed 17th hole gave players fits; on Golf Channel, Brandel Chamblee argued that, in strong winds, the hole becomes unfair, because there is too much luck (or bad luck) in play. Did this week change your opinion, for better or for worse, of one of the game’s most iconic holes?

Bamberger: It’s an odd one-off hole. It’s terrible and fun. My opinion didn’t change. I wouldn’t want it on my home course. But at this point in the proceedings, it’s earned its place in the game. It’s embedded in the culture of golf and, like the over-the-top fans in Phoenix, has not inspired a lot or really any notable copy-cat behavior. If you had to, you could chip one off the tee and play an 80-yard second. Or figure out some way to keep it dry.

Melton: I thought the chaos was lovely. Carnage is fun!

Sens: If you believe that great designs should offer options, then the 17th has never been a great hole. But it’s always been an entertaining hole, and this week maybe more than ever. It has actually seemed more unfair to me in some years past, when the green was kept so firm and the collar so shaved down that many good shots bounced off the green into the water or spun back in the drink. This week, at least, it was all nature’s doing. I’m willing to call a course setup unfair. Bad weather is just the luck of the draw.

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Bastable: Right. Love me some Brandel, but not this take. He was stuck on the notion that random wind gusts could unfairly punish otherwise well struck shots. Well, yeah, but that’s the nature of golf, whether you’re playing an island-green par-3 or a coast-hugging par-5. Mother Nature is as much an opponent as the other 143 players in the field. It’s a cruel, unfair game. Ask Paul Casey.   

Dethier: The hole is what it is. There’s no redesigning it; it’s an island green. And the entire point of the island green is that sometimes, guys will hit the water instead of the island. I thought that watching golfers try to flight different types of shots into the wind made for incredible theater. I was also glad it wasn’t me out there. It didn’t look fun and it wasn’t always fair, but that’s the game.

Colgan: As a kid growing up in the Tiger era, the 17th at Sawgrass was one of the few holes I knew by heart, and one of the first I wanted to see with my own eyes. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize its architectural significance leaves a lot to be desired, but let’s let kids be kids.

4. What Players Championship storyline didn’t get the attention it deserved?

Bamberger: Shane Lowry’s ball-toss. What an arm!

Melton: The sheer absurdity that was the Golden Trophy man reenacting the “Better than Most” putt on the telecast. Wild to see what’s possible with modern tech.

Sens: The fact that I had HIdeki Matsuyama in my pool and his back gave out on him. Talk about unfair!

Dethier: The fact that Keegan Bradley played such spectacular golf that he was arguably the best in the field through 70 holes were it not for an extremely bizarre two-stroke penalty. Also the fact that Dustin Johnson went from 59th to 9th in the final round with a nine-under 63.

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Colgan: Knew you’d find a way to reference Keeg here somewhere, Dylan. Anirban Lahiri gets my vote. He played impossibly tough golf over two very long days at a laughably unforgiving golf course, and he didn’t even lose the golf tournament — he got beat. Made a fan out of me and much more importantly, $2.2 million in the process. Good for Anirban.

Bastable: It’ll get more attention in the coming days and weeks but the drama around the Daniel Berger drop was delicious. It’s unclear from the footage where his ball crossed the hazard line on 16 so all we’ve got is one player’s word (Berger’s) vs. two (Viktor Hovland’s and, to lesser a degree, Joel Dahmen’s). You can expect more litigation on this matter, and please, please, give us a Berger-Hovland singles match in Rome.

5. The regrettable weather aside, the week served as a bit of victory lap for PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, who, while meeting with the press, preached that his tour is about “legacy, not leverage” — a not-so veiled shot at Phil Mickelson’s dealings with a would-be Saudi-backed rival tour. Did anything surprise you about Monahan’s remarks?   

Bamberger: The forcefulness of them.  

Melton: It seemed as though Monahan wants to push the message that the Saudi League threat has been completely neutralized. But I’d be surprised if the breakaway league talk is done for good. The Tour won the battle, but I think the war is far from finished.

Sens: Much of what the commissioner has said in the past about rival leagues has focused on legalities and logistics. It’s either us or them, basically. Jump ship to a rival and you’re no longer in our fold. The “legacy, not leverage” comment was different. It wasn’t just a jab at Mickelson. It was the remark of a man staking claim to the moral high ground.

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Dethier: I appreciated him putting a stake in the ground. He sounded like a man who is confident in his business and in his product. Moral objections aside (I’m not saying they should be, but just for a moment) if the Tour can beat its rivals on its merits alone, that’s a huge victory. I think the dramatic Monday finish actually did just that. And the emotions that Anirban Lahiri showed down the stretch and Cameron Smith showed in his post-round interviews reinforced what Monahan said about the gravity of these events.

Bastable: I was little surprised Monahan and Phil haven’t spoken since Phil’s failed mutiny. Phil could still be of value to the Tour, but you have to wonder if he and Jay will ever break bread again.

Colgan: It’s easy to forget the PGA Tour hasn’t publicly said ANYTHING about rumored rival tours since their inception. For Monahan to respond at all is noteworthy, for him to respond so forcefully is nothing shy of shocking.

6. Earlier in the week, Tiger Woods was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame, with his 14-year-old daughter Sam introducing him. What did you learn about Woods at the Wednesday evening ceremony that you didn’t already know?

Melton: The tidbit about Comic-Con was pretty great. Who knew Tiger was such a superhero nerd?

Bastable: Agree with that. Delightful nugget from Sam. I spent three days fruitlessly scanning random Comic-Con snaps online in search of TW in a batman costume. I also learned that Tiger is a polished public speaker. He went for nearly 20 minutes without notes. That’s not easy to do, even when you’re speaking from the heart.

Sens: Actually, being a superhero nerd seems very much onbrand for Tiger. I’m not sure Tiger told us anything new about himself. We’ve gotten bits and pieces of it all before. But this was all condensed into a single moment that clearly meant a ton to him. Despite being a prepared speech, it seemed more raw and honest than a zillion answers he has given to impromptu questions.

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Dethier: I learned that when Tiger Woods looks back on his golfing life he doesn’t instinctively jump to any professional victories. I was watching from the third deck as Woods spoke and kept waiting for him to mention specific moments in his illustrious career — but he never did. Instead he told stories from his childhood. He talked about his family. He spoke to a legacy of hard work and dedication. I learned that Tiger Woods categorizes himself far differently than we categorize him. 

Bamberger: That he became the first ball-hunter in history to find a brand-new balata ball on a Navy course. Truly, I took his remarks as parable, not reported fact, and found them moving.

Colgan: I learned Tiger has grown more willing to discuss the role race has played in his career. That’s noteworthy.

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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — You’re a golfer. You know how it is. You have the oddest sort of memory. You recall the holes you played and the shots you took like most people can remember their children’s middle names. Plus, the weather. Always the weather.

At the end of 2000, I had a semi-lengthy interview with Tiger Woods. He was going to be Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year, the first person to get the honor for a second time. My impression was he could not have cared less.

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When I asked him about his nine-shot win in the British Open at the Old Course, he kept going back to the weather. He couldn’t believe how calm and warm it was for four straight days.

Enter Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner. This year’s Players Championship will end on a Monday, as it rarely does, but also grandly, as it always does. But for three days the only story was the weather. And what Monahan could recall, at the drop of a hat, was the weather on this occasion two years ago. Four warm sunny days, light breezes, no rain. One day of golf. The tournament was canceled after one round.

Rory McIlroy, now the chairman of the PGA Tour’s Player Advisory Council, said, “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.” That was prescient. McIlroy wasn’t talking about the weather.

McIlroy has Monahan’s ear and vice-versa. Both have a nice sense of humor. At a press conference before the tournament, McIlroy said that the Tour should be more open about announcing suspensions and fines. (It’s notoriously tight-lipped about these matters.) Later, at another press conference, when Monahan had learned what McIlory had said, the commissioner said, “Effective immediately, Rory McIlroy is suspended.”

Being the PGA Tour commissioner has never been more complicated and it started getting really complicated two years ago, when the Players was called after 18 holes, on account of Covid. None of Monahan’s three predecessors — Joe Dey, Deane Beman, Tim Finchem, all members of the World Golf Hall of Fame — have had the long series of challenges that Monahan has faced. Finchem’s 22-year run as commissioner, from 1994 to 2016, basically overlapped with Woods’ career.

In fact, Finchem was inducted just before Woods at the Wednesday-night ceremony in the Tour’s gleaming glass-and-stone headquarters that would be right at home in Milan. You could say Finchem built the new headquarters, given how the Tour’s revenues increased under his watch. But you could say Woods built it, too. Monahan talked about both men at the ceremony.

Here’s an abbreviated list of the issues Monahan has faced that no other commissioner has:

The onset of the pandemic in March 2020.

George Floyd’s death in May 2020 and the racial-unrest awakening it wrought.

Multiple failed Covid tests at the RBC Heritage Classic at Hilton Head tournament in June 2020.

A total reworking of the 2020 schedule, on the fly, throughout 2020.

Patrick Reed’s embedded ball controversy at Torrey Pines in January 2021.

Woods’ terrifying car crash in February 2021.

Greg Norman’s reported planning of a rival international golf league over the course of 2021 and 2022.

Phil Mickelson’s recent, published comments about the PGA Tour (the hand that has fed him) and that proposed league (the hand that could).

Yikes!

This is a roundabout way of saying that Monahan has had his hands full and then some. He has had to protect his turf and he has had to be open to change. And he has done both.

Joe Dey, before becoming the first PGA Tour commissioner, had been the longtime executive director of the USGA. In 1968, when the PGA Tour was breaking away from the PGA of America, the fledgling Tour needed someone with unimpeachable credentials. Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus did not start the movement for the touring pros to break away from the PGA of America. Doug Ford and Bob Goalby were much more active in the effort. But Palmer and Nicklaus played a significant role in bringing Dey to the PGA Tour. Dey, first and foremost, was an ethicist. The starting point for the Tour’s credibility with the public and with the corporate sponsors was that we believed the scores the players said they shot. That was the necessary starting point. He served from the start of 1969 through 1974.

Dey’s successor, Deane Beman, had a 20-year run as commissioner. Beman was a former Tour player with four wins. He thought like a Tour player. He knew what players, his constituents, wanted: more playing opportunities for more money. And that’s what he worked toward.

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Beman’s successor, Tim Finchem, was a lawyer who had worked in the Carter White House as an economics advisor. He approached his job as the most sophisticated type of politician and negotiator, keeping his cards close to his starched shirt and always was several steps ahead of others.

Monahan became commissioner in January 2017. He came to the PGA Tour with a background in sales and marketing and administration, and he rose on those things.

So consider this progression of the commissioners, and excuse the brevity:

An ethicist. A player. A politician. A marketing man.

And then came the last two years.

Baseball has had 10 commissioners: Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Happy Chandler, Spike Eckert, Ford Frick, Bowie Kuhn, Peter Ueberroth, Bart Giamatti, Fay Vincent, Bud Selig and Rob Manfred. The first eight of them were, to different degrees, national figures because baseball was the national pastime and each honored the needs of their three main constituencies: the players, the owner and the fans. Selig was a former owner and his allegiance, in this reporter’s opinion, was overwhelmingly to the owners. Manfred, I would say, but to a lesser degree.

The role of the PGA Tour commissioner is different. The commissioner serves at the pleasure of the players. The PGA Tour, under its charter as a not-for-profit organization, exists to promote professional golf.

But something has changed over these past two complicated and difficult years. Monahan must serve the players, but he must lecture the players, on the sanctity of the rules, the dangers of Covid, the threat of a competing tours. He has had to find money and spend money to keep the players happy knowing that the most fans couldn’t be less interested and, if anything, are turned off by all these high-flying dollar-figure numbers.

Monahan has had to keep corporate sponsors interested in trying times. He has had be to an ethicist. He has had to think like a player. He has had to be a politician and a marketing man. He has had to be more like Landis and Ueberroth and Giamatti. Of course there have been bumps along the way. But he’s kept his hands on the handlebars. He’s been a commissioner.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com

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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — If ever a moment crystallized the PGA Tour’s recent struggles with transparency, it came last November.

It was then, just days before Thanksgiving, that the PGA Tour sent a memo to players announcing it was raising the overall prize money pool by $105 million for the 2022 season, citing $70 million in increased earnings and $30 million drawn from the mysterious “PGA Tour reserves.”

From Tour commissioner Jay Monahan’s perspective, the announcement was nothing shy of a slam-dunk. For the second time in two years, the PGA Tour had managed to increase overall purses during the course of a pandemic that had been financially ruinous to pro sports leagues.

Players had badgered the Tour for more money, and boosts to overall purse payments represented concerted efforts in rewriting the script. And if larger purses alone weren’t enough, the Tour created programs — the Comcast Business Tour Top 10 and Player Impact Program — designed to directly address financial concerns voiced by big-name players.

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But when the Tour announced the changes, the reaction was decidedly mixed.

Sure, it was great that with the snap of commissioner Monahan’s fingers, players stood to make an added $105 million in 2022. In two years, the Tour had increased purses by $165 million, bringing the overall number just shy of half a billion annually. But where on earth was all the money coming from? Wasn’t the Tour already maximizing its efforts to give players the whole of what they’d earned?

In decrying the Tour’s “obnoxious greed” in January, Phil Mickelson cut to the heart of the issue — accusing the Tour of increasing purses at its own discretion and withholding money from players in its reserves (the “slush fund,” as Phil later called it on Twitter).

“They would rather throw $25 million here and $40 million there than give back the roughly $20 billion in digital assets they control,” Mickelson said at the time. “Or give up access to the $50-plus million they make every year on their own media channel. There are many issues, but that is one of the biggest.”

The truth, according to Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, is far less exciting. At his annual Players Championship press conference, Monahan explained the vast majority of the jumps were due to the timing of the Tour’s media rights deals, which went to effect on January 1.

“When we went into our rights discussions, which again, ended at the end of 2019 into 2020, those rights start getting paid January 1 of this year,” Monahan said. “So when you go back to our board meeting in late 2019, we were talking about, ‘How do we allocate the additional resources to the membership?’ And as you’ve seen, every single person on the PGA Tour has grown, but if you look at the FedExCup, the Comcast Top 10, the Player Impact Program, Play 15, you look at our WGCs, our invitationals, the Players, we have invested money back in all of our championships.”

In fact, Monahan argued, the purse increases would not have been possible if not for the Tour’s efforts to expand the breadth of its schedule and its streaming product. The result was a new batch of television rights deals with NBC and CBS worth billions through the end of the decade, which gave the Tour extra funding to share with players.

“We made the decision that [the schedule] was something that we wanted to change, and that’s not so simple,” Monahan said. “We worked very closely with the PGA of America. The PGA of America made the decision to move the PGA Championship back to May. We moved the Players here to March, and that put us in a very strong position as it related to media rights.”

As for the Tour’s reserves, Monahan was less specific, indicating the Tour’s decision to withdraw an additional $30 million for funding purses was made “well in advance” of this year, and was driven by the Tour’s desires to “achieve certain benchmarks” — not necessarily the threat of a well-funded rival tour.

But, Monahan said, the reserves played a critical role in helping the Tour survive the financial brunt of the pandemic shutdown without slashing purses. For a billion-dollar operation like the Tour, Monahan said, the reserves amount to an insurance fund for the players.

“The PGA Tour reserves are $225 million,” he said. “They were at a high watermark — about $300 million — prior to Covid. We think that’s a reasonable range to keep our reserves in, in the event of any event like we’ve experienced the last couple years. You just don’t know.”

Ultimately, Monahan’s words reinforced one of his firmed talking points: that players are at the heart of every financial decision he makes. His surprisingly open-handed method of doing so, however, reinforced something else: it’s one thing to say you’ve “got nothing to hide,” but meaning it is another thing entirely.

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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — The words sounded the way they usually do coming out of Jay Monahan’s mouth: as if they’d been plucked from a Public Relations textbook.

They were delivered by the PGA Tour commissioner in careful, measured clauses and punctuated by long, attention-grabbing pauses. As is Monahan’s tradition, his responses contained the minimum amount of information needed to answer the questions, if they answered them at all.

But even if Monahan’s words sounded like they belonged at a shareholders’ meeting, they landed upon the golf world like a powerful right hook.

Monahan’s Players Championship state of the union press conference Tuesday morning was unlike anything we’ve heard from the commissioner in his half-decade atop golf’s largest professional tour. In the span of 45 minutes, the typically cautious commish delivered blow after blow to the Tour’s competitors, detractors and ill-wishers.

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The press conference began at TPC Sawgrass promptly at 11 a.m. ET. By 11:01, Monahan had landed his first shot.

“Before I make some additional comments on the Players Championship, I wanted to take a moment to address all of the news, discourse and conjecture lately about the world of professional golf,” Monahan said. “The PGA Tour is moving on. We have too much momentum and too much to accomplish to be consistently distracted by rumors of other golf leagues and their attempts to disrupt our players, our partners and most importantly our fans from enjoying the Tour.”

He looked up from the lectern and paused.

“We are and we always will be focused on legacy, not leverage,” he said, alluding to Phil Mickelson’s choice of words in his now-infamous interview with golf writer Alan Shipnuck.

Mickelson has stepped away from golf indefinitely in the fallout from the interview, and his future with the PGA Tour remains uncertain.

Monahan refused to say whether the Tour had suspended Mickelson for his comments, citing Tour policy not to share disciplinary matters publicly, but he did briefly address the affair.

“The ball is in his court,” Monahan said. “He has said that he’s stepping away and he wants time for reflection. That’s something that I and we are going to respect and honor. When he’s ready to come back to the PGA Tour, we’re going to have that conversation. That’s a conversation I look forward to.”

A conversation Monahan won’t entertain, though, is the possibility of a rival tour emerging. Monahan refuted Greg Norman’s claims that Monahan had “bullied” players into staying with the PGA Tour (“that’s not how I operate”) and refused to mention Norman or his proposed league by name.

On the topic of whether Norman’s LIV Golf Investments proposed a long-term threat to the Tour, Monahan spoke with supreme confidence.

“There isn’t [a long-term threat facing the Tour],” he said. “We control our own destiny … So long as we focus on the things that we control, which is what I’ve always tried to do and what we’ve always tried to do as a team, I think we’re going to win, we’re going to grow, and I’m not looking over my shoulder, I’m looking forward. I’m excited about what’s ahead of me and what’s ahead of this organization.”

For all his optimism, Monahan is smart enough to realize the role the Tour played in creating the Phil mess. If there is a long-term threat to the Tour’s dominance, it would seem to exist among the constituency.

The players have been emboldened by the rival tour developments, and have seized the opportunity to air their grievances against the Tour establishment. Shortly before Monahan spoke on Tuesday, Tour poster-child Rory McIlroy issued a rare public slight of the commissioner’s office.

“I think the one thing that the Tour in general could do a better job at is transparency, whether that be with — yeah, just with everything,” McIlroy, who heads up the Tour’s Player Advisory Council, said. “I think transparency and maybe it not being as closed a shop. I’ve always felt that a few of the bans or suspensions, I think that should all be announced. I think that should be more transparent. I’ve always said that.”

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Monahan didn’t blink.

“I don’t think you can ever be good enough on that front, and I take that on myself, and I think you’ll see us continue to be more transparent and answer any questions that we think are on the minds of our players,” he said. “We have nothing to hide, and we’re proud of what this organization represents, the values it conveys, the way that we run our business.”

Monahan’s remarks Tuesday — and the manner in which he delivered them — revealed a different side of the man: the tight-buttoned, tight-lipped suit had been replaced by the street-fighting hockey player from outside Boston. Perhaps most impressive, he’d done so without ever once raising his voice.

The commissioner’s press conference represented not only the PGA Tour’s first and most forceful rebuke of the developments of the last six months in golf but also a warning shot to anyone standing in Monahan’s way: If you’re coming for golf’s throne, you’d better be ready to fight for it.

The Southie accent is long gone, but the right hook still has some juice.

“I wake up every day assuming someone is trying to take my lunch,” Monahan said, expressing no emotion. “That’s the way I operate. That’s the way we operate as a team.”

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