PGA TOUR Players about to face a Reckoning

This week, the PGA TOUR will announce which players are eligible for its new equity program. This announcement could be followed by a wave of defections to LIV Golf.

Sean Zak of Golf.com does a great job of explaining the ins and outs of the equity program here. In short, the TOUR, with the help of investors Strategic Sports Group (SSG), will award varying amounts of equity to 193 members. Top players will receive more than lower-ranked ones, which could create jealousy among some players. However, unlike a one-time bonus, the value of this equity increases or decreases with the PGA TOUR's growth. This incentivizes players to promote the TOUR's success – essentially, they're being asked to invest in its future.

What’s different here, of course, is that this is an equity program and not just a one-time bonus. The value of the equity shares will increase — or decrease — based on the longevity and growth of the PGA TOUR. Players receiving a share are now incentivized to promote growth in the TOUR. Put another way, players are being asked to put their money where their collective mouths have been.

While the exact distribution for top players like Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, and Scottie Scheffler remains unknown, as do the allocations for lesser-known players and "legacy members" like Jack Nicklaus, one thing is clear: the TOUR's future now partially rests with its members, a move loyalists have long advocated for.

Unfortunately we have all learned exactly how personal financial growth has taken precedence for the majority of pro golfers. It has not seemed that the majority of players have cared for anything more than “spending more time with family” and “doing what’s right for their future.” Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that on paper. Why else does anyone in the world seek employment?

That’s what makes this shift toward “an invested common goal” so precarious. Aside from a handful of the most outspoken, do we actually know if players give a damn about the longevity and growth of the PGA TOUR? Is it possible to want that while simultaneously showing outward distrust in TOUR leadership? Simply put, yes. It is possible for two things to be true, as has become a favorite response on Golf Twitter.

What we are all about to see is not just what players’ loyalty is worth to the PGA TOUR, but what that loyalty is worth to the players themselves. This has always been a two-way street in terms of what both sides need to feel satiated. Any players who receive their notice from Commissioner Jay Monahan and choose to defect to LIV will make their true intentions crystal clear. The opposite is also true for those in the middle of the pack who choose to remain on the PGAT roster.

Players are being handed the keys to the castle, so to speak. We will all be watching to see what happens next.

Golf’s Roller Coaster Ride: Challenges, Changes, and the Pursuit of Fun

Hey, I’m new here. I’m Trevor, nice to meet you. I’m not self-absorbed enough to think you have seen some of my stuff before, but maybe you have! If so, that’s awesome, and if not, welcome to my first post here at Golf Unfiltered. As you will see by the following, I don’t take things too seriously. This game, which has given so much to so many, is just that…a game. Let’s have some fun with it. 

I thought I’d kick things off by taking a look at the current state of golf. I apologize in advance if this is an oversimplistic point of view, but I want everyone to look at the bright side of things. Yes, there are many issues with the current state of the game, but positives can be found if you really look. Sure, some of the things happening right now are not great and there are certainly many negatives. But walk with me a little as we try and find the silver lining of things. 

One issue that comes up repeatedly is the current state of the Official World Golf Rankings. Yeesh, things are a mess right now and, at times, contentious when it comes to the OWGR. The biggest problem I see is that players who have joined the LIV Tour no longer receive world-ranking points. This causes an issue for many players who have not qualified for golf’s major championships. There are also concerns about how these points are awarded and people will debate how these calculations are made. For the record, the Hero World Challenge probably shouldn’t be handing out ranking points. 

But here we are. Complicated formulas, shunned players, and some tournaments awarding dubious ranking points. Like I said earlier, there’s a chance it’s not all bad. Maybe, just maybe, we will see some changes. Sparked mainly by the LIV problem, could we see some serious changes to the OWGR? It would seem we are heading to an overhaul. We could see a complete re-do of the current system. Can we make it simpler? More fair? Find a way to coexist with LIV? Maybe! Time will tell.

Speaking of LIV, what do we do here? If you are like me, a PGA Tour mark, you inherently oppose the very idea of LIV. Shorter tournaments, team golf, guaranteed paydays, NO CUTS? Back in my day, you had to earn your living on the PGA Tour. 

Excuse me while I shake my fist at a cloud.

Anyway, the biggest issue with LIV in 2024 is that they are plucking many of the Tour’s best and most popular players. It is tough to see the PGA Tour lose players like Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson, and Jon Rham. For a lot of these guys, they are upfront: they went for the money. Others went for the idea that they could play less golf. Some will even tell you it’s because you can wear shorts. Whatever the reason, losing top-tier players AND weekly grinders undoubtedly hurts the depth of fields on the PGA Tour. 

We have seen the Tour respond by adding more prize money and event distinctions as a result of the limitless supply of cash that LIV has. Aside from that, there seems to be a deal to merge the two tours. Unfortunately, this still hasn’t left the theory stage. A deal was supposed to be done by the end of 2023, but as you may realize, it’s not 2023 anymore. 

The game appears to be heading in a very cloudy direction but can we find some sunshine? Maybe the PGA Tour had become stagnant? They hadn’t made many meaningful changes in recent years, but LIV has forced their hand. And maybe, ultimately, a merger would be good for the game. It would certainly help to see a lot of the LIV guys back on our TV every weekend. 

Wherever we end up with all of this, it’s clear the LIV isn't going away. These two tours will need to coexist for the time being. From a PGA Tour perspective, they will have to take a deep look at how they do things and hopefully, they improve for the better. We can only hope.

Speaking of improving for the better, the governing bodies in the game of golf have decided to roll back the golf ball. My initial thought here is that I want all the distance I can get. But on second thought, and after listening to people who understand this better than I do, it’s not going to be that bad. If you are an amateur of decent golfing ability, the impact on your game will be minimal. 

As I keep saying, let’s have some freaking fun. Instead of getting caught up in the sudden need to hit a seven iron instead of an eight, I urge you to remember that no one cares what club you are hitting and you shouldn’t either. The game is fun. Spending time with friends is fun. Gambling is fun. Hell, even just being outside for a few hours can be fun. Enjoy the game!

While we are on the topic of enjoying the game, I would never be in the position I am in without enjoying golf. I don’t know that I would even be interested in golf if wasn’t for Tiger Woods. He is the reason I picked up a club in the first place. He is the reason many people picked up a club. As people say, he is the needle. He still is. But there is noticeable wear on those tires.

Over the past several years, injuries have kicked off Tiger’s swan song from professional golf. Rather than retiring and putting us all out of our misery with a quick death blow, the last few years have been a slow bleed of a will he or won’t he scenario. Will he come back? Will he shut it down? Will he win again? Will he walk normally again? Round and round we go on the roller coaster.

Sure he will play a few times a year, but the years of Tiger being the main draw for the PGA Tour are coming to an end. We have been saying for FIFTEEN years now, “what will we do without Tiger” and still don’t have a good answer. He remains one of the most popular athletes of all time. The Tour will lose him for good at some point, but there hasn’t been a player that can transcend golf come along since his mid-nineties debut. There probably never will be another. So what does the Tour do? How does it attract young fans? How does it get people to tune in weekly? That all remains to be seen, but it’s not all bad!

Even with the emergence of LIV, we still get treated to great golf every week. There are so many good young players that will be a fixture for years to come. Social media has introduced many to the game in a variety of ways. Maybe with Tiger fading away, golf courses and equipment manufacturers will be forced to confront the idea that profit is not the most important thing. Making golf accessible and affordable will be key in the years to come. Without a superstar like Tiger Woods, I’m willing to bet that we see some changes that make the game more available to more players. 

Again, I said from the very beginning that this is probably an oversimplified look at the problems in golf today. There are nuances and subtleties to every one of these issues. And there are certainly many more issues we could delve into. But my point remains the same: enjoy the game. Remember why you fell in love with golf in the first place. Remember that this is just a game. Remember that the biggest goal in your golfing life should be to have fun. Try and find the positive in everything you do. 

Okay, you probably want to punch me for being so glass-half-full. I will just say, I am looking forward to contributing here at Golf Unfiltered. Throw me a follow on Twitter or Instagram. You haven’t lived until we watch a golf tournament together. So many bad jokes and terrible takes, I am sure we will all have some fun. 

The Absurdity of Men's Professional Golf

While this week was milder in comparison to the drama from the previous week, men’s professional golf remains in a state of chaos. Jon Rahm’s defection to LIV Golf was but another turning point in the future of the PGA TOUR and reignited the frustrations of whiny pro golfers everywhere.

When news broke that a cadre of PGA TOUR players (deemed the “mules” by golf media) sent a memo via legal representation to the PGA TOUR Policy Board, the jokes almost wrote themselves. The list of players included the likes of James Hahn, Grayson Murray, Lanto Griffin, and other barely recognizable names who you may have heard of only because of their propensity to complain. These players demanded more transparency in any ongoing negotiations by the TOUR with the Public Investment Fund (PIF), to which they felt entitled due to their membership status.

As much as I laugh at those names, they aren’t wrong.

These past fews months have felt like we all snuck into a corporation and managed to eavesdrop on water cooler conversations among dissatisfied employees. What we heard at TOUR player press conferences suddenly conflicted with decisions by that player later on, as was the case with Rahm. Clearly a star in every sense of the word, Rahm was made to look like a disgruntled staffer who accepted a job offer from a competitor just to “stick it to the man.” His pledges of fealty to Jay Monahan’s PGA TOUR up and vanished.

It’s difficult to not sit back and wonder who these players truly are despite the words they say. Is anything real anymore? Can anyone be believed?

The money involved in this whirlwind of activity is perhaps the most absurd. Amounts rumored to be in the high hundreds of millions of dollars are thrown around with ease, forcing fans of the sport to try and wrap our minds around their meaning. “If someone offered you $500 million to leave your job…” suddenly became a frequent talking point by supporters of LIV, knowing full well that none of us will ever be faced with that decision. These numbers are make-believe, figments of imagination and exaggeration regular folks toss around to make a point.

This is also true for the imaginary world in which Rahm now finds himself. Only in fiction could a world exist where his “star power” is worth anywhere close to the rumored $300-$600 million he’s to receive for joining LIV. Rahm is not this transcendent sports icon recognizable to the world. He knows this to be true, of course, which may have made LIV’s offer even more enticing. He took the money and ran before anyone else would catch on to the charade.

Perhaps the only aspect of men’s pro golf that is more absurd than the rest is our reaction to this mess. We have all naturally taken an “us versus them” stance on any new piece of information, whether it be players joining LIV, players demanding more transparency, or who is rumored to be running either TOUR. We all feel more knowledgable than the next person, ready to debate and poke holes in the opinions of others. To be a fan of pro golf right now is to agree to choosing sides and defending your choice no matter the cost.

I have not been shy to express my biases to any of this news, but what does it matter? It’s clear that these players have fans as an afterthought, making choices only for themselves and their families. This has always been the case and fans are just now catching on. This presents another layer of absurdity in that we should have realized this long ago.

Is it Fun to Be a Golf Fan Right Now?

I had an interesting exchange with a Twitter follower this morning.

In response to a tweet I sent comparing LIV Golf, the Saudi-backed upstart professional golf tour, to that of an alternate dystopian reality where Tiger Woods did not exist and was therefore not entertaining, this user suggested that if I “love the sport [he couldn’t] see how [I] could objectively say it wasn’t entertaining.”

Hilarity ensued — as is the typical cadence on social media — where I pointed out his subjectivity on my objectivity was ironic… but the exchange made me think:

For the casual golf fan, is any of this LIV Tour vs PGA Tour stuff of any interest whatsoever? Is it actually fun to be a golf fan right now?

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Later this afternoon I am playing in a golf outing to celebrate the life of a family friend who tragically died last year in a freak medical emergency. Most of my wife’s family is playing in a field that, by last count, nears 140 players on a golf course our late friend/family member loved. My wife, who has her own medical struggles but still loves golf, is also playing today. Many others haven’t played golf once this year… or last year.

They are simply choosing to pay an entrance fee, scrounge up a few sets of golf clubs, and play awful golf for upwards of five hours on a day that calls for rain. All because they cared so much for our the event’s late honoree.

All of my family and friends know I run this website, which means that I will undoubtedly be asked my opinion about LIV Golf at some point. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if the topic never comes up, either.

In fact, in the days leading up to today’s outing, many of the aforementioned family and I prepared at Cog Hill’s driving range. While they toiled over ways to get a 7-iron airborne, question why they couldn’t use tees in the fairway and laugh at each other’s banana-slice drives, the topic of LIV or the PGA Tour never came up. Not once.

It was almost as if… shockingly… there was an aspect of golf that exists outside the headlines and social media. Weird!

It was in that moment I realized that I’m simply too wrapped up in my own head about all of this professional golf nonsense that I was completely missing the game of golf itself. In a way, it was passing by right before my eyes while I spent more time thinking of a lame joke to tweet than acknowledging something truly special:

This afternoon will mark the first time, in my 18-year relationship with my wife, that all of us will be on the same golf course at the same time.

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Is it fun to be a golf fan right now? The question is much simpler than any answer I can settle on.

As someone who writes and talks about all aspects of golf on a daily basis, I unabashedly believe that one aspect of the game — the professional side — is no fun at all. Professional sports are often sought out to distract us from the drama and nonsense in real life, yet one could argue that American society is so bad right now that divisiveness and arguments are unavoidable, even in pro golf. LIV Golf picked the perfect time to make its debut, because we have never been more primed to take sides and combat those who disagree with us.

On the other hand, the sport itself — the game that you and I can go play right now — is stronger than ever before. The initial COVID surge of new players is dwindling, but it also allowed more new players to catch the golf bug (pun intended). Metrics are normalizing as any normal bell curve does, but the game of golf is better off for it.

LIV Golf and the PGA Tour, with all of their faults and marketing campaigns, are not for the fans. We are secondary consumers of products that are going to happen anyway. In the case of the PGA Tour, fans are needed to attractive sponsorship dollars to increase the scale of the Tour’s product, but we are not the primary customer. The sponsors are.

LIV Golf? They are only appealing to the players themselves and nobody else. It’s a country club men’s league that allows us to watch (or not). That’s it.

But despite all of that nonsense, a game remains unfettered and willing to accept more fans and participants. We just have to open our eyes and realize it.

Will the PGA Tour suffer due to the LIV Golf Invitational Series?

The world of golf is seemingly at war. The LIV Golf Invitational Series has moved away from being the stuff of rumor and speculation to being very real, and it is something that will see some of the top names in golf play in one of the most controversial new tournaments created in decades. So, will the PGA Tour suffer? What will be the likely consequences?

The gambling industry’s continued growth helps to ensure that top sports continue to thrive. For instance, there are still more people looking for NFL betting odds, NBA form and golf betting markets than there have been before in the US, as more and more states have introduced sportsbook gambling. This could mean more revenue going into the sports and into local economies.

So, the PGA is not likely to find their tour short of spectators or short of money any time soon, but they have still gone to war with the Saudi-backed tournament.

What is the LIV Golf Invitational?

Recent episodes of the Golf Unfiltered podcast have focused more on answering some of the questions golf fans have after seeing more headlines about the LIV tournament.

LIV Golf is a new organization that is fronted by Greg Norman, former world number one golfer. The golfer is CEO of LIV Golf Investments, a company set up to build new sports events and Asian tour events in the world of golf.

The source of the funds is Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which is also where the money came from to fund the recent takeover of Newcastle football club.

They are putting billions of dollars into recruiting some of the best talent in the sport, and aim to create a calendar of 14 events in the next few years. This could be seen as being in direct competition to the PGA Tour.

The controversy attached to the series comes from the source of these funds, which is linked to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has been accused of being involved in the killing of a journalist who was in opposition to the regime.

Current players shifting to the sport

Bryson DeChambeau recently became one of the biggest names to move over to the sport, and is the most discussed player to move over and make a controversial decision to join the tour.

One of the reasons this is so controversial is that it is a divisive move. The PGA Tour has made its stance perfectly clear, dishing out suspensions to everyone who signs up to play at the tournament.

This means that a player at the top of his game, who won the Open back in 2020, is moving to become the poster boy of the Saudi-backed tournament rather than staying loyal to the PGA Tour.

Losing some of the biggest names to play in the sport will, of course, be a blow to the PGA Tour, but they have made their stance perfectly clear to the players.

Not everyone is in agreement with the decision to ban the players. Ian Poulter, one of the British golf stars to sign up to be involved, lamented the decision:

“I didn’t resign my membership because I don’t feel I have done anything wrong. I have played all over the world for 25 years. This is no different, I am committed to playing around the world like I have done for so many years so it is a shame if they view this as different.”

The money on offer for the players is undeniably one of the biggest attractions.

The series will have seven tournaments in the year, some in the US, but also one in Saudi Arabia and one in Thailand. All of them have a $25m purse to be split among the players who take part. Many players also have certain deals to guarantee them income during the time they are involved.

The $25m prize fund means that they will earn more than they would at any PGA Tour event.

The tournament is a little different, too, and it remains to be seen whether this might change the way that people see the sport. The players will tee off together at the same time, but on different holes, which is one of the ways the event is designed to be more exciting, and it also involves a team competition with captains.

It remains to be seen whether the event will have a huge impact on the PGA Tour, but it is clear that many of the players will have to choose where their allegiance is.