“When I tune into a Tampa Bay Buccaneers game, I expect to see Tom Brady throw a football. When I tune into a Formula 1 race, I expect to see Lewis Hamilton in a car,” said Rory McIlroy, announcing he and 20 top PGA Tour professionals were committing to play against each other in 20 tournaments next season, each of which outside the four Major tournaments will have a prize fund of at least $20 million.
It is the latest salvo in the battle for the top players being waged with LIV Golf and it is a powerful punch.
The Tour already has the upper hand in terms of prestige and legacy and part of yesterday’s announcement was also the guaranteed income for all fully exempt members of the PGA Tour would be guaranteed a minimum income of $500,000.
At the top end, and the (relative) lower reaches this is a statement that the PGA Tour and its partners in the DOP World Tour will not lie down before the cash mountain being enabled by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund and its alliance with a number of Donald Trump owned courses.
Like any good series of combination punches, it is the follow-up that perhaps matters most and with this in mind, Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan also said that those who had defected to the LIV Golf Series would not be permitted to rejoin the Tour.
“They’ve joined the LIV Golf Series and they’ve made that commitment,” he said. For most of them, they’ve made multi-year commitments.”
“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.”
That alone will give pause for thought to the five ‘top’ players who are rumoured to be ready to announce their signing up to LIV Golf after the conclusion of this weekend’s PGA Tour Championship at Eastlake.
There will be a Player Impact Programme for the Top 20 players with a new measurement of the awareness of players among casual and core fans.
That will be interesting to see how it is worked through.
Golf has never been more in the public eye, if not all for the right reasons of sporting excellence but the sponsor boards at the media conferences held to announce yesterday’s changes to the make-up of the tour, featuring, FedEx, Coca Cola and Accenture, as opposed to the LIV Golf Tou’s failure yet to secure TV broadcast deals, suggests that the PGA may yet emerge stronger from the disruption.
