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When Jay Monahan met with the media forward of this week’s Gamers Championship, the flagship event for the PGA Tour for which Monahan is the commissioner, two issues grew to become obvious.
First, with lots of the LIV golfers on the earth capable of play within the 4 main championships, the Gamers Championship may be the event that’s impacted probably the most by the absence of the LIV Tour gamers like Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka. The narrative that the Gamers is the fifth main isn’t very sturdy when the majors are literally letting the LIV Golf and the PGA Tour gamers play collectively, however the Gamers Championship isn’t permitting that.
The second factor that’s crystal clear is that the PGA Tour remains to be in bother two years into the battle with the Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Tour. Monahan answered loads of questions, however didn’t, in actuality, give many solutions.
Monahan mentioned that the negotiations with the Saudi Arabian Public Funding Fund over a possible funding deal are nonetheless ongoing, however his unwillingness to supply particulars in regards to the negotiations or what a possible deal will appear like are hardly the issues that disgruntled and annoyed golf followers need to hear.
What followers need is a deal. They need the discuss of negotiations and participant defections and cash and cash and more cash to go away. Monahan mainly informed these followers that the battle will proceed and there’s no deadline for a deal. And there’s actually no assure that PGA Tour gamers will ignore overtures from LIV within the coming months.
Monahan talked in regards to the followers, however when push got here to shove, he talked extra about what’s greatest for the members of the PGA Tour. The followers have been rising with a extra unified voice of frustration and are displaying that frustration by a drop in tv scores for PGA Tour occasions. Solely the American Categorical with its newbie winner Nick Dunlap has seen a scores improve amongst tour occasions this yr. Followers nonetheless don’t appear to be a precedence.
Viktor Hovland focuses on the tenth gap through the first spherical of The Gamers Championship Thursday, March 14, 2024, at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Seaside, Fla.
Will followers keep or revolt?
The pondering might be that the followers are the followers and they’ll proceed to be followers, and that they received’t abandon the sport they love over two years of cash grabs and insults. That may be harmful pondering because the Tour continues negotiations with LIV, particularly provided that the PIF appears to have better leverage than the PGA Tour due to cash.
That was apparent in December when the PGA Tour’s Dec. 31 deadline for a take care of PIF grew nearer and nearer. The Tour did make a $3 billion take care of funding group Strategic Sports activities Group, however LIV poached Rahm from the PGA Tour with a deal of greater than half a billion {dollars}, displaying that its cash benefit maybe overruled the PGA Tour’s arguments of historical past and custom or its SSG deal.
Members of the newly established 13-member board of administrators of the brand new PGA Tour Enterprises want to know that each week that goes by with out a deal is one other alternative for followers to change into a bit extra fed up with the fixed noise and bickering between the 2 rival excursions.
Followers truthfully don’t care about participant fairness within the new construction of the PGA Tour. I’m unsure followers actually care whether or not the highest 10 gamers on the earth all play collectively each week, simply that they’re all united on a single tour and have an opportunity to play collectively extra typically.
If this feels like a condemnation of what the Tour is doing, that’s solely partly true. The LIV gamers elevated assured cash to their biggest aim within the sport. They took the cash figuring out there can be no world rating factors and there can be no straightforward path again to both the PGA Tour or the DP World Tour.
And so they now play in a specific amount of obscurity, as a result of the tv scores for that tour are worse than the worst PGA Tour occasion. Even including Rahm, one of many nice gamers within the sport in the intervening time, hasn’t modified the tv story for LIV. As Scottie Scheffler mentioned this week, the splintering {of professional} golf got here from the LIV gamers leaving, not the PGA Tour gamers staying.
So followers might stroll away from Monahan’s press convention Tuesday with little hope that issues are going to alter within the coming weeks. And the prospect of federal intervention that would delay any remaining deal by a yr or extra must be miserable for all events concerned.
In the long run, it isn’t guarantees of an accelerated negotiation or $3.6 million first-prize checks or participant fairness followers need. Followers need a deal and for the rancor to go away. With no deal, the followers would possibly go away.
Larry Bohannan is the golf author for The Desert Solar. You may contact him at (760) 778-4633 or at larry.bohannan@desertsun.com. Observe him on Fb or on Twitter at @larry_bohannan. Help native journalism. Subscribe to The Desert Solar.
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