The PGA Tour fell asleep. It now resembles the Titanic heading for an iceberg. It’s called the LIV

COMMENTARY – PGA Commissioner Tou Jay Monahan is still successfully patting himself on the back for being the one who runs the biggest, best and most watched corporate golf competition in the world. This despite the fact that his powerful new competitor, LIV Golf, is set to burst onto the scene in 2022. Should Monahan start worrying about sinking his ship?

From the start, it was likely that the clash between a giant called the PGA Tour and a start-up called LIV Golf, would mean a long battle between the two corporations. On one side stands a strong and mature enterprise with years of tradition, many players and millions of fans around the world.

LIV Golf started from scratch in this respect a few months ago, with only one (very significant) difference. From the beginning, the investment has been taken care of by public fund resources from Saudi Arabia, which has a literally brutal budget. LIV Golf is to be built on an initial investment of $3 billion.

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, however, was not about to let the competition near his body from the start. From the start, he ignored all offers of interviews to find some common ground with LIV management. He was firm and uncompromising. Even many PGA fans have observed that his tactic is to not allow the LIV to take up residence on the planet in any way at all.

So vigorously, in fact, that he was even able to suspend his own players who appeared in an LIV tournament in the future. He uncompromisingly threw overboard some of his own friends and people who had spent years helping the business called the PGA flourish. He clearly saw the competition as his arch enemy.

The PGA quickly lost not only legends like Phil Mickelson, but also a world ace like Dustin Johnson, who is considered by golf experts to be perhaps the best player on the planet, although the world ranking, which does not include results from LIV tournaments, does not reflect this.

But the question is whether this was not a fundamental mistake by the PGA, when for spite (or perhaps for obvious reasons, depending on your point of view) it was able to exclude and give up a large part of the world’s players from its starting field.

Monahan has said several times that the LIV is here to liquidate the PGA, with fat capital to help them do it. However, LIV Golf, led by its CEO Greg Norman, has again said that LIV certainly has no plans to checkmate the PGA from the game, and that their enterprise is focused on operating globally. The American continent, while large and interesting to them, is far from their only market. He himself has sought common ground with Monahan many times, but without success.

A NATURAL TURN OF EVENTS

A few more months passed and LIV Golf recently capped off its inaugural season in Miami with a team tournament. This is the kind of aspect that the entire enterprise is built on and should be profitable in the future. Individual team owners could come into play as early as next season, with LIV to operate on a stable basis ala Formula 1 in the future.

So where are the PGA and LIV at the moment? Clearly in the courtroom, but that is likely to be a very long process. More important for the future of world professional golf will be what direction the PGA takes. There is already loud talk of more big names from the PGA joining the LIV from next season.

Soon sponsors may also move away from the traditional event, because although Monahan claimed somewhere in the spring that the PGA has the best players in the world in its ranks, we can already say without exaggeration that this is not true. The PGA has been trying to build its business around Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy in recent months, while other aces have been running away from it.

The PGA, led by Monahan, points to the very poor viewership of the competition, with unofficial sources saying that just over one million viewers watched the peak of the LIV season, several times less than the peak of the PGA season.

However, these figures are unsubstantiated as the LIV does not yet have any official contract with a broadcaster. However, the word “yet” is crucial in this regard, as LIV representatives say this could change in the next few weeks.

And if viewers get the chance to watch Dustin Johnson and Cameron Smith, for example, as captains of their respective teams, it will hardly leave a golf fan completely cold. By bringing LIV to television, its owners estimate a meteoric rise in viewership, which will logically attract a number of sponsors as well.

With the LIV staging 14 tournaments in 2023, the competition will not be perceived on a weekly basis like the PGA, which is played virtually all the time, week after week. Many of the tournaments don’t even have a very attractive spectator line-up, as it’s simply not possible to play from Thursday to Sunday every week. Plus, many of them don’t even play the PGA anymore.

In that regard, the LIV will offer all the tournaments with the most loaded lineups it can put together. Even so, Monahan and Co. still claim that their golf enterprise is the strongest in the world. You could kind of say they’re pretending that nothing can happen to them.

But it has! It happened a few months back when the first players not only left the PGA completely involuntarily, but for example the aforementioned Johnson voluntarily gave up his PGA card. And he was far from alone.

To say that the LIV is gradually taking the reins would be presumptuous and yet, at this point, untrue. But to claim that the LIV will be seen as just some showpiece that has no chance of catching on (as Monahan literally claims) is too much of a risk for the PGA. Yet the American enterprise still pretends that it sees no danger in its competitor.

Now it’s a bit like a scene from the legendary Titanic. While the water is already slowly flowing into the hold, up above they are dancing over immortality, without anyone in the PGA Tour management admitting that their attitude in recent months may actually lead to a big problem. And that common ground will ultimately be the only way to save the seemingly unsinkable ship while there is still time.

Source: PGA Tour, LIV Golf