A Jon Rahm departure from the PGA Tour to LIV Golf “would be more impactful mostly by dint of timing"Getty Images
The current divide in men's pro golf is “directly linked to the star players believing they were not looked after well enough,” considering they are “the needle movers who bring eyeballs to television and streaming and corporate sponsorship dollars to tournament purses,” according to Bob Harig of SI. Offseason events such as the Hero World Challenge -- where only 20 players compete and “everyone is guaranteed a six-figure payday”-- were not enough to quell recent complaints. Harig noted that for years, LIV player Phil Mickelson ”wondered why the Tour subsidized opposite field events, staged so many tournaments and didn’t direct more funds to fewer tournaments with strong fields and larger purses.” In other words, “cater to the marquee players.” But there is “plenty of money to be earned,” even if providing it via sponsors and local tournaments has “been a challenge.” Harig wrote one now has the star players “believing that their side was not accounted for properly.” And with changes made to accommodate them, the rank-and-file players now are "crying foul as well.” Meanwhile, the LIV Golf threat “remains strong" to the PGA Tour. Despite the framework agreement and the Dec. 31 deadline, LIV “seems poised to snatch players away from the PGA Tour for its 2024 season.” Harig wrote for there to be peace, there "needs to be a deal but it remains very unclear whether that will happen” (
SI, 12/3).
CONTINUING TOWARD THE CLIFF: GOLFWEEK’s Eamon Lynch wrote the coming months “will provide ample reminders” of the reality as the “process of reshaping professional golf stumbles toward an increasingly sloppy and contentious endgame.” For two years, golf has seen “skirmishes claimed as decisive victories.” The moves by Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka to leave the PGA Tour for LIV were “no more conclusive than the decisions of Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy to remain.” And a “jump to LIV” by Jon Rahm -- the subject of intense speculation -- “will be no different, whatever the banner-wavers and pearl-clutchers on either side say.” But Lynch wrote Rahm’s departure “would represent something significant, beyond being an example of what happens to a man of supposed character who remains in the mephitic orbit of people like Phil Mickelson and Sergio Garcia.” A Rahm departure “would be more impactful mostly by dint of timing, hastening a reckoning for the competing agendas that have all but paralyzed the PGA Tour’s Policy Board.” Lynch wrote in “every direction one looks, greed and entitlement are rampant” and that “risks engineering a model that is unsustainable, largely because the intent seems to be servicing the current generation of stars with only a cursory nod to what future generations might inherit" (GOLFWEEK, 12/3).
