LIV and Let Die by Alan Shipnuck

Author:Alan Shipnuck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2023-10-17T00:00:00+00:00

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During the week of LIV Portland, the PGA and European Tours strengthened their alliance by announcing a thirteen-year “operational joint venture partnership.” The PGA Tour took another 25 percent of European Tour productions but this time didn’t put any cash into the deal. Instead, the Tour committed to underwrite purses in Europe for the next five years, with guaranteed annual increases. After that, the European Tour has an option to extend the relationship for eight more years. As part of the deal, the top ten finishers on Europe’s season-long points tally, the Race to Dubai, would gain PGA Tour membership for the following season. More money and more access was a win for the players on the European Tour, but the tour had doomed itself to servitude, as its ten best players every year were now sure to bolt to the New World, with its much bigger purses. Under the guise of partnership, Jay Monahan had bought himself an effective delivery system for fresh talent at a bargain price. That was the new Darwinian reality of professional golf, in which the top tours were now competing for the scarcest of resources: star golfers.

Paul McGinley, a European Tour board member when the deal was consummated, pushes back on the notion that the tour sold its soul. “People say we’ve gotten fucked by the PGA Tour, but they don’t understand the situation,” he says. “The European Tour has always been the little guy. Our best players have always gone to America, because the money was two to three times better. Always! You’d have to go back to Monty”—Colin Montgomerie in the 1990s—“the last time our best player stayed home. More recently the money had become four to five times bigger, so how were we ever going to hold on to our players? Then the Saudis came in. What does that mean for the little guy? We had to fight for our survival. You can say we’ve been turned into a feeder tour [for the PGA Tour] if you want, but the fact is, the Saudis gave us just enough leverage to get the financial security we needed. All told, the PGA Tour is going to be into us for well over three hundred million dollars. The only way they get their money back is through European Tour productions, and for that to be profitable we need to have healthy tournaments, so the PGA Tour can’t let us fail. So it’s a very clever deal that gives us thirteen years of stability with no risk. We had to pick sides, and we chose security.”

In the LIV Golf era, professional golf had become brutally tribal. With that as the backdrop, the game’s most enigmatic icon was finally ready to pick sides, too.

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