This will be a bitter pill to swallow for the two establishment champions – Plus: Who were the winners and losers of golf’s big merger?
PGA Tour and LIV announce shock merger to end bitter split
“Now the PGA and Monahan appear to have become just more paid Saudi shills, taking billions of dollars to cleanse the Saudi reputation so that Americans and the world will forget how the Kingdom spent their billions of dollars before 9/11 to fund terrorism, spread their vitriolic hatred, and finance al Qaeda and the murder of our loved ones.”
Rory McIlroy has been shafted by PGA Tour – and forced into bed with LIV Golf
Lee Westwood, Sergio García, Ian Poulter and Henrik Stenson had all resigned their memberships from DP World Tour and become ineligible for this year’s Ryder Cup, which will take place from 29 September to 1 October. Those players could now return, with the new enterprise pledging to establish a “fair and objective process” for players to re-apply for membership after the end of this season. The precise timescale is currently unclear but the prospect of Europe and the USA fielding their very best players has just grown enormously. Keith Pelley, the chief executive of the DP World Tour, had first brought the PIF into the professional game with the inauguration of the Saudi International in 2019 and is understood to have played a key part in the peace talks.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan called a hypocrite in ‘heated’ players meeting after surprise LIV Golf merger
“If you just look at just the environment that we’re in, the PIF was controlling LIV, and we were competing against LIV,” Monahan said, via CBS Sports’ Adam Silverstein. “I felt very good about the changes we’ve made and the position that we were in, but ultimately, to take the competitor off the board — to have them exist as a partner, not an owner — and for us to be able to control the direction going forward put us in a position as the PGA Tour to do and serve our members, and at the same time, again, get to a productive position for the game at large.”
PGA Tour goes full hypocrite in its merger with LIV Golf
Many PGA players took principled and honest positions about not wanting to do business with the Saudis, about the importance of sticking with the PGA Tour, about the need to turn down massive sums of money for the good of sport and society. They, apparently, weren’t even a part of the merger discussion, with Collin Morikawa tweeting Tuesday morning, “I love finding out morning news on Twitter.”
OLIVER HOLT: A penny for the thoughts of those who resisted the riches after this astonishing U-turn
If they can look their members in the eye after this astonishing volte-face, then they have a stern constitution indeed. Monahan’s u-turn is particularly spectacular. It was not long ago that he was damning the defectors to LIV Golf in emotive terms, invoking Saudi involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks and saying that ‘as it relates to the families of 9/11, I have two families that are close to me that lost loved ones, so my heart goes out to them’.
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