fredvarcoe.com

By Fred Varcoe


How can golf save itself? The advent of LIV has divided the sport and the sport needs to be undivided. The fact that it has been allowed to remain in a state of chaos is a disgrace and nearly all the participants are guilty to some degree. No surprise there. Most sports organizations are run by self-serving, blinkered idiots. They can’t see the bigger picture and don’t want to give up their slice of power. As a result, they don’t have the answers. Luckily, I do.


Indentured independent contractors
Unlike football, golf doesn’t have a powerful, world governing body like FIFA. It has the R&A in Europe and the USGA in the United States and they generally govern the game of golf and the rules of golf, as well as events like the four majors. There are many tours around the world, including the DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour), the Australasian Tour, the Champions Tour, the Sunshine Tour, the Japan Tour, the Asian Tour, the Korean Tour and, of course, the PGA Tour, which also controls the Korn Ferry Tour and PGA Tour Americas, both of which are feeder tours for the PGA Tour.

And then along comes LIV, throwing cash around to tempt players to abandon their commitments to the PGA Tour and play on an abbreviated but highly lucrative new tour of three-day tournaments with a closed field.

The PGA Tour cries foul, saying these players are breaching their contracts and have no right to jump ship, even though the PGA Tour calls these players “independent contractors.” The contracts state that these “independent contractors” can’t play anywhere else without permission from the PGA Tour. But restriction of trade is illegal. In the United States, “restraint of trade covers a broad range of activities, including:
– Creating a monopoly;
– Coercing someone to stop doing business;
– Using non-compete clauses or other contract provisions to prevent someone from conducting business;
– Negatively affecting someone’s ability to conduct business freely.”


The PGA Tour wanted to dominate professional golf and was very angry when it found out it couldn’t. On the surface, LIV’s intervention was a vulgar attack on the PGA Tour. But LIV didn’t want to operate in a vacuum and approached the PGA Tour to come to an agreement so that everyone could play golf happily. The PGA Tour refused to talk, and this was a stupid, irrational and self-defeating misstep. LIV didn’t want to destroy the PGA Tour; it wanted to complement it.

But like a jilted husband, the PGA Tour and its lackeys in Europe lashed out, invoking fines and bans for the rebel players, and even penalizing college players.

Talk about a resolution
Clearly, it needs to be resolved. Of course, some people might not want it to be resolved. Tens of players have earned PGA Tour cards because some of the world’s best golfers are playing on the LIV tour. A number have become winners for the same reason. Would Scottie Scheffler be so dominant if Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka and Bryson De Chambeau were still playing on the PGA Tour? I think not. LIV has created opportunities for many journeyman players on the Korn Ferry and PGA tours, but that’s actually a good thing. People can see just how good a golfer ranked #150 or #200 can be. The elitism of the PGA Tour has damaged the game of golf. OK, LIV is a closed shop, but it has livened up the sport and given it new ideas, ideas that the PGA Tour has been happy to steal.

Lovers of golf do not want to see division and professional golf should provide a stable living for all its practitioners, not just the top 100. The Players Impact Program is an insult to golfers lower down the order. The idea that players who did not jump to LIV should get a bonus is absurd. Everyone on the PGA Tour has already benefited professionally and financially by the absence of some of the world’s best golfers.

So, we need a settlement. That settlement should make professional golfers true “independent contractors” so that they can play anywhere they want (subject to some eligibility rules). The irony is it’s so easy. By banning LIV golfers from PGA Tour events, it was the PGA Tour that suffered.

The further irony is that the LIV golfers did not want to leave their respective tours and in truth there was no reason why they should have. The top golfers always want to play in the top PGA Tour events, as well as the majors and the Ryder Cup. If the PGA Tour had said, “OK, let’s see how we can make this work,” things would have worked out fine.

Having criticized the PGA Tour, LIV also can’t escape criticism. Its ambush of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour and even college golf was crude and largely unnecessary. Better timing could have allowed the players to voluntarily hand in their PGA Tour cards.

No harm done
The truth is LIV was never going to do much damage to the PGA Tour. The PGA Tour basically damaged itself. The PGA Tour said players couldn’t play in tournaments that clash with PGA Tour events without permission. This doesn’t make sense. For a start, most of the top golfers play less than half the events in a year and some PGA Tour tournaments clash with (drum roll) … other PGA Tour tournaments. If the PGA Tour can schedule tournaments against itself, why can’t LIV (and let’s not forget tournaments in other parts of the world, especially the DP World Tour, which is played on far more interesting courses than the PGA Tour)?

Here’s an interesting concept for the PGA Tour: make your golfers true independent contractors and eliminate any restrictions about playing events that clash with PGA Tour events. This, I believe, is what golf fans would like to see.

Freedom is only going to benefit golf. I’m not saying that the PGA Tour shouldn’t make rules or even require a minimum number of tournaments, but it can rationalize its current system. Tennis did that by grading its tournaments and awarding points accordingly. The world tours can come up with a universal grading system (which it kind of has already for world ranking points) and apply it to their tours. (My system is: The points value of a tournament is determined by the world ranking of the top 10 players in that tournament.) The players can then decide their own schedules. I’m pretty sure the PGA Tour will still win out. Three of the majors are still in the U.S., plus the Players Championship. (I would like to see a World Major added to the international golf schedule, classifying it as a major and moving it to different parts of the world every year). It will be in LIV’s interests to make a schedule based around the top events in the PGA Tour schedule, partly to ensure that the top players will play and also to avoid antagonizing the PGA Tour.

Cruel and unusual punishment?
That’s all good, but we still have to deal with LIV, whose ambush of the PGA Tour was underhand. The elephant in the room is punishment. The PGA Tour and the DP World Tour went nuts, banning players outright and imposing ludicrously high fines (many of which LIV has paid). Let’s remember, the PGA Tour wants the top players back, so imposing fines of $100,000 a week is just stupid. If you want the players back, you have to find a reasonable way to do it. So, step 1: fine the players according to their status in the game, which can be determined by how much they’ve taken home in prize money on the relevant tours during their career.

Phil Mickelson will be at the top end of that scale, having won nearly $97 million. Fine him 1 percent of that total. Alternatively, you could come up with a system based on how many tournaments he’s competed in or won, but there’s no reason to make it complicated. A $970,000 fine for Phil makes sense to me.

The second part of re-integration is more difficult: ranking. Phil, a guy who won the PGA Championship four years’ ago, is currently No. 1,159 in the world. My feeling is that the LIV players have to start at a lower level. They can’t just jump back to their previous status. Where applicable, I would allow the top LIV players back into tournaments on sponsor exemptions because then the PGA Tour gets what it wants: the top players. Those lower down the totem pole will have to earn their places back. If they were on the DP World Tour or the Asian Tour, then those tours can decide how to allow them back. Many players have benefited – professionally and financially – from the absence of LIV players from the various tours, so it’s up to those LIV players to fight their way past this new batch of players on merit and earn their place back at the top table. A one-time massive Q school perhaps.

Team talk
If it sounds like I’m talking about the end of LIV, then I’m not. I like LIV. I like the 54-hole, shotgun start format and I think the PGA Tour should hold similar events. But I don’t see LIV as financially sustainable in its current format. One of my earlier ideas to change LIV was to make it a four-day event with the team event based on the fourth day of play. All four days would go to deciding the individual winner but the teams for the fourth day would be decided by the results of the first three days. So, Team 1 would consist of the players who finished first, 13th, 25th and 37th. Team 2 would consist of the players who finished second, 14th, 26th and 38th, and so on.

That works fine and would be exciting except that LIV’s financial goals include making the teams into money-making franchises. Having different players every week wouldn’t fit that model. But the current model – four players to a team – is too restrictive and if a player’s injured, the team’s down to three or using a sub. My idea is that each team consists of a squad of eight to 10 players. Now, remember, this will work out if the players really are “independent contractors,” so that players can switch between tours during the season. Sure, LIV can tie a few down with appearance fees to make sure the teams don’t consist of college players, but my vision is to have eight to 10 top players in a squad but still only have four players representing a team in any given week (although if there’s no clash with other events, having all eight or 10 players play over four days would be really cool).

And that system takes my next idea a step further: the LIV Tour should be a TEAM EVENT ONLY. Fans love team events and LIV has clearly been trying to capitalize on that, but not very successfully. The team element is always secondary to the individual competition. Put it as the focus of LIV and you have a dynamic, fan-friendly event (hopefully with better names than Smash or the Cleeks). Then, the franchise system will work. Fans would love it, broadcasters would love it, sponsors would love it, and money-grubbing agents and businessmen would love it.

The PGA Tour has already agreed, provisionally, to work with LIV and some say it needs LIV’s proposed $1.5 billion dollar donation. In short, professional golf needs to look at itself in the mirror; if it was starting from scratch, how would it be organized? Probably a lot better than it’s being organized at present.

By Fred Varcoe

Senior Golf Digest writer Joel Beall penned a column the other day trying to put the LIV Golf Series into perspective and he did a pretty good job of it. Here’s some excerpts and comments.
(You can read the full article here.)

****

“It’s too early to validate LIV’s aspirations to ‘reinvigorate’ the sport, particularly given the motives behind them. But the enterprise can’t be dismissed, much as the PGA Tour wishes to do so. Not after LIV’s coup of signing Dustin Johnson and in-their-prime stars like Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed. Not with a number of other players about to follow suit or weighing a similar jump. Not with LIV’s endless mountain of gold that would put Scrooge McDuck to shame. The operation has brought the game to the once-unthinkable precipice of a schism at the professional level.”

LIV’s pot of gold could actually undermine its own ambitions. It’s not a bottomless pot. LIV can only survive if it exists as a credible golf tour (or series of events). It’s not going to be paying $100 million appearance fees 10 or even five years down the line. The tour has to be accepted or it will die.

“LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman has said he does not want a schism; he envisions LIV to be additive to the sport. Norman is also rolling out a field in London this week that, with a few notable exceptions, is composed of has-beens and never-wases.”

It’s a cheap shot to label these golfers as has-beens (and let’s not forget, many of them are/ were PGA Tour players). A lot of these slurs refer to the likes of Lee Westwood, Martin Kaymer, Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter, Richard Bland and even Phil Mickelson. Apart from being a clickbait cheap shot, it’s just inaccurate. Lee Westwood was the DP World Tour champion (for the whole season) less than two years ago; Kaymer is a former World No. 1; Garcia won the Masters five years ago and his last PGA Tour title was less than two years ago; Poulter won his last PGA title four years ago and made the Top 40 in each of the majors in 2021; Bland is playing the best golf of his career at 49 and won his first title a year ago, as well as leading the U.S. Open after two rounds last year; and Mickelson was the defending PGA champion when all this kicked off. Maybe they’re not in the Top 10 anymore, but these guys are still relevant — and major attractions — in any tournament they play in. Granted there are some lesser names in LIV, but there’s a reason for that, which is that the PGA Tour is so restrictive. It amounts to 125 elite players and maybe 100 more hangers-on. The sport needs more events around the world to accommodate more golfers. There are a lot of good golfers out there desperate for competition and a decent payday. Why doesn’t the PGA Tour put a cap on prize money and give more golfers more chances to earn a living playing tournament golf? Yes, I can see the flaw in that argument, but the PGA Tour seems to be more inclined to throw money at the bigger players.

Getting to LIV envisioning to be “additive to the sport,” why shouldn’t it? This whole mess could have been solved if the PGA Tour had met with Norman (or, even better, someone from LIV with more brains and less attitude). In fact, the PGA Tour should have said to its golfers: “You can play anywhere, anytime.” Instead, they said, “Play on our Tour or die.” The PGA Tour’s stance makes no sense at all. It can still have points or prize money tallies to produce rankings and eligibility, but then the ball is in the court of the golfers. They would be able to determine when and where they play golf and if they want to try to play in the majors or Ryder Cup. The PGA Tour was never going lose out by giving golfers more freedom. There are plenty of good golfers out there. And the top golfers don’t play every week. For example, in the 2020/21 season, Scottie Scheffler played 25 out of 52 tournaments. So, why can’t the PGA Tour exist with LIV and other tours? Independent contractors are just that: independent. That’s why the PGA Tour will lose the upcoming lawsuits.

“Competing for ungodly sums of money under the misguided notion that it will somehow help a maligned government sportswash its image.”

Let’s throw this argument under the bus. The United States and Europe do not have the moral high ground here. The DP Tour inaugurated a tournament in Saudi Arabia AFTER the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The PGA Tour also has had events in Japan, which has a despicable justice system and the death penalty, and China, which is responsible for so many crimes against humanity it makes Saudi Arabia look like Sweden. The accusation of “sportswashing,” should not be a factor in this debate.

“[LIV] could help the PGA Tour and DP World Tour, cleansing them of those stuck in the purgatory between relevance and the Champions circuit and making way for fledgling stars. But for all that it hasn’t been, LIV has shown just enough of what it could be—and the chaos it could impel—and that’s the problem. There’s the problem of the disruptor in question, the series being funded by the Saudi Arabian government, for it is driving this discussion and its direction seems aimless.”

Good point. What is the purpose of LIV? To liven up golf? Maybe. Norman used to go on about expanding the golf world beyond North America, but he undermines his own argument by having five of the eight tournaments in the United States. Nothing in Korea, Japan, Australia, South Africa, continental Europe? Again, if LIV had sat down with the PGA Tour and drawn up a plan where they didn’t tread on each other’s toes, golf could have gained. But the PGA Tour, according to Norman, refused to even talk to LIV about such things.

“Perhaps the issue begins with the vehicle itself. There is a fundamental fault with the competition that LIV Golf is creating, and for a second put aside the problematic strings to this venture and focus on that competition. At its heart, golf is appreciated for being the purest rendition of meritocracy, where spots aren’t given and you only make what you earn. LIV Golf is the antithesis of this spirit. It offers signing bonuses and no-cut guaranteed paydays to players most fans would not pay to see. Aside from the general curiosity surrounding its Thursday debut and a better-than-expected production, the LIV Golf presentation had no appeal. There was nothing on the line, no reason for these guys to be playing aside from the chance to line their pockets no matter how they finish. It is a glorified exhibition.”

Good point. LIV should be taking its stars to places where they aren’t normally seen. And if the two sides had sat down and had a polite conversation, points (perhaps on a lesser scale) could have been awarded to LIV events that counted in the U.S. or Europe. LIV is a golf tournament, a competition, so it has credibility. Give it some respect and embrace it and that might benefit the game.

“Here are bigger purses, bigger bonus pools, bigger FedEx Cup bonanzas coming to the tour, but they don’t have the resources to engage in an arms race, and legacy won’t be enough.”

Do we know what’s going to happen with the FedEx Cup, the Ryder Cup and the majors? Will the big names be dumped? Ryder Cup captains have captain’s choices, while major winners have extended eligibility. Sit down, talk it out….

“This moment should force a hard look in the mirror to those at PGA Tour headquarters. The reason rogue leagues were fun thought exercises is because the tour has fallen into stasis. The product has become oversaturated with too many events and at times it seems allergic to creativity.”

Scheffler played 25 out of 52 tournaments last season and Dustin Johnson played 21, so why the need to punish those playing elsewhere? More events mean more opportunities for all golfers.

“Which is why, ultimately, a potential schism inflicts the most pain on fans. This has become a sideshow with the worst type of actors, and as bad as the play has been, where it could lead is worse. Now fans’ attention will be divided between an entity that doesn’t know what it’s doing and doesn’t offer much in the way of competition yet does boast some marquee names, against the traditional power with true competition and true consequences that could lose the very stars needed to pull people in. Forget additive; that is the very definition of subtraction. It is a diluted product.”

The PGA Tour’s reaction was knee-jerk, although somewhat understandable or at least predictable. They HAD to sit down with Greg Norman or, better still, a rational LIV executive. Or even a Saudi Public Investment Fund official with the first question being, “What do you want?” They just needed to have a conversation….