The Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) sunk nearly a billion dollars into getting the new league off the ground and it became a huge thorn in the side of both the PGA and European Tours. PGA Tour Commissioner, Jay Monahan tried to ignore the rival league, but with the billions of dollars available to the Saudis via Aramco Oil profits, the American Tour never had a chance. After three years of highly public legal maneuvering and social media attacks the three tours have agreed to drop all the lawsuits and create a new world entity that would preside over all three tours. If you can’t beat’em…..Join’em. The PGA Tour was faced with justifying their tax-exempt status in the court system and that simply could not happen. Given the billions of dollars the PGA Tour generates every year, the tax bill would have been enormous if they were to lose their 501(c)(6) exemptions. The Saudis made their point. Greg Norman knew what buttons to push and he did it masterfully. Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Patrick Reed, as well as several other stars defected to the new league for the guaranteed money, larger purses and fewer events. The PIF’s Yasir Al-Rumayyan will become the Chairman of the Board, for the yet-to-benamed entity and PGA Tour Commissioner, Jay Monahan will be its CEO. The key points in all of this are that the lawsuits will come to an end, LIV players, who were suspended by both the DP World Tour and the PGA Tour will be allowed to return to both after the 2023 season. The PIF will pump millions of dollars into the new entity and the PGA Tour will continue to run their schedule as they have in the past. In a poll of golfers and golf media conducted by Scott Michaux for Power Poll responders were not shy about expressing their feelings with opinions varying widely. The majority (58 percent) were disappointed in the deal, while only 13 percent were pleased, 15 percent relieved and 13 percent don’t know yet how to feel about it. Despite those initial reactions, roughly twothirds of poll voters believe the peace agreement between the rival tours will either be good for the game (37 percent) or neither good nor bad (28 percent), with 35 percent feeling that it will turn out to be bad for the professional game. Even hard-core golf fans have become disenchanted with professional golf and declining television ratings numbers prove that point. Hopefully this new merger will be a positive for both golf fans and professional golfers, but only time will tell.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTQ2Nzk4