Move, Countermove

Recently returned from a four-day golf trip to Pinehurst. All anyone wanted to talk about was the LIV Series.

SI’s Alex Miceli reported that LIV has a plan for relegating the bottom four players at the end of the 2023 season, as well as an ersatz Q-school, fittingly called Promotions. As he points out, it’s essentially the same concept as what the PGA TOUR has done for years with the top 125, even if the terms “promotion and relegation” are more generally associated with European soccer leagues. Somehow, I don’t see the Phil Mickelsons and Dustin Johnsons of the world suffering the fate of Watford or Norwich City.

(Sidebar: when I was covering college sports for the two FOX sports regional networks in Florida, I wrote a lengthy blog post about “promotion and relegation” in Division I college football. Sadly, that post has long since been lost in the internet ether, but trust me: it could have worked.)

Interestingly, the Tour came out with a plan on Tuesday to create a secondary points list for FedEx Cup Playoffs eligibility; as Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard reports, players who have been suspended from the Tour for playing LIV events (but have not resigned Tour membership) will be dropped from the FedEx Cup standings, and players behind them who are still in good standing will fill in the gaps. It’s Christmas in July for players in the 126-136 range — as long as they don’t jump ship for LIV between now and the FedEx St. Jude Championship in mid-August.

It’s move and countermove, which has been the dance between Ponte Vedra and LIV for months now. On that note, there was one quote over the weekend from a two-time major champion that deserved more attention amongst the furry of LIV-related headlines.

Retief Goosen opined that the PGA Tour’s decision to ban LIV players from competition “was the worst thing that any of the tours could have done” — a strong statement from an otherwise understated member of the World Golf Hall of Fame. It was his follow-up, however, that caught my attention. 

Goosen’s comment, as reported by Lewine Mair in Global Golf Post: “Why did (PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan) wait until the first batch of top players had gone to LIV to increase the prize money for next season by $60 million-plus? Had he done that before they disappeared, he might have enticed some of them to think that with the money going up from $8 million to $12 million per tournament, they would stay put.”

Goosen is referring to Monahan’s “enhanced schedule” announcement during the week of Travelers in June, which revealed a $54 million increase in purses across 8 events in 2023. Monahan stated that the extra money would come from increased sponsor support and the Tour’s operating reserve, and added that this was an “acceleration” of a plan that was already in the works pre-LIV. The general consensus among golf media was that LIV’s rapid success in luring top talent away from the PGA TOUR forced Monahan’s hand.

With that in mind, Goosen’s question is a fair one: if the Tour already had that plan in place, why wait? It’s not unreasonable to assume that certain players might have reconsidered jumping to LIV had they known about the upcoming purse increases. Most media portrayed the “enhanced schedule” as a counter-punch; Goosen seems to suggest that Monahan would have saved himself a lot of trouble by swinging first.

Is Goosen correct? Hard to know. The horses are already out of the barn — with more to follow. Hoggard notes that Jason Kokrak (currently 40th in the FedEx Cup standings) and Charles Howell III (99th) are set to make their LIV debuts this week in New Jersey, as will Paul Casey, who sits 127th. Presumably, they cut their deals with LIV before the “enhanced schedule” was announced — or perhaps their financial windfalls are such that the increased Tour purses for 2023 didn’t change their minds, which, upon reflection, is more likely.

And that, as we all know, is the hard part. Given the dollar figures being thrown around by LIV, it may not matter if the PGA TOUR punches first, second, or never. But for the sake of their tournament partners and tour members, they have to keep swinging. Those “punches,” in the form of splashy announcements, are the public side of what has become a high-stakes chess match, both sides attempting to see five moves ahead. Jay Monahan and Greg Norman have been forced to adopt stances of both prizefighter and grandmaster.

Punch, counterpunch. Move, countermove.