“PGA is being really stupid about this. They don’t control the majors, so they have no real punishment. All they’re doing is banning some of the sport’s big names who are doing occasional “other” tournaments to make more money. By forcing the players to choose and thus keeping them out of PGA events they’re just gonna kill their own ratings.”
Wrong. The LIV - funded by a Saudi “soverign wealth” fund - is trying to buy top players away from PGA tournaments, offering higher payouts than do many of the PGA Tour venues. It’s like when investors built separate baseball leagues. Even then, no players playing in one league were not allowed to play in the other league also. In golf, think of the parallel as if each player is a “team” (a playing unit) in the PGA [league]. Baseball players do not play for two teams in two different leagues.
MONEY$$$$$$ and not PGA “rules” is why a few big players are going to pay for the LIV. Michelson is a high stakes gambler who, it was reported, had gambling losse of upwards of $40 million between 2010 and 2014 - debts he may still be paying off. Dustin Johnson peaked (to world ranking of #1) back in 2017, and now ranks 15th. The article itself ranks some of the other joiners [Louis Oosthuizen (21), Kevin Na (34), Talor Gooch (35) and Sergio Garcia (57)]. In other words most of those joining are not today’s top winners. Most are also older than the average age of many of today’s top golf winners. When YOU are not winning, your take of a tournament’s winning$ are not at the top. So the Saudis are offering to pay all who join bugger sums than they have been getting with the PGA tour. But in many cases, in an even playing field, many of them have lower earnings not becase the PGA is stingy, but because they have not been winning.
It’s all about the money. It’s not about “PGA rules” of the game or its organization of the tournaments.
And one beef of mine is ALL “sovereign wealth” funds. Imagine our IRS running private ventures to make money for itself. “Soveriegn wealth” funds are nothing less than nation-state funds competing, for themselves, in the investment markets. Personally, to help keep our domestic markets free markets I would ban all foreign nation-state ownership and investment in U.S. markets.
But there’s a difference between playing non-PGA events and being BANNED from PGA events. Top end players often pick and choose their non-majors (ie PGA events) to not be fatigued for the majors. And because the PGA doesn’t control the majors they have to have a cordial relationship with non-PGA events. And in the past that has extended to other tours, players can generally do European and Asian events. You see this most often with English golfers who are generally on the tour over there but also come over for PGA. But for whatever reason the PGA has decided the LIV is the exception. No cordial relationship there, anybody that signs onto the LIV can’t play in PGA events. But we know from the “Tiger bump” a lot of golf viewership is people wanting to see certain players, not really the event itself. You ban enough of these players people want to see ratings will bottom out.
And you think the pga tour is clean? There’s the PGA tour china your and the annual pga tour tournament in Shanghai.
The chicoms make the Saudis look like amateurs when it comes to human rights abuses.
It's not a great analogy. First of all, golf is an individual event, and the players could always pick and choose which tournaments they played.
Also, when we did have leagues that truly tried to compete for top talent (USFL, WHA, ABA and AFL), the thing that kept the players from going back was the contract with the new league, not actions by the old league. (The conflicting schedules also prevented it.)