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.
Especially someone Mickelson who earned a lifetime exemption, why do they care if he plays somewhere else and only plays the majors, at 0+ years old.
The smart thing would be for the PGA to challenge the NIV to a championship world tournament.
“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.