PGA of America Boss Wants 'Civility' Around LIV Golf But Has Interesting Way of Showing It
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PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh shared some views held by many: that LIV Golf’s business model is suspect and he’s skeptical that the Saudi backers of the circuit through the Public Investment Fund will want to continue to "burn" money and that "I don’t see that they are accomplishing much."
Those comments were made to the Times of London last week on the eve of the major championship, the PGA, his organization runs. And in the same interview he expressed a desire for "civility" and “I don’t think division is good for the game."
He suggested that the PGA Tour and LIV Golf work toward "some sort of agreement" and the Masters "set the stage for, frankly, civility," he also threw water on LIV’s Official World Golf Ranking application, saying the organization has not responded to requests for information—to which LIV Golf replied, essentially, “uh, yes we did."
Not exactly the best way to go into PGA Championship week with the hopes that all will calm down.
The PGA has invited no LIV golfers for pre-tournament interviews. Not Cam Smith, the reigning British Open champ. Not Masters runners-up Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka. (Editor's note: Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka were added to the interview schedule on Monday and will appear Wednesday.)
Both Mickelson and Koepka are two-time winners of the PGA. In fact, this will be Mickelson’s first appearance in the championship since he became the oldest to win a major two years ago at Kiawah Island. Mickelson’s self-imposed exile kept him away from last year’s PGA.
It is possible Mickelson declined an interview room request—he did not come to the interview room pre-tournament at the Masters but did conduct interviews—but it’s hard to imagine Smith turning it down.
Perhaps most curious of all were Waugh’s comments about the OWGR. He’s a member of the OWGR board of directors and involved in studying LIV Golf’s bid. At the very least, you would think he would show some level of neutrality publicly, no matter how flawed he or anyone else believes to be the case about the application.
"They had our latest response weeks ago and we haven’t heard back," Waugh said. "They have made a bad assumption that this will be a quick process. It never has been. Every application has taken a year-plus as far as I’m aware."
In retort, LIV Golf said it did respond to late-April correspondence and has repeatedly said it would like more clarity and what it needs to do in order to comply.
Also, Waugh’s assertion that every application has taken at least a year—he said "as I’m aware"—is not accurate. While nobody should have expected LIV’s application to be rubber-stamped—and LIV Golf did itself no favors by early on complaining about it—the idea that it must take a year has been refuted often. (PGA Tour China, for example, was accredited before playing its first event.)
Any such discussion of OWGR and LIV Golf always needs a disclaimer: those who went to LIV either knew or should have known the risks; that the OWGR process was murky and often not made public; and that several of the people involved in it don’t want LIV Golf to be accredited.
And there are serious issues with the application that either need to be modified or changed.
Waugh simply said the quiet part out loud, which doesn’t portend the kind of civility he is seeking.