PGA Tour Players Still Know Almost Nothing About PGA Tour/LIV Golf Alliance
CROMWELL, Conn. — The proposed alliance between the PGA Tour and the Saudi PIF, LIV Golf’s financial backer, loomed large early in the week at the U.S. Open. Rory McIlroy canceled his pre-tournament press conference to effectively avoid discussing the deal and Collin Morikawa cleverly dodged questions about it by talking about his FORE Youth Project instead. Once balls were in the air, the discourse seemed to fade into the background—rightfully so.
However, this week at the Travelers Championship, that “break,” as Adam Scott called it, is most definitely over. The Player Advisory Council, of which Scott is the chairman, met early this week. Then on Tuesday evening, PGA Tour members were invited to a players meeting in Cromwell, Conn. with Tyler Dennis, the EVP and President of the PGA Tour, and Ron Price, the Tour’s Chief Operating Officer.
On Wednesday morning, PGA Tour representatives also gathered for a meeting of their own with tour officials.
The conference-table discussions might be back on, but PGA Tour players have questions—lots of them—that still haven’t been answered and apparently won’t be for a while.
“There are still lots of questions to be answered because we really only have this framework that was announced,” Scott said of the meeting. “So although that seems fairly simple, I think the deal sounds quite complex and this could take a long time. I think hopefully everyone is cooling down and as things go along, there is transparency to the players and those questions get answered.”
As for his own feelings associated with the proposed deal, Scott says he has quite a few, but he’s interested in observing how it all ultimately plays out. The 42-year-old former Masters champion alluded to the loyalty he showed to the PGA Tour over the past year. Scott seemed to wonder if he made commitments under false pretenses.
“I have some emotional—I'm caught up emotionally because I stayed on the PGA Tour and this looks—and it was put to us that if we left we were never coming back, and it seems there are going to be pathways back,” he said.
Adam Scott meets with the media ahead of the Travelers Championship.
Rob Carr/Getty Images
The original PGA Tour/PIF alliance was announced to the complete surprise of the membership, and many players found out about the news via social media. McIlroy, who was the PGA Tour’s de facto spokesperson amid the power struggle with LIV Golf, only heard about the deal the morning of its announcement.
Xander Schauffele, the defending champion this week in Connecticut, wasn’t present during the players meeting due to sponsor obligations, but said that the general consensus among his peers is a request for transparency going forward.
“The sad part is I probably don’t even have a question they can answer. There just isn’t a whole lot of information out just yet. Some part of the agreement still needs to be written up,” Schauffele said. “Everyone wants transparency and I’m sure in their eyes they are being as transparent as they possibly can be, and all of us players would like to think they are taking care of us, but if they’re not able to give us any answers, that means there aren’t any.”
Matt NeSmith, who was present during the meeting, agreed that there wasn’t a lot of new information shared with players on Tuesday evening, and said that in many ways, the unknowns just have to be accepted by PGA Tour membership for the time being.
“They just explained that the framework agreement was signed to end litigation,” he said. “It opened up the possibility for more agreements to be made in the future, but we still don’t know what that looks like, and we won’t know for a while.”
Joel Dahmen wasn’t in the meeting, but he heard that PGA Tour officials “just kept using the word 'framework.'”
The PAC meeting, player meeting and agent meetings this week in Cromwell didn’t help players understand the future of their tour, but according to Scott, they did help cool some emotions.
There has been progress since the players-only meeting hosted by PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan at the RBC Canadian Open, which got particularly heated. Monahan has since paused his day-to-day duties due to a medical situation.
“I think the player meeting went well last night from where the player meeting was two weeks ago. I think some of the emotions have cooled,” Scott said.
“Just when you’re very surprised, some emotions are stirred up, and I think you can’t help but feel—you can’t help but feel left in the dark even though I don’t expect to run the PGA Tour and them to run everything by me,” Scott added.
Anger on the players’ side might be quelled for now, but as Schauffele said: “[it] probably wouldn’t be too hard to re-heat the soup.”
And for many, temperatures are still running hot.
Walking off the driving range, one current Player Advisory Council member summed up why PGA Tour officials gathered PGA Tour members, only to provide almost no new information.
“To give us false confidence. Make us feel like we’re important,” he said.