Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm Credit LIV Golf for PGA Tour's Changes, 'It Is What We Needed'
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Designated events. Limited fields. No-cut events.
Throw in the Player Impact Program bonus, Comcast Business Tour bonus and an enhancement to the FedEx Cup bonus pool and you can count numerous ways the lives of the top players on the PGA Tour—and those who strive to join them—are being compensated this year and into coming seasons.
What was the impetus?
“Oh, it’s LIV Golf. Without a doubt,’’ said Jon Rahm, the No. 1-ranked player in the world, on Tuesday at TPC Sawgrass. “Without LIV Golf, this wouldn’t have happened. To an extent we should be thankful this threat has made the PGA Tour want to change things. I wish it didn’t come to the PGA Tour being under fire from somebody else to make those changes and make things better for the players, but I guess it is what we needed. So yeah, it is because of LIV Golf, otherwise we wouldn’t have seen any of this.’’
Rahm is competing in the PGA Tour’s flagship event, the Players Championship, where 31 players who are now part of LIV Golf competed last year. That doesn’t include Phil Mickelson, who did not play the Players.
The top three players on the 2022 leaderboard—winner Cam Smith, runner-up Anirban Lahiri and third-place finisher Paul Casey—are now all part of LIV Golf and ineligible for the Players.
It was a year ago at this tournament, when the LIV Golf threat was real, that commissioner Jay Monahan said “we’re moving on."
A week later, LIV Golf announced an eight-tournament invitational schedule for 2022 and put in place its 14-event league schedule for this year, luring several past major champions with considerable guaranteed money and $25 million purses to the rival circuit.
The PGA Tour—with the help of a player meeting last August in Delaware that outlined significant changes—stepped up with a boost in several purses to $20 million this year and the Players Championship offering $25 million.
Next year, there will be eight designated events with limited fields, no cuts (meaning guaranteed money) and $20 million purses for each. The Player Impact Program was increased to $100 million but will be scaled back to $50 million next year with the other $50 million being spread among the FedEx Cup bonus program and Comcast Business Tour program.
“I'm not going to sit here and lie; I think the emergence of LIV or the emergence of a competitor to the PGA Tour has benefited everyone that plays elite professional golf,’’ said Rory McIlroy, who along with Tiger Woods spearheaded the Delaware meeting last year. “I think when you've been the biggest golf league in the biggest market in the world for the last 60 years, there's not a lot of incentive to innovate.
“This has caused a ton of innovation at the PGA Tour, and what was quite, I would say, an antiquated system is being revamped to try to mirror where we're at in the world in the 21st century with the media landscape. The PGA Tour isn't just competing with LIV Golf or other sports. It's competing with Instagram and TikTok and everything else that's trying to take eyeballs away from the PGA Tour as a product.
“So LIV coming along, it's definitely had a massive impact on the game, but I think everyone who's a professional golfer is going to benefit from it going forward."