Golf Wars: Saudi-Backed League Divides Golfers from PGA, Fans Just Want Great Games

Phil Mickelson
Matthew Lewis/Getty Images
Penny Starr

The very first round of the new LIV Golf Invitational Series is underway today at the Centurion Club in the suburbs north of London.

And some of golf’s biggest names will be on the course as controversy about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s lucrative new league swirls around them and the game itself.

This includes fierce reactions from the PGA, which until now had a firm grip on the industry and its players. 

So far, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Louis Oosthuizen, Sergio Garcia, Lee Westwood, Talor Gooch, Martin Kaymer, Kevin Na and Ian Poulter have signed on to the new league. Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed will reportedly join the series for its first U.S. tournament.

Fans, meanwhile, are trying to keep up with the politics while hoping the sport going forward will deliver what the want: Great golf from the greatest golfers.

The golf dot com website calls it “an inconvenient truth.” Golfers call it an opportunity to enrich their careers as well as their wallets.

The site said the $25 million purse for the London event is the biggest in golf history. A bulk of the prize money ($20 million) will reward the individual stroke-play portion of the event, with the remaining $5 million to be shared by the top three teams.

But some of golf’s best remain loyal to the PGA:

Multiple major winners Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas declared the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Invitational Series ‘a shame” and “a bummer’ on Wednesday for fracturing the sport at its peak.

Along with top-ranked Scottie Scheffler, the pair spoke at the US PGA Tour’s Canadian Open, which starts Thursday in competition LIV Golf’s debut event outside London.

‘It’s a shame that it’s going to fracture the game,’ McIlroy said. ‘The professional game is the window shop into golf. If the general public are confused about who is playing where and what tournament’s on this week and oh, he plays there and he doesn’t get into these events, it just becomes so confusing.’

Jon Rahm, Collin Morikawa, Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth, and Brooks Koepka, and Xander Schauffelev also so have said they will not join the new league.

And Tiger Woods is all in for the PGA:

“I’ve decided for myself that I’m supporting the PGA Tour,” Woods said in November 2021, according to Golf Digest. That’s where my legacy is. I’ve been fortunate enough to have won 82 events on this tour and 15 major championships, and been a part of the World Golf Championships, the start of them and the end of them. So I have allegiance to the PGA Tour.”

A bit of background might reveal what’s at stake here, according to the golf dot com website:

LIV Golf is the organization staging the LIV Golf Invitational Series. Two-time major champion Greg Norman is the CEO and commissioner of the league, which is aiming to be an alternative arena to the PGA Tour for the world’s best players. LIV Golf is backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which is among the most lucrative sovereign wealth funds in the world, with an estimated value of $600 billion.

Golf Digest reported:

Founded in 2021, LIV Golf named the aforementioned Norman as its CEO in October, followed by a number of former executives from the PGA Tour and other sports affiliations. In February 2022, LIV Golf announced a $300 million, 10-year investment in the Asian Tour at the Saudi International (which now falls under the Asian Tour umbrella and is sponsored by PIF) that included a 10-event international series that will host tournaments in Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

The PGA has been outspoken about its stance, according to Golf Digest, including PGA Tour Commissioner’s statement from January 2020 that said any player who sided with a rival league would face suspension and possibly a lifetime ban.

PGA CEO Seth Waugh said last year that those players who joined a rival league would not be allowed in future PGA Championships or Ryder Cups.

But apparently, the upcoming PGA Open is an exception and it could signal the complicated path forward for the organization if it bans some of the game’s best players.

“Regarding players who may choose to play in London this week, we simply asked ourselves this question—should a player who had earned his way into the 2022 U.S. Open, via our published field criteria, be pulled out of the field as a result of his decision to play in another event? And we ultimately decided that they should not,” read a statement from the PGA. “Our decision regarding our field for the 2022 U.S. Open should not be construed as the USGA supporting an alternative organizing entity, nor supportive of any individual player actions or comments. Rather, it is simply a response to whether or not the USGA views playing in an alternative event, without the consent of their home tour, an offense that should disqualify them for the U.S. Open.”

And while the PGA claims it has the standing to discipline players, now LIV CEO Norman disagrees and said so in an open letter. 

“Surely you jest,” Norman wrote in the February letter. “And surely, your lawyers at the PGA Tour must be holding their breath…for decades, I have fought for the rights of players to enjoy a career in which they are rewarded fully and properly for their efforts. They are one-in-a-million athetes. Yet for decades, the Tour has put its own financial ambitions ahead of the players, and every player on the tour knows it. The Tour is the Players Tour not your administration’s Tour. Why do you call the crown jewel in all tournaments outside the Majors “The Players Championship” and not “The Administration’s Championship?”

“But when you try to bluff and intimidate players by bullying and threatening them, you are guilty of going too far, being unfair, and you likely are in violation of the law,” Norman wrote.

A real controversy, however, may be Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, which has rarely been covered over the two years leading up to the first tee shot in London.

Not to mention that the PGA has not shied away from politics, canceling former President Donald Trump’s annual golf tournament at Trump Doral and the 2022 PGA Championship at Trump Bedminster.  The PGA’s long-term cooperation with Communist China has also stirred controversy over the years.

But for now, fans can only hope going forward not only will the best players win but perhaps the best league, too. 

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