PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan burned everyone who trusted him

Jay Monahan had his price and it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, I suppose.

The Saudi-backed LIV Golf league was throwing hundreds of millions of dollars around on players, tournaments and legal fees to compete with the PGA Tour. Maybe it was naive to think there wasn’t an endgame where the commissioner of golf’s premier circuit to came out on top.

After two years of holding the PGA together, of convincing the majority of the game’s top players not to accept the blood money coming from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, of revamping the Tour schedule with designated event purses worth $20 million each, of securing trust from sponsors, stakeholders and anyone else who could’ve put the final nail in the PGA’s coffin, the end came without warning on Tuesday morning and it was Monahan holding the hammer.

The PGA Tour, DP World Tour and LIV Golf will merge into one, for-profit entity. Professional golf as we knew it is dead, almost unilaterally destroyed by the man entrusted to save it.

No one was given any indication this sort of deal was possible, let alone being negotiated. PGA Tour players — the same ones who had Monahan’s back, who turned down millions — found out about the merger on Twitter.

How he can even dare to face them again is mind-boggling. Judging from the early responses of those on Tour, it won’t be pretty.

But none of that matters to Monahan, apparently. He emerges from the seismic shift with more power than ever as the CEO of the yet-to-be-named organization. PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan will serve as chairman. The Saudi fund will initially serve as exclusive investor to the new endeavor, meaning Al-Rumayyan is the only person Monahan must dance for now and already were seeing him move in ways previously thought impossible.

Take what Monahan said at the Travelers Championship almost exactly one year ago, June 22, 2022, as the Tour announced massive changes to retain its talent from LIV’s overtures:

“The PGA Tour, an American institution, can’t compete with a foreign monarchy that is spending billions of dollars in an attempt to buy the game of golf. We welcome good, healthy competition. The LIV Saudi Golf League is not that. It’s an irrational threat, one not concerned with the return on investment or true growth of the game.”

Here’s what Monahan said on Tuesday, after announcing the merger:

“What’s happened today is we’ve recognized that together we can have a far greater impact on this game than we can working apart,” Monahan told CNBC. “…We’re announcing to the world that on behalf of this game we’re coming together. It’s less about how people respond today and it’s all about how people respond in ten years. When they see the impact we’re having on this game together there will be a lot of smiles on peoples faces.”

Well, look at that! It turns out Grandpa Joe’s legs worked this whole time, he was just waiting on a golden ticket to get him out of bed.

Will Monahan even be around in 10 years to see what becomes of this deal? How can he possibly stay on as CEO and get the players to trust him after such hypocrisy?

Let’s just strip away all the moral arguments for a moment — and there are many — and think about this purely from a financial standpoint. Some of the biggest names in golf turned down a chance to acquire equity in LIV Golf and its team franchises. Those who did take the money and own part of their LIV teams are now expected to see their ownership values skyrocket beyond comprehension.

How can Monahan look at players like Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler with a clear conscious? How does he reward their loyalty? By kneecapping their earning power to increase his own.

Make no mistake: Monahan needs their support. Both from a public relations standpoint and a business one. The PGA-LIV merger is contingent on the PGA Tour Policy Board’s approval. McIlroy, Patrick Cantlay, Webb Simpson, Charley Hoffman and Peter Malnati all serve as player directors on the policy board.

Now that Monahan has exposed himself as the worst kind of hypocrite, McIlroy is supposed to follow his lead and backtrack on every hardline stance he took against LIV? It’s hard to envision.

Netflix’s Full Swing showed everyone exactly what PGA Tour players think about LIV Golf. And we’ll get to see exactly how the players reacted to the news because Netflix had cameras rolling for Full Swing season two when news of the merger broke.

There’s no hiding from what happened here.

Jay Monahan packed everyone into the PGA Tour’s safe house, doused it with Saudi oil and lit a match. Somehow he’s the only person who didn’t get burned. Money and a new title offered all the protection he needed.

This piece expresses the views of its author(s), separate from those of this publication.