PGA Tour Player Director Peter Malnati may not be one of the Tour’s most easily recognisable players, despite his trademark bucket hat, but he’s certainly one of the most outspoken when he’s given the chance with a microphone.
But after a moving day 66 at the Players Championship that included a tap-in birdie at the iconic 17th, the 36-year-old from Indiana gave the waiting media a lot more than they’d bargained for and divulged that he, like Rory McIlroy, is desperate for a unification in men’s professional golf.
“I think something needs to happen for our sport,” he said. “I want to see a unified game where, when we have events like the Players Championship, that we have all the best players in the world and we’re proud to call ’em PGA Tour members. That’s what I want. I don’t know how we get there, but that’s what I want.”
The Players Championship may well be the PGA Tour’s flagship event and one that Tour organisers have made no secret that they’d desperately love to see classed as a major, but Malnati said the words that most of the audience are thinking when several of the world’s top players are not permitted to play.
“Whoever wins this golf tournament is going to have achieved the most incredible accomplishment, to win on this golf course, against this field, but it would be even better if we had Jon Rahm here. I’ll just say it. It would be even better. It would be an even better win,” he said. “So that’s something that we as a membership and as leaders of the membership, we need to figure that out, how do we make this happen for people to come back, and do it in a way that has some semblance of fairness, some semblance of just, how do we do it in a way that can at least somewhat pass the sniff test and get us to a place where, when we have championships like this, we have a group of the best players – like, we already have a group of the best players in the world – how do we get to a place where we have all of the best players in the world here.”
Quite how LIV players may eventually be brought back into the PGA Tour fold is something that will be heavily debated if and when an agreement with the PIF is met, and opinions vary among PGA Tour membership as to whether they should be brought back at all, but Malnati feels that the middle ground is where they should eventually land.
“That might be the thing that’s most top of mind for people,” he said. “You would find opinions that ran the gamut, from guys that just have a line in the sand that say never, and guys – I mean, I think Rory’s been pretty outspoken that he wants to see the best players playing on the PGA Tour – so we’re going to have to net out somewhere in the middle.
“I think there’s certain methods that we’ve been able to establish and put in place that will be really, really good for the PGA Tour and its membership, and our fans, too. This player equity plan, I don’t understand it, it’s a little bit above my head, but I certainly know enough to say that I really do support it. It’s going to make players owners of the Tour, and guys who violated our policies aren’t ever going to be eligible for that. That’s a big deal. Like, that’s a big, big deal.
“So I think, if we do find a pathway for guys to come back, there will certainly be safeguards in place to protect the members of the Tour who stayed here.”
Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch reported on Friday that the PGA Tour Player Directors were lining up a Monday meeting with PIG Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan in what is expected to be a move to ascertain exactly what the PIF’s intentions and asks would be should they become investors in PGA Tour Enterprises, but on this point Malnati was rather coy, admitting that there may be a meeting but that the details of it, should it take place, have yet to be passed on to him.
“I think at this point I probably should have more details,” he conceded, “because, yeah, there may be a meeting, but I don’t even know, I don’t know where it is or how I’m getting there. I would like to know that information, and I would like to then tell the membership about it before I talk about it.”
Malnati is also of the opinion that suggested that the players voices should only carry so much weight when it comes to determining the direction taken by the PGA Tour in the future, something that is contrary to the prevailing attitude voiced week to week.
“At its core, like, players have no business running the PGA Tour,” he admitted, “but this is a members’ organization. Like, we should have input in the direction it goes. For something, some of these monumental changes that are bound to happen as we start up this for-profit company and take on investment, whether it’s from the private sector here or the whatever it is, like, players should have involvement and knowledge of that, and even input.
“Like, players do not need to be running this organization, but we certainly, yeah, we certainly should be a part of decisions like that. I think we’ve almost swung the pendulum too far in the other direction now after what happened on June 6th, where players and the whole organization were left in the dark, the pendulum has swung too far to where players are probably feeling like they have, you know, more input than we should. So I think, as it comes back to sort of neutral, I think we’re going to land in a really sweet spot where we have the leadership of the Tour doing what they should, which they are, and we have a lot of transparency where the players know what’s going on and are able to give their input.”
Before signing off, Malnati had his say on LIV’s team-golf concept, something that the breakaway tour continue to push heavily but that has also received a lukewarm at best reception from golf fans.
“I need to understand better what Yasir is really trying to accomplish there,” he said. “Are there any fans that care which team won the tournament? And, like, and I don’t know, I don’t know what fans of LIV want or care about, but are there any fans that care about who won it? I mean, that seems so contrived to me.
“I feel like we could also create some contrived team golf something, somewhere outside of the FedEx Cup season, but, like, what does he really want is a question that I want to understand better. Because I don’t think it’s some contrived, fake, add up random guys’ scores and call them a team. I don’t think that’s it. I think what he means is more stuff like the Ryder Cup, I would guess, but I have no clue because I haven’t talked to him.”
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