The controversial merger between the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is approaching its self-imposed December 31 deadline and the rumour mill continues to churn with suggestions that an agreement is far from settled.
PGA Tour veteran, major winner and two-time Ryder Cup captain Davis Love III is the latest to hint at what we’ve all been expecting and claim that nothing will be signed by the end of the year.
“The only thing I do know is nothing is going to happen really fast,” Love said, speaking in Florida, where he was meeting on a golf course project.
When pressed if he thought the December 31 deadline – albeit extendable – could yet see an agreement in place he admitted that he thought it extremely unlikely, saying “I don’t see any way.”
Love III, the longest serving member of the Tour’s policy board, thinks that the process has helped the PGA Tour to reexamine its goals, strategies and return its focus to its primary objective, the PGA Tour players.
“It’s forced us to take a look at what has been going on for 53 years and think about what the next 50 years will look like,” he said. “How do we set up our company to be ready for the future?”
Love III maintains that the decision to defect to the upstart LIV Golf league was a short-sighted one and is not in favour of any kind of reconciliation that would see those players return to compete on the PGA Tour again in the wake of lawsuits, verbal criticism of the Tour and its leadership.
“I told some of them this in the very beginning. I’m not against you as a person, I’m against what’s happening and I think you’re making a bad business decision,” Love III said. “Jay [Monahan, PGA Tour Commissioner] tried to explain it to these guys, you are signing with our competitor and giving our competitor leverage that is going to hurt our ability to make decisions and hurt our financial position. You don’t really understand that it is not just playing in this golf tournament versus that one.
“I’m still against the fact that this is a hostile takeover. These guys signed with a company that is trying to take us over. If a bunch of guys left Pepsi and went over to Coke and tried to take over Pepsi would you ever let them come back to Pepsi? I don’t think so. It may not be a perfect comparison but they sued us to make us change our rules so they could get what they wanted.”
But as for how the new-look PGA Tour will shape up, who the investors will be and what they can expect in return for their dollar, Love III says it’s very much a work in progress and that conversations are ongoing at PGA Tour headquarters and among those with whom the decisions rest, with Love III himself forming part of a ‘war council’ to ensure that the players and the future well being of the PGA Tour returns to the top of the priority list.
“There’s a whole lot I don’t know,” he admitted, “but I do know there is nothing going on right now besides where do we want to go? We might have screwed up the last three years, now how do we set up the PGA Tour for the future? Is there a different model? We’re independent contractors, maybe we’re not independent contractors? The lawsuits are dropped; now what do we want to do, what does (the PIF) want to do? Do they really want to keep blowing that much money on LIV? Probably not.”
As for the main stumbling block to an agreement between the proposed merger parties, Love III puts the blame squarely at the door of the PIF, claiming an unwillingness to negotiate beyond the framework agreement laid out that, among other demands, would see the PIF as having right of refusal to any new investment, seeing LIV players guaranteed access to major championships, and would see PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan granted memberships at both the R&A and Augusta National.
“It’s just like the lawsuit: we’re never going to go to trial if they don’t ever do discovery. Our staff and players did discovery. They refused.
“We [the PGA Tour] made an offer and if you don’t ever communicate, we can’t make another offer. It’s bizarre what’s going on. It’s a long way from anything. The sharks are circling. Now everyone wants to invest in the PGA Tour.”
The sharks Love III refers to include companies like Endeavor, who’ve already reportedly had an investment offer rejected, and it’s believed there may be as many as 10 additional investors who are emerging as alternatives to the PIF should an agreement be failed to reached at any date.
Love III maintains that it’s not a question of financial requirement for the PGA Tour, however, claiming “we don’t need money, that’s the beautiful thing,” before going on to add that it’s not just the PIF that he’s wary of metaphorically climbing into bed with, believing that primary control should remain in the hands of the players.
“If it was Warren Buffett instead of PIF, do we really want Warren Buffett to control the PGA Tour just because he gave us a whole bunch of money?” he asked. “Shouldn’t the players control the PGA Tour and the staff that the board approved?”
It was recently announced that Tiger Woods was being added to the Tour’s policy board as a sixth ‘Player Director’ and felt that Woods’ voice carried sizable weight, though he admitted that he wasn’t sure if was partly due to Tiger’s injuries curtailing his playing ambitions or through a general desire to see the best interests of the players looked after.
“Maybe he sees it as a responsibility and maybe he sees it as an opportunity,” he said. “I don’t know. I’m just glad he’s doing it.”
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