Before LIV Golf had officially started his process wind-down, and before he had he declared bankruptcyAnd before his Saudi supporters withdrew their funding, when he was still represented a existential threat to the established golf world, a question followed PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan around:
Why hadn’t he stopped the Saudis before they started?
The implication here was that the Saudis – before they had launched LIV, and while they were exploring the specifics of a new team-based supercharged golf league – had reached out to Monahan, seeking partnership, and that Monahan had ignored their call, and so the great golf war began.
Now Monahan has finally offered his side of the story.
Speaking to Eamon Lynch as part of a new Golf Channel show, Eamon Lynch has questionsMonahan addressed this particular bit of second guessing.
“Many of your critics said at the time that a lot of this could have been avoided if you had taken a call from the Saudis at the start, which doesn’t seem like such smart advice now that they’ve cut and run from the sport,” Lynch asked. “But why didn’t you take that call in the beginning?”
Monahan challenged the very premise of the question – that it was approached in good faith at every point – and instead painted the picture of a covert recruitment operation.
“First of all, I am not aware of the ‘call’ that was made to me,” he said. “I think that every time you negotiate with someone, you want to understand what their intention is, you want to understand how sincere they are. And if someone will call me, or if someone called me, you must recognize, depending on what time this “call” happened, that they had been in our tournaments as a team with their lawyers, recruiting all the things they need from our agents, recruiting all the things they need. to do to strengthen their league
“I think the most important thing here is that it was his conviction that franchise-based team golf was a more successful long-term proposition for the game than golf as played on the PGA Tour. That that model that is so successful in the sport of stick-and-ball could translate immediately into men’s professional golf, and that in the end it would win.
This last piece felt like the heart of his answer, and one of the most important pieces of the interview: the Tour, which has been the first golf league in the world for essentially its existence, had no interest in engaging with a new tour that seeks to exist as its superior. The nuance of the situation is difficult to capture in a single sentence – for example, when LIV first formed, the Premier Golf League was still around. try to go livealso, and yes, I know it all feels like old history – but it paints a clearer picture of Monahan’s perspective.
“So if you meet, then I think a couple of things are going to happen,” he continued. “Either you have to agree that you need to become (a feeder tour) or to a large extent it will become that, or you need to look inside and say: “What we have created is the right model for our players, for our fans, and for everyone we serve”. And that is what guided us at that time.
“It was not a pleasant period,” Monahan concluded. “We focused on the things we could control, knowing what it was that we thought they were trying to do.”
Elsewhere in the interview Monahan acknowledged that he would have handled some things differently with the benefit of hindsight. He specifically mentioned the launch of the Tour’s framework agreement with LIV, which he called his “biggest regret”. As for the fact that the PGA Tour is going on, while LIV is winding down? Monahan turned down the opportunity to take a victory lap.
“I’m extremely proud of where we are and I’m extremely grateful to everyone who contributed to getting here,” he said. “It’s not about me. You know, I was the head of the organization during a challenging time. I did the best I could alongside everyone else to get the right result.”
Based on a quick search of the interview, I’m not sure there is a place to watch the entire extensive interview – but it will be re-aired at some point on Golf Channel and clips can be found. here.
