‘Cheated’ stars’ billion-dollar beef with merger

World golf has been left stunned and scrambling for answers after the PGA Tour and DP World Tour merged with the breakaway LIV league.

The announcement on Wednesday shocked everyone bar PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and Saudi Public Investment Fund governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who had supposedly been locked in secret negotiations for seven weeks.

The deal has been made but details of what that means remain under a cloud.

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These are the biggest questions hanging over the merger.

HOW WILL THE TOUR SCHEDULE LOOK?

The PGA Tour schedule can change each year, although this season consists of 43 events plus the four majors, which are run independently.

The DP World Tour this season hosts 39 tournaments across 26 countries.

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The LIV tour this year features 14 events.

It will obviously be impossible for a player to compete at all 96 of these, but exactly how the relationship will work is yet to be revealed.

Any player who has defected to LIV has been banned from competing in PGA Tour events, although they’re allowed to compete at majors. The DP World Tour has handed massive fines to its professionals who have defected.

Leading golf journalist and author Alan Shipnuck shot down suggestions LIV will be happy to abandon its tour now it has sufficiently leveraged its rivals.

“LIV has always been Al-Rumayyan’s baby. He wants to reward loyalty and keep LIV intact for legacy reasons,” Shipnuck tweeted.

“Otherwise he’s just underwriting the PGA/Euro tours… which previously rejected offers at partnership. And he now controls the purse strings for the whole sport.”

At the very least the PGA Tour is likely to insist on keeping the events which have this year been classified as “elevated” or “designated”. The tour has made these events requirements for the top 20 players in the Player Impact Program (PIP).

Aside from the four majors, the PGA Tour this year appointed 13 tournaments elevated, meaning minimum prizemoney purses of $30 million (AUD). All LIV events are worth about $38 million.

WILL LIV INNOVATIONS GO OUT THE WINDOW?

The breakaway league has been likened to golf’s version of Twenty20 cricket – a shortened format of the sport which tries to lure new fans using bright lights and obnoxious gimmicks.

LIV players stand on a podium after a win and spray each other with bottles of champagne while fireworks explode in the background.

The PGA Tour – much like Test cricket – is a space for the sport’s traditionalists and rusted-on supporters to enjoy the skill and intricacies of the game. There’s no place for podiums or fireworks.

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The LIV event format also differs to PGA Tour events. Rather than four rounds and a field cut after two, LIV is played over three rounds, with smaller fields and no cuts.

PGA Tour players have been mixed in their opinions on reducing fields and axing the cut-line at tournaments.

LIV is also played in teams, as well as individuals.

The merger will most likely mean a mixture of four-day and three-day events across the season, although those details are yet to be confirmed.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR AUSTRALIA?

The PGA Tour has largely abandoned Australia in recent years, although the DP World (European) Tour still co-sanctions two events Down Under.

So when LIV brought the likes of Cameron Smith, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson, and Bryson DeChambeau to Adelaide in April it was – needless to say – easy to win the hearts of Aussies.

But will a merger with the PGA Tour ruin future plans of big events coming to our shores?

South Australian premier Peter Malinauskas, who was instrumental in bringing LIV to the country, believes it’s good news for Australian fans.

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“Very happy news,” he told Nine’s Today.

“In fact I don’t have any doubt the events in Adelaide probably were a precursor to the negotiations that have been taking place for the last few weeks.

“I certainly think it’s going to be a good outcome for Australian golf fans going forward.

“There’s no doubt Australia has been deprived of high-level professional golf being played on our own turf for a long time.

“We’re excited about having an even bigger and better event next year, where we might see more cross-pollination of players between the two tours.

“I’ve already been in touch this morning with LIV Golf executives, I’ve been in touch with Greg Norman… what that means for Adelaide is potentially more players of that elite standing coming to play on our shore.”

The PGA of Australia is also hoping the merger can strengthen ties with world golf, rather than sever them.

”We have and will continue to act in a deliberate, strategic and consistent manner which is to be committed to work within golf’s global ecosystem and provide strong pathways for the players on the PGA Tour of Australasia into tours around the world,” CEO Gavin Kirkman said.

WILL PGA TOUR PLAYERS BE COMPENSATED?

Players who took millions of dollars from the Saudi-backed league were labelled greedy and sell-outs.

Australia’s Cameron Smith was one, accepting a reported $140 million just weeks after winning the British Open last year.

On the flipside, Tiger Woods turned down a billion-dollar offer to join his former sparring partner Norman at LIV. His was the biggest, but certainly not the only approach that was knocked back by PGA Tour loyalists.

“A lot of them took a really principled, moral stand and said ‘We’re not going to LIV’. They said no to offers of 75, 100, 200 million dollars, to stick with the PGA Tour and defend it,” CNN world sport analyst Don Riddell told Nine’s Today.

“Now they come into work and discover we’re all kind of on the same team now anyway.”

The question is, will the players who remained loyal and turned down the cash, see at least some of it after being forced to side with LIV?

Rory McIlroy has been the biggest public critic of LIV and the loudest advocate for the PGA Tour. He must feel cheated, to say the least, that Monahan did a deal behind his back which will see McIlroy earning money from the Saudis.

The LIV rebels have had their cake, and now they can eat it too.

Hundreds of millions in the pocket from sign-on payments, and now welcomed back to PGA Tour events with open arms.

Leading journalist Dan Rapaport revealed LIV players are likely to have to give some of the money back.

“I’m told the guys who took the LIV money and wanna return to the PGA Tour will definitely pay a fine. Won’t be equal for every player, either,” Rapaport tweeted.

“Will that be enough to assuage guys who are pissed they turned down $100 million to stay loyal, only for the two to merge?”

WHAT WILL GREG NORMAN’S ROLE BE?

It’s hard to see ‘The Shark’ working side by side with the PGA Tour given how vocal his criticism has been for a long time.

It was Norman who instigated the breakaway league, insisting his motivations were to improve the working lives – and wallets – of players on tour.

It’s been a messy road but it seems the Aussie great has achieved what he set out to. But will he still have a seat at the table?

It was in September last year when Norman admitted he’d given up trying to work with Monahan.

”We have no interest in sitting down with them, to be honest with you, because our product is working,” Norman said.

“This notion we’re trying to destroy tours is not true. The PGA Tour is trying to destroy us, it’s as simple as that.”

Making Norman’s future considerably murky is the fact he was snubbed in negotiations between Monahan and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Saudi Public Investment Fund.

He’s the CEO of LIV but was not aware of the merger plans – which had supposedly been running for seven weeks – until less than an hour before it was made public on Wednesday.

That suggests Al-Rumayyan is comfortable moving forward without Norman.

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