LIV Golf Officially Announced Brooks Koepka's Signing 6 Minutes Into PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan's Press Conference About Changes To The Tour
LIV Golf pulling no punches. Which should surprise nobody. This is a gutter war, especially in the public forum, and each side is going to take every chance they get to knock the wind out of the others' sails. That's what today's press conference was about. Big changes to the PGA Tour to further incentivize players to stay with the Tour and put more money in their pockets. I talked a bit about that here yesterday:
Many of the things I mentioned in that blog have held up to be true, and more details have emerged. Numerous existing marquee Tour events (that aren't majors) have had their purses boosted as follows.
Couple this with 3 proposed international fall events and you've got yourself a helluva golf calendar.
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Given that those events are overseas, they'll be finishing at odd hours outside of the football Sunday grind. Imagine waking up with a cup of coffee and the back 9 of a top-tier PGA Tour event to get you warmed up for NFL Red Zone. What a treat.
Maybe the biggest change, however, is the size of the playoff series being reduced from 125 players (who get to retain their PGA Tour card for the following season) to 70 players. The playoffs will now go from 70 players at the FedEx St. Jude, to 50 players at the BMW, to 30 players at the Tour Championship at East Lake. That's exciting and all, but that's also 55 players that are missing out on PGA Tour cards they would have received under the old format. And guys that would likely fall in that bucket are sure as shit not happy about it.
It sure sounds like the fall is going to have those 3 marquee international events for top finishers, and be complemented with a slate of events for the 55 players boxed out plus others (probably in collaboration with the Korn Ferry Tour) that will compete for additional Tour cards. That has high potential for drama as guys fight for their careers. Makes life a little harder for those guys, but also gives those traditional fall events (presumably the Shriners, CJ Cup, Zozo, Mayakoba, Sea Island) a little more juice. That's fun for us at home..
But circling back to Brooks and this whole rivalry. What a diabolical move to hold back on an official announcement that everyone knew was happening until 2 minutes into a big time press conference. The PGA Tour is on their heels in a big way, and it was eye-opening to see Jay Monahan essentially say as much.
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It was crazier too to have Jay get asked questions about Brooks early in the press conference, not having known that the announcement was official.
Sure enough a reporter broke the news to him on live television and there Jay was, acting not the least bit surprised and giving an all-too-prepared response.
No punches pulled between these two sides. Both probably feel like the posted a W today. Time will tell.