CEO Of Saudi Golf Claims "I Will Create My Own Majors" If Existing Four Don't Permit LIV Players
Chris Trotman/LIV Golf. Getty Images.Ohhhhh nelly.
The LIV Golf vs. PGA Tour existential battle got the full New Yorker treatment this morning, with Zach Helfand penning a comprehensive and smooth-reading overview of the issue tearing professional golf apart. If you've been following this ordeal since the beginning, much of the article will be re-stating what you already know. (There's a hilarious anecdote in there about the Saudis trying to rent the Augusta clubhouse to hold a meeting with players, and you can guess how the greencoats felt about that request). But I want to zoom in one on particular quote. It comes from Majed Al Sorour, who's part of crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman's inner circle. Al Sorour is essentially his sports liaison; he's the CEO of Golf Saudi and the Saudi Golf Federation and was recently added to the board of Newcastle United, the English Premier League soccer team the Saudis decided to buy with some loose pocket change.
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Sorour was talking about the major championships, which have stayed mostly neutral in this battle. None of the four majors have banned any LIV players from joining solely on their decision to join LIV. Instead, they've stood by their pre-LIV qualification requirements, which mostly include being a certain world ranking or winning a PGA or DP World Tour event. They've tried to stay out of the fray, to play Switzerland, to leave the warring factions to their own devices. What makes that objectionable to LIV guys, as we've discussed in detail on this here blog, is that LIV tournaments do not offer world ranking points. They've been pining for them, and they've tried to exploit loopholes, but it has all been unsuccessful. Winning a LIV event will net you $4 million, and you'll get to spray champagne on a podium like you're Lewis Hamilton, but you're not going to move up the rankings. Dustin Johnson, who was the best player during LIV's inaugural season and won the season-long points race, is steadily dropping down the world rankings despite his strong play.
The LIV folks—which, if we go high enough, are just the Saudi government decision makers—have stayed mostly diplomatic throughout this process. They've spoken about wanting to be part of the golf ecosystem. To be additive, not disruptive. They'd be willing participants in a sit-down with the PGA Tour and the rest of golf's powerbrokers, they'll tell you. But with the OWGR not budging yet, and none of the majors changing their criteria to make it easier for LIV guys, some cracks in the we're-gonna-play-nice front are showing. It does seem like the Saudis will play nice only if they're getting their way. And, as of right now, they're not.
It began at last week's event in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, when Greg Norman, Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka all took shots at the OWGR. But the most telling—and, for golf fans, the most depressing—bit dropped with the New Yorker piece on Monday.
“For now, the majors are siding with the Tour, and I don’t know why,” Sorour told the New Yorker. “If the majors decide not to have our players play? I will celebrate. I will create my own majors for my players…Honestly, I think all the tours are being run by guys who don’t understand business.”
Oh man. I've long wondered, and I've spoken about this publicly, what's stopping the Saudis from, if the majors continue to hold firm, simply saying "fuck the Masters, I'm going to have my own Masters on the same weekend and quadruple the purse?" There's nothing stopping them, and now it's clear that Sorour's at least considered the possibility.
Make no mistake: this is how a sport dies. If there are no events that are universally viewed as the pinnacle of the sport, and players decide that dollars are more important than chasing major championships, the public will cease to care about professional golf. No one—I repeat, no one—watches sports because of how much money the athletes are making. We watch sports because we want to see humans perform at the absolute highest level under the most pressure possible. It's undoubtedly true that the Saudis and their extremely deep oil reserves would successfully lure some top players away from majors if they started their own richer events. I also don't blame anyone for making as much money as they can. It's game theory, really: the individual will act in the individual's best interest, even if it's detrimental to the group as a hole. That's what would happen here. Guys would take the money because it's simply too good to pass up, but it would be horrific for the future of our sport. You could argue that's what's already happening.