The best golfers in the world are converging at the home of Jack Harlow this weekend for the PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky. Unfortunately, this occurrence is far and in-between with the ever-growing presence of Saudi-backed LIV Golf. Every weekend in the golf world that doesn’t involve a major (or America’s best attempt at proving foreign supremacy), sees the top players in the world split between the home of Survivor and the home of low-budget super hero dramas. LIV -and somehow the CW- are here to stay. Golf fans, and the PGA, know that. Or at least we thought.
As has become more common that Tiger Woods shooting over par, the hype of this weekend’s golf tournament was again fizzled by an ominous rain cloud of news surrounding the sport. Less than five months after leading the effort in merging golfs two biggest entities, PGA Tour Board member Jimmy Dunne resigned from his post on Monday, effectively putting the deal he worked so hard to put together on the backburner.
Here’s Jimmy Dunne’s resignation letter from the PGA Tour board.
Jimmy negotiated the Framework Agreement with the Saudi PIF. Then the players reacted and took the majority on the board. Dunne been completely shut off from negotiations. Also very close with Rory McIlroy. pic.twitter.com/OGQfXDGynz
— Dan Rapaport (@Daniel_Rapaport) May 13, 2024
Last week’s Wells Fargo Champion and face of today’s PGA Rory McIlory called Dunne’s departure a “huge loss”, adding that his confidence in a PGA-LIV merger is “lower than ever”. The pessimism from the 35-year-old could be blamed on the fact he’s had a “double bogey” kind of week with a reported divorce on the cards, but it still has plenty of validity.
Since signing the agreement back in January, Dunne had been frustrated by other members of the PGA Tour Board of Directors, and some players on the tour, casting him out in talks and in-house negotiations. It’s clear the people running the PGA continue to hold a morality-complex over the PIF and LIV. To them the tour is sacred. Promotion of the traditional, respectful, quiet, game of golf is a must. To be fair, they’ve done a heck of a job keeping the game sacred over the past few decades.
Never would you see stories break of a golfer going into millions of dollars of gambling debt before it was legal. Never would you a PGA poster boy ruin his marriage by going on a sex-craved binge while on tour. Never, EVER, could the Tour bear having a bunch of hooligans running around Augusta National in shorts.
Oh wait that all happened?
Listen, I know none of those things are morally as tainting as doing business with a Saudi-backed golf league. I know the PGA thinks it has a standard to uphold, and they view a deal with LIV as a breach of that standard. But here’s the thing. Golf has never been in this great of a spot. The personalities and the talent in the sport are at an all-time high, but fans can’t enjoy it because the PGA has cast the LIV defectors out like a public school would children with a peanut allergy at lunch time.
It’s time to let the kids sit with everyone else. I mean it’s not even about morals anymore. Every time a copy of the “PGA Tour” video game is sold the PIF, and therefor LIV, is making money. Just get a deal done.
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