PGA Tour announces revamp to counter rival circuit

NEW YORK－PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan announced a sweeping overhaul of the circuit on Wednesday in a move designed to dissuade players from defecting to the Saudi-backed LIV Golf series.

At a news conference in Connecticut on the eve of the tour's Traveler's Championship, Monahan confirmed details of a plan that leaked out on Tuesday to revamp the tour.

The sweeping reforms include a return to a calendar-year season starting in 2024, and the creation of three international events at the end of the season.

In addition, eight designated tour events will see prize money boosted significantly with purses averaging at around $20 million.

The season-ending FexExCup playoffs will also see revised field sizes from 2023, with 70 players for the FedEx St. Jude Championship, 50 players at the BMW Championship, and 30 players at the Tour Championship.

The moves are the PGA Tour's most significant response yet to the rise of LIV Golf, which launched earlier this month and has signed eight of the world's top 50 players including major winners Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka.

In remarks to reporters on Wednesday, Monahan said the PGA Tour would be unable to compete financially with LIV Golf, which is bankrolled by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which has assets estimated at around $620 billion.

"I am not naive," Monahan said. "If this is an arms race and if the only weapons here are dollar bills, the PGA Tour can't compete.

"The PGA Tour, an American institution, can't compete with a foreign monarchy that is spending billions of dollars in attempt to buy the game of golf.

"We welcome good, healthy competition. The LIV Saudi Golf League is not that.

"It's an irrational threat; one not concerned with the return on investment or true growth of the game."

'Accelerated' reforms

Monahan said the threat posed by LIV Golf had "obviously accelerated" the PGA Tour's plans to revamp the schedule.

"We were planning on raising purses to these events in the future, OK?" Monahan said.

"The move that we're making at the start of 2023, there's no question that one of the things that we're looking to do is make certain that our top events are maximized both in terms of their consequence and the financial investment, and this is an acceleration of that.

"So, yes, this is that, this is something that we're doing to respond on behalf of our members to the current environment that we're in."

Monahan, who earlier this month suspended 17 current or former members of the PGA Tour who had signed with LIV, expressed dismay that four-time major champion Koepka had decided to jump ship.

Koepka was confirmed in the field for LIV Golf's debut US event in Portland next week just as Monahan began the news conference.

"Listen, every player that's left, I'm going to say I have great admiration and respect for the contributions that they have made to the PGA Tour," Monahan said.

"And I'm disappointed that Brooks Koepka has left and has joined the LIV Golf series. I haven't had a chance to talk to him about it, and I look forward to having a conversation with him, but I'm not going to share any more than that at this point in time."

AFP