Saudi Golf League vs. PGA Tour

Last updated on: February 12, 2022 at 8:12 pm by Kermit Zarley

Saudi Golf League vs. PGA Tour 2022-02-12T20:12:24-07:00 Kermit Zarley

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The big talk on the PGA Tour right now is a proposed international pro golf tour that is trying to draw PGA Tour players to compete on which would be in competition with the PGA Tour, and former superstar Greg Norman is promoting this new tour. Norman originally is from Australia, but has lived in the U.S. for most of his life. He gained his pro golf reputation largely by competing full time on the PGA Tour. But he has always had a big beef with the PGA Tour, and now he is taking this gripe to another level.

Incidentally, this proposed tour that would draw PGA Tour players away from its tournaments is nothing new in pro golf. It has happened before, starting in my day with Arnold Palmer and Mark McCormick considering a tour of only about thirty of the best pro golf players in the world. But Arnold eventually turned it down, which was certainly the right thing for him to have done. We had player meetings in which we discussed this, and one time I threw in my two-cents worth.

During my early days on the regular PGA Tour, even before Norman showed up, the PGA Tour was beginning to have a few pros from foreign countries who were excellent players who wanted to compete on the PGA Tour, yet they also wanted to compete on another or other pro golf tours in the world. This practice was beginning to hurt the success of the PGA Tour. So, to combat it, the PGA Tour passed a rule in which a foreign member of its Tour had to compete in at least (I think is was first) 12 PGA Tour-sponsored tournaments. If they refused, they could not be a member of the PGA Tour and therefore could not compete in any of the PGA Tour’s tournaments. Greg Norman and superstar Seve Ballesteros of Spain didn’t like that and complained about it for years. But the PGA Tour stuck with this rule throughout the decades since.

Now, it appears that Norman is exercising his grudge against the PGA Tour big time. Professional golf in the U.S. has always had another rule that a PGA Tour member could not accept an agreed-upon amount of money from the sponsor of a PGA Tour tournament to play in that tournament which would be in excess of that tournament’s total purse. Any player or tournament sponsor in violation of this rule would be heavily punished and perhaps banned from future association with the PGA Tour. But in other places all over the world, pro golf tournaments have been held in which players are guaranteed some certain amount of money simply for competing in that tournament. It still happens to this day, and it happens in tournaments that are part of a schedule on another tour and tournaments that have no affiliation with some particular tour.

For example, the PGA European Tour, which is the second most successful pro golf tour in the world, now plays some tournaments in the Middle East in wealthy countries that guarantee some players millions of dollars just to compete in their tournaments, which is separate from any purse they may have for which the whole field competes. Some members of the PGA Tour in recent years have been competing in these tournaments and thus accepting these guaranteed monies. The PGA Tour has never forbade or penalized any of its members for doing this. However, the PGA Tour has always required that if any of its members are going to skip a PGA Tour tournament in order to compete in one of these foreign tournaments during the same week, they must first get permission from the PGA Tour to do this. The PGA Tour used to have a limit (and they surely still do) on how many times per year a member could do this.

The reason for such rules is to protect the success of the PGA Tour in a reasonable manner. For, the leverage that the PGA Tour has in negotiating contracts with its tournament sponsors and with the TV package (which usually accounts for about one third of the Tour’s total purses) depends on the PGA Tour’s ability to guarantee these entities a field of players in tournaments that has some of its best players. This is a sensitive issue for the PGA Tour because those who compete its tournaments are not employees of the PGA Tour, like NFL and NBA players are for their teams, but independent contractors who decide where and when they will work or not work. And it is obvious that tournament sponsors need a reasonably good field to promote its tournament to the public and thereby to be successful.

Well, today, television announcer, articulate swing analyst, and former PGA Tour player Brandel Chamblee, a friend of mine, responded to Charley Hoffman on Golf Channel’s Golf Central Pregame show before the WM Phoenix Open was televised today. It is being held at the TPC of Scottsdale stadium golf course near where I live. Forty-five year old Charley Hoffman, who is on the backside of his pro golf career and often a contender in the WM Phoenix Open, is a four-time winner on the PGA Tour. He obviously has been offered a handsome amount of money to commit to playing in this proposed Saudi Golf League. Hoffman sounded off in an Instagram post, favoring this new pro tour and heavily criticizing the PGA Tour with which he has banked $32 million in purse money through his career. Nick Piastowki just wrote and published an article in Golf magazine about what Hoffman said, and Chamblee’s rebuttal about it, and I heartily endorse what Brandel says. Entitled “Accountability? Where is his? Brandel Chamblee scorches Charley Hoffman,” you can read it online here.

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