Recently, I’ve been blogging about the talk of the PGA Tour lately, which is a proposed pro golf tour that would compete with the PGA Tour like no other pro golf tour has ever done. This proposal is by LIV Golf, of which Greg Norman is the CEO. He is being called “the face” of this proposed tour. It is called the Super Golf League (SGL) and being funded through LIV Golf by the Saudi Arabian government, perhaps their Sovereign Wealth Fund or something like it. It has been reported that Phil Mickelson says LIV Golf has talked to about 100 players on the PGA Tour about playing on this proposed tour. And these players are being offered a lot of guaranteed money, whereas the PGA Tour has never guaranteed players any money, which is against the Tour’s principles.
Norman sent out a memo last week to PGA Tour players and their agents making certain allegation about PGA Tour “bullying,” claiminbg it cannot legally prevent pro golfers from competing on both the PGA Tour and this proposed Super Golf League. That assertion is pretty much a rehash of Norman’s complaint starting at the end of my full time career on the regular PGA Tour. You see, Norman is an Australian who moved to the U.S., competed full time on the PGA Tour, and became a superstar pro golfer. He won 89 pro golf tournaments, with 20 of them being PGA Tour wins of which two were majors, the U.S. Open in 1986 and 1993. Plus, he was runner-up in 8 majors. Norman has also become a very successful businessman in clothing and golf equipment.
When very good foreign-born pro golfers make their living playing pro golf tournaments, some of them want to play a rather limited schedule compared to other pro golfers and play on more than one pro golf circuit in the world. For example, Norman might have wanted to play 3-4 Australian tournaments, 6 tournaments on the European Tour, maybe a few other tournaments wherever, and 10 or less tournaments on the PGA Tour. To do this sort of thing, a player might have to become a member of multiple pro golf tour since there are pro golf tours all over the world.
Even back then and before, the PGA Tour had a rule that foreign-born players who were members of the PGA Tour had to play in a certain minimum number of PGA Tour tournaments per year in order to remain a member. (The four majors in golf are not owned and operated by the PGA Tour even though they are on the PGA Tour schedule.) When the PGA Tour first invoked this rule, which I think was early in my Tour career, that minimum number of tournaments was 12. (Of course, an exception has always been made for any player suffering an injury that prevents him from competing.) The Tour might have raised that later to a minimum of 15 tournaments.
Through the years, there were a few superstar, foreign-born, pro golfers who complained about this rule, most notably Greg Norman and Spain’s Seve Ballesteros. So, that’s why I’m saying these recent allegations against the PGA Tour by Greg Norman are mostly rehash. I think that back in those days, Norman may have claimed the PGA Tour could not legally impose such a rule, perhaps accusing it of being a monopoly. I don’t recall if he ever tried to bring a lawsuit against the PGA Tour about it. But his memo sent out last Friday seems to me to be an implicit threat to sue the PGA Tour if it bans any of its members from joining this Super Golf League.
Two days ago, the PGA Tour reportedly held a players’ meeting at the Honda Classic in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to discuss this matter. PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan reportedly told the players that they would have to make up their minds which tour they would compete on, it being either the PGA Tour or the SGL tour, but they could not compete on both without losing their PGA Tour membership.
Greg Norman should know way more about this than I do, which isn’t much, that is, about the legality of this situation. For, it has occupied his attention so much of his life. He had such an obsession about it, complaining to the media and arguing with Tour officials. But the acronym PGA in PGA Tour means Professional Golfers Association. Thus, the PGA Tour is an association with a membership. Such an entity in the U.S. legally has the right to accept someone for membership or reject that person as long as such rejection is not due to race, religion, etc.
The PGA Tour has always given as its main reason for requiring that foreign-born superstar members play at least 12 PGA Tour tournaments that its television package demands. When I played the regular PGA Tour, the television package provided about one third of the total purses of all PGA Tour tournaments. Nowadays, it is 57% of the purse total. So, television money is a big part of how the PGA Tour exists.
Therefore, the PGA Tour has always argued in defense of its minimum 12-15 tournament rule, saying it could not negotiate its lucrative TV package without being able to provide some guarantee to both tournament sponsors and television networks that it could supply reasonably-talented fields for its tournaments. Allowing foreign-born players to not make that minimum could considerably reduce the field talent.
So, my tentative conclusion about this matter is that the PGA Tour probably has the legal right, being an association, to ban players who join this proposed Super Golf League. But Norman also has raised the issue of the PGA Tour being a non-profit organization and that banning such players would be a legal violation of this status. The PGA Tour is both a non-profit and a private, taxable corporation. Now things get a bit sticky, and I don’t recall some of this.
We may find out more about this legality in the future if Norman’s LIV Golf sues the PGA Tour. Right now, it looks like they can’t even get any top players on the PGA Tour to commit to this SGL. Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson, who came out last week in support of it, backtracked this week and said they are with the PGA Tour after they saw how Phil Mickelson got hammered by just about everyone in the past week and has retreated to his bedroom to sulk or change his mind. (See my many blog posts in the past ten days about Poor Phil.)
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