Excellent ball striker Billy Horschel negotiated the exacting requirements of Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio, with a blistering seven-under par 65 to take a sizable lead of five strokes heading into tomorrow’s last round. On the course that Jack built, aka Jack Nicklaus, the hot and cold 35-year old Horschel, already a six-time winner on the PGA Tour, started fast with a chip-in birdie on the first hole and never looked back. Horschel is the kind of guy who could run away with this tournament that honors our Memorial Day holiday that honors and mourns members of the U.S. armed forces who have died.
But the biggest talk on the PGA Tour is still the new and competing Super Golf League. Financially backed by the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund, it will stage its first tournament next week in London. Two-time major champion Dustin Johnson, now 13th on the Official World Golf Ranking, seemed to have changed his mind and will be playing this event as the best player in the 42-player field. Rumors say Johnson has agreed to a sum of approximately $124 million up front just for joining the league, thus committing to play some of its tournaments. And that doesn’t count what players can earn from the purse of each tournament. Eight events are scheduled for this year, with the final one at Doral Trump in Miami.
The PGA Tour has stated that any of its members who compete on this Super Golf League tour will not have been granted permission to do so and therefore will be subject to disciplinary action, which may be a complete ban from the PGA Tour. The stakes are high. It looks as though this is going to wind up in court as a big money lawsuit. It basically comes down to whether the PGA Tour can legally make such a requirement of its members, whom the courts and Internal Revenue have always regarded as independent contractors and therefore not employees. It would seems that they therefore have the right to play whatever golf tournaments they choose. However, the PGA Tour is a trade association that seems to have a right to require that its members compete in its tournaments, and as far as I know, this supposed right has never been challenged in U.S. courts.
To make matters more uncertain for Dustin Johnson, he is a former RBC Canadian Open champion and has had an endorsement contract with RBC. But when Johnson recently announced that he would play the SGL in London next week, RBC immediately announced that it had ended its contract with Johnson. Of course, Canadian Open officials aren’t too happy with Johnson’s decision either. Sparks will surely begin to fly as soon as this SGL tournament is conducted next week.
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