‘Ban LIV golfers from majors? We’ll just start our own!’
If LIV golfers are banned from the four majors, the money men behind the breakaway series will just create their own. That’s the promise of Golf Saudi CEO Majed Al Sorour, one of the key players in creating the 48-man rival league that caused the sport’s so-called civil war.
Sorour, with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governer of Saudi Arabia’s $600 billion Public Investment Fund, have so far invested more than $2 billion of that pot to tempt the likes of Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, and Cameron Smith.
And while the governing bodies that run the majors – the Masters, PGA Championship, US Open and The Open – have, so far, stayed out of it and not banned any LIV players, they have said they may reassess their qualification processes in the new tour’s emergence.
The most likely to oust the rebels is the Masters, with Augusta chairman Fred Ridley named in the infamous legal action taken by LIV against the PGA Tour, claiming “he personally instructed a number of participants in the 2022 Masters not to play in the LIV Golf Invitational Series”. LIV currently boasts six Green Jacket winners in its ranks.
Greg Norman, meanwhile, has accused the tours of colluding with the Official World Golf Ranking to ensure his players fall far enough to keep them out that way.
And Sorour, speaking to The New Yorker in a lengthy expose, has decided he’ll take matters into his own hands.
“For now, the majors are siding with the [PGA] Tour,” he said. “And I don’t know why.
“If the majors decide not to have our players play, I will celebrate,” former professional footballer Sorour continued. “I will create my own majors for my players. Honestly, I think all the tours are being run by guys who don’t understand business.”
(Apropos, there is a wonderful anecdote in the lengthy expose that Sorour once tried to hire the entire Augusta National clubhouse to entertain some of the game’s top stars during the Masters. A request which was, presumably, treated with the contempt it deserved.)
The obvious question is how Sorour and LIV would go about creating its own majors. There were eight events in its first season of invitationals, while next year will feature anything between 14 and 24 events depending on who you believe. They will all feature the same 48 players – so how do you differentiate from the so-called regular events?
The obvious answer is for them to just pump more prize money into it. What makes this tournament different from any other? Well, instead of a $20 million prize pot with $4 million to the winner, it will be a $100 million prize pot with $20 million to the winner.
Which is all good and well for the already sickeningly wealthy players involved, but what does that add to the fan experience? Spoiler alert – it’s nothing.
And where will they play these LIV majors? Think of the wonderful places golf’s existing majors go. Augusta, St Andrews, Royal Birkdale, Royal St George’s, Winged Foot, Oakmont, Brookline, Shinnecock, Baltusrol, and Oakland Hills to name a handful. It’s a hell of a stretch to think that any of these clubs would want to align themselves with LIV.
With no disrespect to the places that LIV has held their events this year, they are courses that wouldn’t get close to hosting a major. Indeed, the best they will visit is the season-ending Team Championship at Doral – and that’s only because its owned by Golf Saudi’s US correspondent Donald Trump.
Take the PGA Tour’s flagship event, The Players Championship, as a short case study. Every year it has undoubtedly the best field in golf, boasting, until this year, a number of the world’s top 100 regularly in the 90s.
And how long have Jay Monahan and friends been trying to make that a major? It doesn’t matter how good your field is, it doesn’t matter how much money you pump into it, it doesn’t matter if it’s held on one of the most recognised golf courses in the world, and it doesn’t matter if beat us with “the fifth major” year after year, fans simply regard it as a really good golf tournament with the best players. It has everything you would want of a major, but it is – and this is the crucial bit – not a major. And it likely never will be.
The PIF can pump as much money into this as they want, but you can’t buy history and prestige.
Sorour accuses the powers that be who run the majors as “guys who don’t understand business”. What they do understand, though, is golf.
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Alex Perry
Alex has been the editor of National Club Golfer since 2017. A Devonian who enjoys wittering on about his south west roots, Alex moved north to join NCG after more than a decade in London, the last five of which were with ESPN. Away from golf, Alex follows Torquay United and spends too much time playing his PlayStation or his guitar and not enough time practising his short game.
