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      Masters Tournament Will Let LIV Golf Players Compete in 2023

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      The decision by Augusta National Golf Club is an interim victory for the upstart circuit, but other troubles loom.Augusta National Golf Club will allow members of the breakaway LIV Golf league to compete in the Masters Tournament, the first men’s golf major of 2023.The decision by the private club, which organizes the invitational tournament and has exclusive authority over who walks its hilly, pristine course each April, is an interim victory for LIV, the upstart operation bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to much of the golf establishment’s fury.“Regrettably, recent actions have divided men’s professional golf by diminishing the virtues of the game and the meaningful legacies of those who built it,” Fred S. Ridley, Augusta National’s chairman, said in a Tuesday statement. “Although we are disappointed in these developments, our focus is to honor the tradition of bringing together a pre-eminent field of golfers this coming April.”But the approach announced by the club on Tuesday — continuing to rely on qualifying categories that often hinge on performances in PGA Tour competitions or other majors, or on certain thresholds in the Official World Golf Ranking — threatens to limit access for LIV players as more years pass, which could ultimately make it more difficult for LIV to attract new golfers.Ridley said Augusta National evaluates “every aspect of the tournament each year, and any modifications or changes to invitation criteria for future tournaments will be announced in April.”LIV declined to comment on Tuesday.The organizers of the British Open, the P.G.A. Championship and the U.S. Open have not said how or whether they will adjust their 2023 entry standards in the wake of LIV Golf’s emergence this year. Augusta National, though, has now offered what could be a template for LIV’s short-term relationships with the major tournaments.Augusta National, for instance, did not abandon its tradition of offering past winners lifetime entry into the tournament, a reprieve for the six LIV players who have already earned green jackets: Sergio Garcia, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Patrick Reed, Charl Schwartzel and Bubba Watson. Recent winners of other majors will still qualify for the 2023 Masters, clearing the way, for at least a little longer, for players like Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Cameron Smith.And Augusta, which has become entangled in the Justice Department’s antitrust inquiry into men’s professional golf, will continue to admit players who are in the top 50 in the world rankings at certain times.The world ranking system is a weapon that is as subtle and technical (and disputed) as it is consequential and, for some golfers, determinative. LIV players do not currently earn ranking points for their 54-hole, no-cut events, and they have fallen in the rankings as other golfers have kept playing tournaments on eligible tours. In July, LIV applied to be included in the rankings, and more recently, it partnered with the MENA Tour, which is a part of the system, to try to keep its players in the mix.But the board that oversees the rankings includes golf executives whose reactions to the breakaway series have ranged from skeptical to hostile, and the group has not embraced LIV’s requests. If major tournaments like the Masters continue to use world ranking points as a qualifying method, at least some players will see their entry prospects evaporate. A sustained reliance on PGA Tour events as other qualifying avenues will also stanch access for LIV players.Whether LIV golfers can play the majors may be crucial to the upstart’s prospects in the years ahead. Beyond golfing glory, major championship winners earn heightened public profiles, and they are more likely to attract lucrative sponsorship arrangements. If LIV’s players face extraordinary constraints on their chances simply to reach a major tournament field, much less to win the competition, the league may have trouble recruiting new players.The possibility of exclusion from the majors was enough to warrant a brief legal spat over the summer, when the LIV players Talor Gooch, Matt Jones and Hudson Swafford asked a federal judge to order their participation in the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup playoffs. Gooch, Jones and Swafford had all failed to qualify for the 2023 majors through other means, and their lawyers warned that keeping them from the playoffs would probably end their chances at doing so. Heeding the arguments of the PGA Tour, which said that “antitrust laws do not allow plaintiffs to have their cake and eat it too,” the judge turned back their request.Augusta National’s decision on Tuesday, fleeting as it might ultimately prove, is still a milestone for LIV, which has not signed a television contract or attracted marquee sponsors. Those symptoms of trouble have only deepened concerns about the long-term viability of the new tour, which many critics regard largely as a means for Saudi Arabia to sanitize its reputation as a human rights abuser. Last week, the circuit acknowledged that its chief operating officer, who was widely seen as integral to its business ambitions, had resigned.In recent months, Greg Norman, LIV’s chief executive, urged major tournaments to “stay Switzerland” and allow his circuit’s players to participate.“The majors need the strength of field,” Norman, a two-time British Open victor and three-time runner-up at the Masters, said last month. “They need the best players in the business. They want the best competition for their broadcasting, for their sponsors, all the other things that come with it.”But LIV stands to benefit, too. A victory in a major by one of its players, LIV supporters have said, would give the circuit greater legitimacy.“If it is a LIV player who wins a major next year,” Norman said, “that goes to show you how we work within the ecosystem.” More

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      Atul Khosla, Chief Operating Officer of LIV Golf, Exits Saudi-Backed League

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      The executive’s departure is the latest turmoil for LIV, which has drawn plenty of attention but no major television or sponsorship deals.Atul Khosla, the veteran sports executive who was expected to guide LIV Golf into the franchise model on which it has staked its viability, has resigned from the venture that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund financed in a challenge to the PGA Tour.Khosla’s exit, just more than a year after LIV announced his appointment as its chief operating officer, comes as the start-up struggles to gain sustained traction and, confidential records reported by The New York Times this week suggest, is far from reaching the benchmarks that would make it successful.“At the conclusion of LIV’s successful inaugural season, Atul Khosla decided to move on,” Greg Norman, LIV’s commissioner, said in a statement on Friday, days after players and agents were privately told that Khosla would step down. “We respect A.K. and his personal decision.”Khosla is not the first senior official to leave LIV this year, and the outfit has faced questions over the future of Norman, a two-time winner of the British Open and a vociferous critic of the PGA Tour’s design. But while a departure by Norman would threaten to deprive LIV of one of men’s golf’s most familiar and time-tested voices, Khosla was increasingly seen as the LIV executive most integral to fashioning a way forward.At the same time, suspicions about the true scope of his power swirled in the weeks before he left LIV. In a recent court filing, the PGA Tour accused the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, as the wealth fund is formally known, of having an outsize role in managing an operation that has attracted a handful of the world’s top players, including Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson and Cameron Smith.But even with the defections of those players and some others from the PGA Tour, LIV has not secured the television and sponsorship arrangements that are the lifeblood of top-tier professional sports. Such deals were seen by McKinsey & Company consultants, in an analysis privately prepared for Saudi officials last year, as vital to the new league’s prospects for success.Moreover, LIV, which some experts regard as little more than an effort by Saudi officials to sanitize the country’s reputation as a human rights abuser, has not achieved other benchmarks identified by McKinsey as crucial to realizing even a “coexistence” with the PGA Tour, including signing most of the world’s top 12 golfers and facing “no/mild response” from the golf establishment.LIV has insisted, though, that it remains on track as it heads toward a system in which its teams will act as franchises. In a statement to The Times last week, Jonathan Grella, a LIV spokesman, said that it “has repeatedly made clear that our stakeholders take a long-term approach to our business model.”“Despite the many obstacles put in our path by the PGA Tour, we’re delighted with the success of our beta test year,” Grella said. “And we’re confident that over the next few seasons, the remaining pieces of our business model will come to fruition as planned. Our business plan is built upon a path to profitability. We have a nice, long runway and we’re taking off.”One week later, word of Khosla’s departure became public.In his statement on Friday about Khosla’s resignation, Norman asserted that some of LIV’s “most trusted partners” were “supporting our structural transition and introduction of exciting new developments.” More

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      Confidential Records Show a Saudi Golf Tour Built on Far-Fetched Assumptions

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      McKinsey documents suggest the Saudi league is far off-track for success. Experts say the analysis shows it was never just about profits.Early in 2021, consultants working for Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund studied an audacious idea: The desert kingdom wanted to become the world leader in the hidebound realm of men’s professional golf.If the idea seemed unlikely, records show that the benchmarks for success bordered on the fantastical. A new Saudi league would need to sign each of the world’s top 12 golfers, attract sponsors to an unproven product and land television deals for a sport with declining viewership — all without significant retaliation from the PGA Tour it would be plundering.The proposal, code-named Project Wedge, came together as Saudi officials worked to repair the kingdom’s reputation abroad, which hit a low after the 2018 assassination of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents. The plan was the foundation for what became LIV Golf, the series whose debut this year provoked accusations that Saudi Arabia was trying to sanitize its human rights record with its deep pockets, former President Donald J. Trump’s country clubs and a handful of big-name golfers. Some of those golfers have publicly played down Saudi abuses, as has Mr. Trump.The league’s promoters say they are trying to revitalize the sport and build a profitable league. But hundreds of pages of confidential documents obtained by The New York Times show that Saudi officials were told that they faced steep challenges. They were breaking into a sport with a dwindling, aging fan base — if one with plenty of wealthy and influential members — and even if they succeeded, the profits would be a relative pittance for one of the world’s richest sovereign wealth funds. Experts say that these make clear that Saudi Arabia, with a golf investment of least $2 billion, has aspirations beyond the financial.An unidentified man trying to hold back the press as Saudi investigators arrived at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in April 2019 amid a growing international backlash to the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi.Chris Mcgrath/Getty Images“The margins might be thin, but that doesn’t really matter,” said Simon Chadwick, a professor of sport and geopolitical economy at Skema Business School in Paris. “Because subsequently you’re establishing the legitimacy of Saudi Arabia — not just as an event host or a sporting powerhouse, but legitimate in the eyes of decision makers and governments around the world.”The documents represent the most complete account to date of the financial assumptions underpinning LIV Golf. One of the most significant was prepared by consultants with McKinsey & Company, which has advised the kingdom’s leaders since the 1970s. McKinsey, which has worked to raise the stature of authoritarian governments around the world, was key to Vision 2030, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s plan to diversify the kingdom’s economy and turn it into a powerful global investor. Worldwide sports have become a pillar in that plan, with Saudi officials even discussing the possibility of someday hosting the World Cup.McKinsey, which declined to comment, analyzed the finances of a potential golf league, but pointedly said in its report that it was not examining whether it was a strategically viable idea. And many of Saudi Arabia’s rosy assumptions, McKinsey added, “have been taken for granted and not been challenged in our assessment.”Indeed, LIV Golf appears far from meeting the goals that the Project Wedge documents laid out. After an inaugural season that cost in excess of $750 million, the league has not announced major broadcasting or sponsorship deals. And its hopes for a surrender by, or an armistice with, the PGA Tour have instead collapsed into an acrimonious court battle.Mr. Trump with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, right, at a LIV tournament at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in July.Seth Wenig/Associated PressMoreover, the league is nowhere near having signed all of the elite players who Saudi advisers said were required for success. In one presentation slide, as McKinsey projected one of its more optimistic financial forecasts, the participation of Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy — who have combined to win 25 major championships — was included under the headline “What you need to believe.”Of those stars, only Mr. Mickelson joined LIV, with a deal that is reportedly worth at least $200 million.Mr. Woods, with his ability to attract fans and sponsors, was seen as essential. Even though the league offered Mr. Woods a long-term plan that could have made him “in the neighborhood” of $700 million to $800 million, according to Greg Norman, LIV’s chief executive, the league has found Mr. Woods to be one of its greatest public antagonists.“I don’t know what their end game is,” Mr. Woods said of LIV last month in the Bahamas, where he was hosting a tournament on the PGA Tour schedule. Mr. Woods acknowledged that the PGA Tour “can’t compete dollar for dollar” with the Saudis, but he said that “an endless pit of money” was not a surefire means to “create legacies.”Saudi soccer fans celebrating during a World Cup match against Argentina in Qatar last month. Worldwide sports have become a pillar in the plan to raise Saudi Arabia’s global stature.Tasneem Alsultan for The New York TimesNot long after Mr. Woods spoke, LIV announced details for several of the 14 tournaments it expects to be the proving grounds for $405 million in prize money next year, in addition to the guaranteed payouts it has promised players. It has said it will release its full schedule “in the coming weeks.”The season will unfold as LIV’s business evolves toward its planned franchise model. Although professional golf has some signature team events like the Ryder Cup, the PGA Tour generally relies on players competing for themselves. LIV, whose music-blasting gatherings feel little like traditional tournaments, is betting that fans will prefer to watch a dozen four-player teams competing against each other.“LIV has repeatedly made clear that our stakeholders take a long-term approach to our business model,” Jonathan Grella, a spokesman for LIV, said in a statement. “Despite the many obstacles put in our path by the PGA Tour, we’re delighted with the success of our beta test year. And we’re confident that over the next few seasons, the remaining pieces of our business model will come to fruition as planned. Our business plan is built upon a path to profitability. We have a nice, long runway and we’re taking off.”Prince Mohammed, the kingdom’s 37-year-old de facto ruler, often gravitates toward splashy ventures and has repeatedly said that he sets sky-high targets in hopes of motivating officials to achieve a fraction of them. In its analysis, McKinsey called the golf league “a high-risk high-reward endeavor.”The consultants detailed three possible outcomes for a franchise-driven league: languishing as a start-up; realizing a “coexistence” with the PGA Tour; or, most ambitiously, seizing the mantle of dominance.In the most successful scenario, McKinsey predicted revenues of at least $1.4 billion a year in 2028, with earnings before interest and taxes of $320 million or more. (Federal records show that the PGA Tour, a tax-exempt nonprofit, logged about $1.5 billion in revenue and posted a net income of almost $73 million for 2019.)By contrast, a league mired in start-up status — defined as attracting less than half of the world’s top 12 players, navigating a “lack of excitement from fans,” reeling from limited sponsorships and confronting “severe response from golf society” — stood to lose $355 million, before interest and taxes, in 2028.The American golfer Phil Mickelson, right, at LIV Golf’s inaugural event in St. Albans, England, in June.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFor now, LIV’s standing tilts sharply that way. Its tournaments have not commanded large crowds, and its broadcasts are largely limited to YouTube. The PGA Tour suspended players who defected, and it is not yet clear whether the organizers of the four major men’s tournaments will allow LIV golfers to participate.Of the top 12 players on a roster in the McKinsey report, LIV has attracted four: Sergio Garcia, Dustin Johnson, Mr. Mickelson and Henrik Stenson.McKinsey’s work on the golf project is part of a longstanding pattern of foreign consultants providing rationales for Gulf States’ multibillion-dollar projects, some of which become white elephants. When the crown prince announced plans to build a futuristic city called Neom, McKinsey was among the companies that helped envision proposals for robotic dinosaurs, flying taxis and a ski resort that officials say will host the Asian Winter Games in 2029.The Project Wedge analysis was conducted for Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund, which is led day to day by its governor, Yasir al-Rumayyan. Mr. al-Rumayyan, a longtime golf enthusiast, is also chairman of the Saudi Arabian Golf Federation. In 2019, he hosted a “Golf Means Business” tournament at the crown prince’s annual investment conference in Riyadh. The PGA Tour describes Mr. al-Rumayyan in court documents as a micromanager whose “daily involvement and influence bears on everything from LIV’s global strategy to the tiniest detail.”Tiger Woods at the Hero World Challenge at Albany Golf Course in Nassau, Bahamas, this month.Mike Ehrmann/Getty ImagesOne document obtained by The Times shows that LIV organizers considered assembling an all-star board of business, sports, legal and political titans. But nine of the people who were identified as possible board members, including Ginni Rometty, the former IBM chief executive, and Randall Stephenson, the former AT&T chairman, said they had never been approached about joining.“I didn’t know I was on the list, and I have never been approached,” Mr. Stephenson, who is a member of the PGA Tour’s board, said in an interview. If asked, he said, he would decline. “It would be a quick conversation,” he said.Most others listed in the document, including the basketball legend Michael Jordan; former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; and Mark Parker, the executive chairman of Nike, did not respond to requests for comment. McKinsey did not appear to prepare the document, which carries the logo of Golf Saudi, which Mr. al-Rumayyan leads.Mr. Grella, the LIV spokesman, did not answer inquiries about the current composition of a board, which a player handbook said would initially have up to 10 members, including Mr. al-Rumayyan and Mr. Norman.Despite its struggles, LIV is making plans for tournament venues years into the future and is trying to sign more stars. Mr. Norman said in November that a television deal was “a priority,” and as the new season nears, golf fans and executives alike have debated what boost the new league might get if one of its players captured a major championship in 2023.That, Mr. Norman has suggested, would be proof of “how we work within the ecosystem.”It would also be a sign that an outright ban of LIV players from the sport’s biggest stages, one of the gravest hazards that McKinsey flagged, had so far been avoided.Greg Norman, center, the chief executive of LIV Golf, has said that a television deal is “a priority.”Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesKevin Draper More

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      Dow Finsterwald, Golfer Known for Some Close Calls, Dies at 93

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      Finsterwald was one of the sport’s most consistent money winners. But he may be best known for twice narrowly missing out on winning the Masters.Dow Finsterwald, who captured the 1958 P.G.A. Championship and twice narrowly missed out on winning the Masters while becoming one of golf’s most consistent money winners, died Nov. 4 at his home in Colorado Springs. He was 93. His death was confirmed by his son Dow Jr., The Associated Press reported. No cause was given.Finsterwald won 11 PGA Tour events and finished in the money in 72 consecutive tournaments in the 1950s. That streak was the second longest at the time, after Byron Nelson’s 113 consecutive tournament cuts in the 1940s.“My conservative play brings the highest rewards,” Finsterwald told The New York Times after winning the P.G.A. Championship by two shots over Billy Casper. “I just keep trying to move the ball toward the hole.”Finsterwald won the 1957 Vardon Trophy for best scoring average of the year and was named the 1958 pro golfer of the year by the P.G.A.He played on four Ryder Cup-winning teams and was the nonplaying captain of the victorious 1977 American squad, which faced a British-Irish team for the last time before the event became a competition between Europe and the United States. But for all his achievements, Finsterwald endured frustration at the Masters.He finished two strokes behind the victorious Arnold Palmer, a close friend, in 1960 after incurring a two-stroke penalty for taking a prohibited practice putt. He finished tied for the lead with Palmer and Gary Player after four rounds at the 1962 Masters, but he fell to third place in the 18-hole playoff, which Palmer captured with a late charge.Finsterwald may have lacked the flair that would appeal to the galleries, but he did have a fine short game.“Jerry Barber and I were playing a practice round, $5 or $10 Nassaus,” he told The Columbus Dispatch in 2007, referring to a type of bet. “He chipped in two or three times and I called him a ‘lucky something.’ He said, ‘The more I practice, the luckier I get.’“That was the first time I’d heard that. If I was able to get a decent short game, it was because I think I worked at it a little harder than others.”Dow Henry Finsterwald was born on Sept. 6, 1929, in Athens, Ohio.When he was 14, his father, Russell, a former head football and basketball coach at Ohio University in Athens, got him a summer job at the Athens Country Club. He bought a set of clubs, went on to play for the Ohio University golf team, played on the PGA Tour as an amateur, and turned pro in November 1951.Finsterwald was the runner-up in the 1957 P.G.A. Championship, when he was upset in the final by Lionel Hebert. It was the 39th and last time the event used the match play format.He had won only four tour events going into the 1958 P.G.A. Championship, which was held at Llanerch Country Club in Havertown, Pa.Entering the fourth round, Finsterwald was two strokes behind the leader, Sam Snead, and one behind Billy Casper. He shot a 31 on the first nine on Sunday, finished with a 67 and won by two shots over Casper.Two years later, Finsterwald endured a shattering experience at the Masters.When he set the ball down for a practice putt after holing out on a second-round green, Casper, his playing partner, warned him that this was prohibited by the course rules, which were printed on the back of the scorecards.Finsterwald, unaware of the prohibition, told Casper that he had in fact taken a practice putt on a green after holing out in the first round.He then reported his transgression to the officials, who retroactively assessed a two-shot penalty for his first-round practice putt. But they did not invoke the usual automatic disqualification of a golfer who turns in an incorrect scorecard, which Finsterwald had done for the first round, in view of the delay in imposing the penalty.Palmer birdied the last two holes of the fourth round and beat Ken Venturi by one stroke — and Finsterwald by the two shots he had lost to his penalty.Finsterwald, who was considered an expert on the rules of golf, was an official at the 2013 Masters, at which Tiger Woods made an improper drop after hitting into the water in the second round. Finsterwald mentioned his 1960 Masters misadventure to the head of the competition committee, believing that it might serve as a guide on how to penalize Woods.Woods was assessed a two-shot penalty for the infraction. But, like Finsterwald, he was not disqualified for signing an incorrect scorecard, since the penalty was imposed after the second round had ended. He finished in a tie for fourth place, four shots back. (Adam Scott defeated Angel Cabrera in a playoff.)After retiring from regular tour play in 1963, Finsterwald served as the director of golf at the Broadmoor Golf Club in Colorado Springs.Finsterwald’s wife, Linda Pedigo Finsterwald, died in 2015. They had a daughter, Jane, and four sons, Dow Jr., John, Russell and Michael, who died shortly after birth. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.Although Finsterwald twice fell short at the Masters, the attention he received led to a job as the host of a series more than 150 syndicated television vignettes about the early 1960s, “Golf Tip of the Day,” in which he gave pointers to athletes and show-business figures.The rewards for Finsterwald were mostly limited to his becoming a modest presence as a TV personality. As he told the news website TCPalm in 2011, the shows paid him what “today would be called small peanuts.” More

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      LIV Golf Threw a Sport Into Chaos. It Also Changed It.

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      The Saudi-backed golf series, which will expand next year, has forced the PGA Tour to redesign its economic model. The drama between the two golf entities seems far from over.DORAL, Fla. — To hear the 52-year-old Phil Mickelson’s account, whatever happened this year in his golf career — a greed-fueled rupture, a simply-business parting of ways, an inevitable estrangement, a lucrative exercise in denial and downplaying — has yielded something close to sublime.“I see LIV Golf trending upward, I see the PGA Tour trending downward and I love the side that I’m on,” Mickelson said this month in Saudi Arabia, the country whose sovereign wealth fund bankrolled the new LIV Golf circuit, including a Mickelson contract believed to be worth about $200 million.As the series closes its first season Sunday, when its team championship event is to be decided at Trump National Doral Golf Club and a $50 million prize fund divided, it can credibly claim that it has disrupted men’s professional golf more than anything else since the late 1960s, when what would become the PGA Tour emerged.It has done so with a checkbook that seems boundless, nearly unchecked brazenness and self-assurance, and the political cover of a former American president who has looked past Saudi Arabia’s record on human rights. It has not, though, been a romp without resistance or an instantaneous and definitive dethroning of the old order.The PGA Tour, now redesigning its economic model so urgently that it is tapping reserve funds, still commands the bigger roster of current stars and the loyalties of the tournaments that matter most to history. The tour, less tainted by geopolitics, has lucrative television deals; LIV Golf is on YouTube. Players earn world ranking points at PGA Tour events; they drop in the rankings the longer they compete in the new series. Dustin Johnson knows this well, as he is now No. 30, down from No. 13 when he signed with LIV in May. (But perhaps Johnson does not mind all that much: He captured LIV’s individual championship and has won at least $30 million on the circuit this year, after accruing about $75 million in career earnings during a PGA Tour tenure that started in 2007.)Dustin Johnson’s world ranking has fallen to No. 30 from No. 13 when he joined LIV Golf in May.Ross Kinnaird/Getty ImagesWhat many golf executives are figuring out, though, is that it is possible to revile much about LIV, from its financial patron to its devotion to 54-hole tournaments to its defiant dispensing of starchy atmospheres, and yet recognize that the PGA Tour had left itself vulnerable to at least a spasm of drama. Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, who ascended again to the world’s No. 1 ranking after a tour event last weekend, have been two of LIV Golf’s foremost critics — and two leading architects of a new strategy to fortify and reinvent a PGA Tour that had some popular players feeling undervalued and some younger ones struggling for financial breakthroughs.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More

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      Augusta National and U.S.G.A. Drawn Into Justice Department Antitrust Inquiry

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      The Justice Department is investigating the PGA Tour for anticompetitive behavior in its dealings with LIV Golf, the breakaway Saudi-backed league.DORAL, Fla. — The Justice Department’s antitrust inquiry into men’s professional golf — a sport splintered this year by the emergence of a lucrative circuit financed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — has in recent months come to include the organizers of some of the most hallowed and influential tournaments in the world, according to people familiar with the matter.The United States Golf Association, which administers the U.S. Open, acknowledged on Wednesday that the Justice Department had contacted it in connection with an investigation. Augusta National Golf Club, which organizes the Masters Tournament, and the P.G.A. of America, which oversees the P.G.A. Championship, have also drawn the gaze of antitrust officials.The federal inquiry is unfolding in parallel with a separate civil suit filed in California by LIV Golf, the new Saudi-backed series, accusing the PGA Tour, which organizes most of the week-to-week events in professional golf, of trying to muscle it out of the marketplace. Moreover, LIV has contended that major tournament administrators, such as Augusta National and the P.G.A. of America, aided in the PGA Tour’s urgent efforts to preserve its long standing as the premier circuit in men’s golf.LIV, for instance, has accused the leaders of the R&A, which runs the British Open, and Augusta National of pressuring the Asian Tour’s chief executive over support for the new series. LIV also said that Fred S. Ridley, the Augusta National chairman, had “personally instructed a number of participants in the 2022 Masters not to play in the LIV Golf Invitational Series” and that the club’s representatives had “threatened to disinvite players from the Masters if they joined LIV Golf.” (A handful of golfers, including Phil Mickelson, joined the lawsuit but later withdrew their names from it, content to let LIV Golf wage the courtroom fight.)LIV executives have also fumed over perceived stalling by Official World Golf Ranking administrators to award ranking points to LIV players, who include Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Cameron Smith. The ranking system’s governing board includes executives from each of the major tournament organizers, as well as the PGA Tour.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More

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      PGA Tour Accuses LIV Golf of Interfering With Its Contracts

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      The PGA Tour filed a counterclaim against the breakaway, Saudi-backed LIV Golf series, which has accused the tour of antitrust violations.The PGA Tour filed a countersuit against LIV Golf on Wednesday, the latest turn in a winding legal battle between the tour and the Saudi-backed circuit that has drawn a number of top players.In its counterclaim, the PGA Tour, which LIV is suing for antitrust violations, said the upstart series had “tortiously interfered” with the tour’s contracts with golfers who had left to join LIV. It added that LIV had “falsely informed” its players that they could break their contracts with the tour “for the benefit of LIV and to the detriment of all tour members.”“Indeed, a key component of LIV’s strategy has been to intentionally induce tour members to breach their tour agreements and play in LIV events while seeking to maintain their tour memberships and play in marquee tour events like The Players Championship and the FedEx Cup Playoffs, so LIV can free ride off the tour and its platform,” the PGA Tour said in its counterclaim.The PGA Tour, which declined to comment on Thursday, asked for a trial by jury, which was set for January 2024. The tour also seeks damages for any lost profits, “damages to reputational and brand harm” and other legal costs.In a statement on Thursday, LIV said the PGA Tour “has made these counterclaims in a transparent effort to divert attention from their anti-competitive conduct, which LIV and the players detail in their 104-page complaint.”A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More

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      How Bryson DeChambeau Saved Long Drive Golf

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      The sport is gaining fans among the public and professional golfers, many of whom have adopted its techniques for their own games.In August 2021, long drive was on the brink of collapse. The niche sport — in which competitors drive golf balls as far as humanly possible, often more than 400 yards — had endured a difficult year, disrupted by the pandemic, and registrations for the world long drive championship were dismal.That’s when Bryson DeChambeau, the winner of the 2020 U.S. Open and a member of the 2018 and 2021 U.S. Ryder Cup teams, entered the competition, sparking a surge in interest and dozens of new entries.“He saved us, that’s for sure,” Kyle Berkshire, a two-time world long drive champion, said.DeChambeau’s participation was not a total shock: In recent years, more and more established pros, increasingly obsessed with driving distance, have become unabashed fans of long drive, with PGA Tour winners like Justin Thomas, Tony Finau and Cameron Champ expressing support. Berkshire has become a go-to training partner and sounding board for many of these pros, sharing tips on swing technique, stretching, fitness routine and more.“Back when I was in college, everyone thought the long drive guys were the clowns of the golf world,” Berkshire said. “That whole perception is changing.”DeChambeau has played a major role in that, and after finishing seventh in the 2021 competition, he’ll be back for this year’s world championship, which begins Tuesday.DeChambeau made headlines in 2020 by bulking up and drastically changing his swing, increasing his average driving distance by nearly 20 yards to lead the PGA Tour. He ultimately won that year’s U.S. Open, and he has not been shy about crediting long drive — particularly its emphasis on swing speed — with much of his success.“I actually watched the 2019 world long drive championship, and that’s what inspired me and got me thinking,” DeChambeau said in a recent phone interview. “These guys were swinging the golf club 40 or 50 miles faster than me, so I thought, what if I could add just 15 percent to my swing speed and use that on tour? That’s how it started, and then I got addicted to hitting it farther and farther.”With the help of Berkshire and other long drivers, DeChambeau adopted a common long drive practice method: overspeed training, in which competitors swing the driver as hard as possible, with no regard for accuracy, in the hopes that it will also improve the speed of their more typical, controlled swings.The method worked incredibly well for DeChambeau — so much so that now, he and Berkshire said, it has become a standard training routine for many professional golfers.“It’s sort of a new revolution,” Berkshire said. “At this point, it’s almost required for professional golfers, since everyone is doing it.”According to Mark Broadie, a Columbia University professor and golf researcher who helped coach DeChambeau in 2020, the embrace of long drive within the golf world is a logical next step. Years ago, Broadie invented the “strokes gained” metric, which analyzes the impact of every shot throughout a round of golf in relation to the rest of the field. His analysis ultimately found that even marginal gains in driving distance could have a major effect on scores.“It’s true for all players: If you drive it 20 yards longer, even with a little less accuracy, you can gain a stroke per round,” Broadie said. “So it feels like a natural evolution for long drive to be more accepted. If you want to drive the ball as far as possible, then you clearly want to talk to the long drivers, the guys who have optimized that throughout their careers.”Long drive has existed, in some form or another, since 1949, when a driving competition was held in conjunction with that year’s P.G.A. Championship. A more formal long drive world championship would form in 1976, and various professional leagues have taken shape since the 1990s.One of the most recent iterations of a long drive league — the World Long Drive Association, sponsored by Golf Channel — essentially disbanded in 2020 after canceling its season because of the pandemic. In its wake came a spiritual successor, the Professional Long Drivers Association, which has hosted a number of tournaments, including the 2021 world long drive championship.While the association’s administrators are happy to be gaining acclaim in golf circles, they are also hopeful it will translate into mainstream acceptance.“This year, we’re getting a really big response from players wanting to compete, and more fans are coming out to watch our events,” said Bobby Peterson, the association’s managing partner and majority owner. A former long drive competitor, Peterson has been a part of the sport since 1992, and he said there had never been as much enthusiasm surrounding it as there is this year, including interest from possible corporate partners. “This isn’t just hyperbole,” Berkshire said. “Based on the talks I’ve been involved in, this sport is in the best position it’s ever been in.”Long drive’s recent ascent comes at a time when golf is reckoning with a major disruption in the form of the LIV Golf Series, whose major shareholder is the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. In its first season, LIV Golf poached some high-profile golfers from the PGA Tour, including DeChambeau, and implemented innovations aimed at enhancing the fan experience and changing how viewers watch golf, including shorter tournament structures and a team format.David Carter, a sports business professor at the University of Southern California, said long drive could ultimately be an intriguing acquisition or partner with either the PGA Tour or LIV Golf, as both look to add content in the years to come.“It’s all about this next generation of consumer: younger people who want short-form, digestible content,” Carter said. “Something like long drive could be curated in a lot of different ways, whether online, through social media, or in conjunction with tournaments.”As long drivers prepared for this year’s world championship, Berkshire was grateful for DeChambeau’s continued support. He said he nearly had to pinch himself when he thought of how far long drive had come in such a short time.“Just a year ago, I had never seen a sport in such a bad position,” Berkshire said. “Now, I’ve never seen one poised for such a bright future. It’s just an exciting time all around.” More