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      PGA Tour’s Fight With LIV Golf Reaches Justice Department

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      The Justice Department is investigating the PGA Tour for anticompetitive behavior in its dealings with the breakaway LIV Golf series.The conflict upending men’s professional golf spread to a new setting with the Justice Department investigating the PGA Tour for anticompetitive behavior in its dealings with the breakaway LIV Golf series, a tour spokeswoman confirmed Monday.The PGA Tour has suspended players who have defied tour regulations and participated in two recent LIV Golf events without the PGA Tour’s permission. Greg Norman, the chief executive of LIV Golf, whose major shareholder is the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, has castigated the tour’s stance as an “illegal monopoly.”Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, has repeatedly countered that his organization’s policies will stand up to legal review, including if a lawsuit is filed by a suspended PGA Tour member, which is expected. The PGA Tour has pointed to a 1994 federal probe examining comparable disciplinary measures by the tour against golfers playing in a non-PGA Tour event without the commissioner’s permission. The tour received no federal sanctions at that time.“We went through this in 1994 and we are confident in a similar outcome,” Laura Neal, a PGA Tour executive vice president, wrote in an email Monday. Of the Justice Department inquiry, Neal said: “This was not unexpected.”A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment, citing the longstanding policy of neither confirming nor denying reports of continuing investigations.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 5A new series. More

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      The PGA and DP World Tours Allied. Then LIV Golf Happened.

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      The alliance made it easier for players to compete in more tournaments, but the new golf tour is testing the partnership.Fabrizio Zanotti had been waiting to hear where he’d be this week.Ranked 38th on the DP World Tour, he was on the cusp of getting into the Genesis Scottish Open. But as of last summer, an alliance between the PGA Tour and the DP tour means that he had a spot in the PGA Tour’s Barbasol Championship, nearly 4,000 miles away in Nicholasville, Ky., if he didn’t get into the Scottish Open.Zanotti, who is from Paraguay, wasn’t complaining. “It’s really good,” he said. “The partnership is nice for us here in Europe to have the opportunity to get there.”Just a few months ago, the PGA Tour and the European Tour, which oversees the DP World Tour, had an alliance that looked fruitful. After competing for players for several decades, the tours came together in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic and by November 2020 they had formalized a partnership.Last August, the tours announced that they were co-sanctioning three events: the Scottish Open and the Barbasol, which run Thursday through Sunday, and the Barracuda Championship next week in Reno, Nev., opposite the British Open.This meant players on the PGA and DP World Tours could compete in either event if their ranking was sufficient to get in. But mostly it meant if they didn’t get into the Scottish or British Opens, they had a great consolation prize in playing lesser tournaments on the more prestigious PGA Tour.Fabrizio Zanotti of Paraguay said an alliance between the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour should mean more opportunities for him to play and compete.Murad Sezer/ReutersWhen this deal was announced in August, it was heralded as a sign of the deepening cooperation between the tours and sold as a benefit to both tours’ members.“With us co-sanctioning three events this year, we are no longer competing for top players,” Keith Pelley, the European Tour commissioner, said in an interview earlier this year.“Everything changed after November 2020. It was a mind-set shift for both of our organizations to work as closely together as we could and share all facets of our businesses. We went from competitors to partners.”Those were the days. That alliance is being tested publicly and politically by the new Saudi-backed LIV Golf Tour. The high-dollar invitational series has lured a group of PGA and DP World Tour players away and sent more established tours scrambling to make changes.In the first event, the winner took home $4 million, but there was guaranteed money for every player, including the last-place finisher, Andy Ogletree, who won the U.S. Amateur in 2019. (He didn’t make the field at the first LIV event in the United States, at Pumpkin Ridge in Oregon, throwing into doubt his professional future.)For golfers trying to play their way up the rankings and into tournaments, money surely matters, but it’s the Official World Golf Ranking points that matter the most. They’re what determines how much control players have over their schedules.“The playing opportunities with the merger are great,” said Maverick Antcliff, who played in college at Augusta State University in Georgia and is ranked 171st on the DP tour. “If you have a good week in that opposite field event, you have an opportunity to transfer to the U.S. That’s the avenue I want to go. That strategic alliance has given us a clearer pathway.”Before the alliance, the way players in Europe got invites onto the PGA Tour and into the majors was by being ranked in the top 50 in the world — not just on a particular tour — or by qualifying for the United States or British Opens through their qualifying process. The strategic alliance has given talented but lower-ranked players a chance to compete on the PGA Tour and possibly finish high enough to gain more control over their schedule.While it presents larger, existential questions for professional golf, it has more practical week-to-week consequences for players trying to get into tournaments like the Scottish Open. Will defectors to the LIV Golf being excluded from events give other players a chance to compete? And that’s another way of players on the cusp asking if they have a spot in events after remaining loyal to the tour where they’ve been playing.The answers aren’t clear. For one, the two tours are structured differently. The PGA Tour is a nonprofit. The European Tour is essentially a union of its members. So their punishments have differed because their members ostensibly have a say.Jay Monahan, commissioner of the PGA Tour, has threatened to suspend or bar players who go to the LIV tour (with a number of players like Dustin Johnson and Kevin Na resigning their memberships upon moving to LIV).The LIV Golf Invitational Series presents existential questions for professional golf and has also changed the week-to-week dynamics for players trying to get into tournaments like the Scottish Open.Troy Wayrynen/EPA, via ShutterstockPelley, the European Tour commissioner, had to take a different tact with his players: They were fined $120,000 for playing in the first LIV event in London and barred from playing in the three co-sanctioned events. Pablo Larrazabal and Oliver Bekker paid their fines and were back playing on the European Tour at the recent Horizon Irish Open.Yet the LIV Tour, which set out to challenge the existing tours, is doing so at the cost of upcoming players. Consider Ogletree, who has struggled on the PGA Tour but had his U.S. Amateur champion status to fall back on. Now the question remains what his defection to the LIV Tour means for his professional career.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 5A new series. More

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      Mickelson and LIV Golf Attract Fans and Anger to Oregon

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      Participants in the Saudi-backed event “have turned their backs on the crime of murder,” one critic said. But spectators just wanted to see their favorite players.NORTH PLAINS, Ore. — Even as Phil Mickelson and other marquee players teed off to applause on Thursday in a Saudi government-backed tournament outside Portland, the golfers were excoriated in a protest and an affiliated television ad by family members and survivors of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.It was a sign of the divisive nature of the start-up LIV Golf series, and a jarring contrast to the enthusiasm of the gallery that followed Mickelson around the course at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club, chanting such encouragement as “Man of the people, Phil, man of the people.”The Sept. 11 family members held a news conference Thursday morning to express their vehement opposition to the first of five LIV tournaments being held this year in the United States. And they sponsored a television ad that pilloried the tournament and the involvement of such stars as Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau.The 30-second ad mentioned Saudi links to the terrorist attacks and noted that 15 of the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia. It also made reference to the death of Fallon Smart, a 15-year-old girl who was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver while crossing a street in Portland in 2016. A Saudi community college student facing charges disappeared before trial and was apparently spirited back home by the Saudi authorities.The ad showed photographs of Mickelson and other stars playing here, gave out the Pumpkin Ridge phone number and criticized the Saudis for using the tactic known as sportswashing to attempt to cleanse their dismal record on human rights.“We’ll never forgive Pumpkin Ridge or the players for helping Saudi Arabia cover up who they really are,” the ad said. It continued: “Don’t let the Saudi government try to clean up its image using American golf tournaments.”The family of Terrance Aiken, who was killed in the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, protested the Saudi-backed LIV Golf event on Thursday.Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian, via Associated PressTen Sept. 11 family members and one survivor of the attacks traveled to the Portland area to protest the tournament. They said they tried unsuccessfully to meet with some LIV golfers at a hotel on Thursday morning.Brett Eagleson, 36, whose father, Bruce, died in the collapse of the south tower of the World Trade Center, called the Saudi endeavor “shameful” and “disgraceful” and called on the LIV golfers to understand and acknowledge the kingdom’s links to the attacks, which took nearly 3,000 lives.He called on Mickelson to “be a man, step up, accept the truth of who you’re getting in bed with.”The Saudi government has long denied any involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks. The Sept. 11 Commission, in its 2004 report, found “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded” Al Qaeda, which carried out the attacks. But there has been speculation of involvement by other, lower-ranking officials, and an F.B.I. investigation discovered circumstantial evidence of such support, according to a 2020 report by The New York Times Magazine and ProPublica.Tim Frolich, a banker from Brooklyn who escaped from the 80th floor of the south tower but severely injured his left foot and ankle while running from the tower’s collapse, said the golfers had been “bought off” and were accepting “blood money” from the LIV series. The Saudi-sponsored tour offered signing bonuses, some reported to be in the nine figures, to lure some golfers like Mickelson from the PGA Tour.“This is nothing more than a group of very talented athletes who appear to have turned their backs on the crime of murder,” said Frolich, who will turn 58 this month.Mickelson was not made available to reporters on Thursday. In an interview published in February, he told his biographer, Alan Shipnuck, that the Saudis were “scary” and had a “horrible record on human rights,” including the 2018 killing and dismemberment of the Washington Post columnist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi. Mickelson later apologized for his remarks. He joined LIV Golf in June.No official attendance figures were given for the three-day tournament’s opening round, played under a cloudless sky with temperatures in the 70s. But the crowd to watch mostly aging players in decline was perhaps only a third of the daily attendance of 25,000 or so at a typical event on the rival PGA Tour. Mickelson, 52, finished the round at three over par, eight strokes behind the leader, Carlos Ortiz of Mexico. Still, Mickelson has a vocal and dedicated following.A number of spectators interviewed said they were simply interested in seeing a sporting event and avoiding geopolitics.“It’s messy, potentially, but I’m just here to watch golf and kind of block out all of that stuff,” said Stacy Wilson, 44, of Vancouver, Wash., a longtime fan of Mickelson’s who said she was taking advantage of an opportunity to watch him play in person. “I just choose to have tunnel vision about it and enjoy the game.”Some spectators noted that President Biden would be engaging with the Saudis in a trip there in mid-July. Others said they found it a double standard that golfers were being singled out when China has benefited from hosting two Olympics and from $10 billion in reported investments from N.B.A. team owners despite the country’s poor human rights record.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 5A new series. More

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      LIV Golf Is Drawing Big Names and Heavy Criticism in Oregon

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      As golfers arrive for the $25 million Saudi-backed tournament, a mayor, some 9/11 families, a U.S. senator and some Pumpkin Ridge club members have expressed outrage.NORTH PLAINS, Ore. — The Saudi government-backed LIV Golf Invitational series arrives in the United States on Thursday as it continues to roil a genteel sport with a slogan that promises, “Golf, but louder.” Except this is probably not the kind of noise its supporters had in mind.There is vehement opposition by some to holding the three-day tournament at the Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club, about 20 miles northwest of Portland. The disapproval has come from politicians, a group of 9/11 survivors and family members, club members who have resigned in protest and at least one outspoken club board member. Critics have decried what they describe as Saudi Arabia’s attempt to use sports to soften the perception in the West of its grim human rights record.Portland is the first of five LIV (a Roman numeral referring to the 54-hole format) tournaments to be held in the United States this year. The newly formed tour, with its lucrative prize money and eight-figure participation fees, has quickly become a threat to the long-established PGA Tour as marquee players such as Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka have joined the Saudi endeavor.The Portland tournament will take place as local fury still simmers from the 2016 death of Fallon Smart, a 15-year-old high school student who was killed while crossing a Portland street by a driver traveling nearly 60 miles an hour. A Saudi community college student, facing felony charges of manslaughter and hit and run for Smart’s death, removed a tracking device and disappeared before trial, returning home apparently with the assistance of Saudi officials.Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, has been insistently seeking justice for Smart and beseeching the White House to hold the Saudis more accountable. He has criticized the LIV golf tournament, which is backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, as an attempt to cleanse the country’s human rights reputation, a tactic known as sportswashing.Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon said the Saudis could not have picked “a more insulting and painful place to hold a golf tournament.”Jason Andrew for The New York Times“No matter how much they cough up, they’re not going to be able to wash away” that reputation, Wyden said in an interview. Referring to Smart’s death, he added, “The Saudis could not have picked a more insulting and painful place to hold a golf tournament.”Teri Lenahan, the mayor of tiny North Plains, population 3,440, has signed a letter with 10 other mayors from the area objecting to the LIV tournament, though they acknowledge they cannot stop it. Some members of Pumpkin Ridge have resigned in protest.Some family members and survivors of the 9/11 terrorist attacks have planned a news conference for Thursday to discuss what they called the golfers’ “willing complicity” to take money from a country whose citizenry included 15 of the 19 hijackers.Critics of the tournament note that American intelligence officials concluded that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, ordered the killing and dismemberment of the dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018; that 81 men were executed in Saudi Arabia in a single day in March, calling into question the fairness of its criminal justice system; and that Saudi women did not receive permission to drive until 2018 after a longstanding ban and still must receive permission from a male relative to make many decisions in their lives.“I really felt it was a moral obligation to speak out and say we cannot support this golf tournament because of where the funds are coming from to support it,” Lenahan said in an interview. “The issue is the Saudi government publicly executed people, oppresses women and considers them second-class citizens. And they killed a journalist and dismembered him. It’s disgusting.”Escalante Golf, a Texas firm that owns the Pumpkin Ridge course, did not respond to requests for comment.The LIV tournament will go on, playing out against a backdrop of realpolitik. As a candidate, President Biden vowed to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” for the murder of Khashoggi. But Biden will travel to Saudi Arabia in mid-July, seeking, among other things, relief from the oil-rich kingdom for spiking gasoline prices in the United States.In truth, the issue of human rights frequently takes a back seat to financial and marketing concerns in the realm of international sports. China, for instance, was named to host the Winter Olympics in 2022 and the Summer Games in 2008. And the N.B.A. does robust business there. A recent ESPN report said the league’s principal team owners have more than $10 billion invested in China.Greg Norman, the golfing legend who is the face of the LIV series, recently claimed that the PGA Tour had 23 sponsors doing more than $40 billion worth of business in Saudi Arabia, saying in an interview on Fox News: “The hypocrisy in all this, it’s so loud. It’s deafening.”Greg Norman, above, chief executive and commissioner of LIV Golf, spoke at the LIV Golf Invitational welcome party, right, in Portland, Ore.Chris Trotman/LIV Golf, via Getty ImagesJoe Scarnici/LIV Golf via Getty ImagesThere have been clumsy moments in support of the Saudi involvement in golf. When asked about Khashoggi’s killing last month at a promotional event in the United Kingdom, Norman said, “Look, we’ve all made mistakes.”The creation of the LIV tour has resurfaced longstanding questions about athletes’ moral obligations and their desire to compete and earn money.Speaking generally, Wyden, who briefly played college basketball, said the Saudi approach is “really part of an autocratic playbook.” He continued: “They go in and try to buy everybody off, buy their silence,” figuring that “something somebody is going to be upset about on Tuesday, everybody’s going to forget about on Thursday.”The Portland tournament will feature $25 million in prize money, including $5 million for team play and $4 million to the individual winner.At news conferences here, golfers acknowledged the financial attraction of the LIV tour. And they said they respected various opinions about their involvement. Some played down human rights issues, while others, like Sergio García and Lee Westwood, said they felt golf could be a force for good.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 5A new series. More

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      Schauffele Holds Off Theegala to Win Travelers Championship

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      Xander Schauffele nearly let a three-shot lead slip away, but a birdie on No. 18 gave him a two-stroke victory over Sahith Theegala and J.T. Poston.CROMWELL, Conn. — Before the first round of the Travelers Championship on Thursday, Sahith Theegala, a PGA Tour rookie, was asked if young players in the field were worried about the cluster of veterans spurning the tour to join the rival, Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit.“Actually, there’s a next man up mentality,” Theegala, 24, answered. “There are a ton of incredibly good players coming up. There’s not going to be an issue finding the next group of top golfers.”With one hole remaining in Sunday’s final round of the Travelers, it appeared that Theegala was going to be prophetic in the most personally satisfying way.Theegala held a one-stroke lead as he stood on the 18th tee after rallying to catch the third-round leader, Xander Schauffele, who began the day with a three-shot edge over Theegala. Reaching for a driver and needing to hit a left-to-right cut shot, Theegala, who had not bogeyed any of the previous 17 holes, felt confident.“A cut is my bread and butter,” he said later. “And I hit it well, it just didn’t cut. I don’t know why — adrenaline, maybe?”The shot came to rest in a fairway bunker, inches from an imposing, steep bank. Theegala needed two shots to escape the sand, which led to a double bogey and paved the way for Schauffele’s sixth career tour victory. He birdied the 18th hole to win the Travelers Championship by two strokes over Theegala and J.T. Poston.For Schauffele, who won the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics last year, it was his first individual tour victory in three years. (He teamed with Patrick Cantlay to win the Zurich Classic in Louisiana in April.)“I’m happy because I was expecting to be in a playoff,” Schauffele, 28, said. “That was a really strong field, and Sahith just kept charging. It was a bit of a shock to see the way it played out at the end. I knew the finish would be tight.”Statistically, Schauffele has been having one of his best seasons, even if his efforts had not led to an individual victory, something Schauffele acknowledged Sunday evening.“I just hadn’t put four good consecutive rounds together, which is why mentally this is going to be such a boost for me,” he said. “I’m feeling like this could jump-start some things for me. At the end of the round, I felt really locked in.”Sahith Theegala missed a bogey putt on the 18th green Sunday.Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesIt was the second time this year that Theegala had come close to earning his first tour victory. At the Phoenix Open in February, an unlucky bounce on the 17th hole of the final round led to a bogey that left him one shot short of qualifying for a playoff. That loss left Theegala in tears, but Sunday he was calm and measured in his analysis of the final sequences. He occasionally smiled, if wryly.“I played a lot of good golf all week, and I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing,” he said. “That’s the feeling I’m leaving with — a lot of positives.”Schauffele agreed with Theegala, in more ways than one.“He’s a really good player, and he just needs to keep knocking on the door until he breaks that thing down,” Schauffele said.He added: “There’s been a lot of talk about where golf is right now. Some say there’s a fracturing of our game, but the future’s bright.”With nine holes remaining on Sunday, Theegala was one of four golfers under 30 jockeying for the lead at the Travelers, one of the tour’s oldest events. The group included Michael Thorbjornsen, a 20-year-old amateur, and Poston, 29. Both were in contention to unseat Schauffele at the top of the leaderboard.Entering the closing holes, the duel between Schauffele and Theegala began to resemble match play, although Theegala was playing one group ahead of Schauffele, who was in the final group of the day.Theegala tied for the lead for the first time when he birdied the par-4 15th hole, and he took the lead outright by sinking an 11-foot birdie at the par-4 17th.As usual, the field at the Travelers was deep with top-ranked players, but this year was especially chock-full because the T.P.C. River Highlands golf course outside Hartford is only 105 miles from the Country Club outside Boston, which hosted last week’s U.S. Open.Poston, who entered the Travelers No. 162 in the men’s world rankings and has one career PGA Tour victory, in 2019, had a sparkling, six-under-par 64 on Sunday. Poston had three birdies on the front nine and three more on the back nine and did not have a bogey. It was his third top-10 finish in his last eight events.Thorbjornsen qualified for this year’s U.S. Open, which was held near his boyhood home of Wellesley, Mass., but he missed the cut last week. At the Travelers, he was sharp, with four rounds in the 60s, including a 65 in the second round. On Sunday, he eagled the par-5 sixth hole after knocking a fairway wood 260 yards to the green and leaving a tap-in putt for a three on the hole. Four birdies and two bogeys led to a four-under 66. More

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      Will LIV Golf Diminish PGA Tour Events Like the Travelers Championship?

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      A prized mainstay of Connecticut’s sporting calendar for 70 years, the Travelers has become more than just a golf tournament.CROMWELL, Conn. — The Travelers Championship in central Connecticut, contested on a golf course beside cornfields, is celebrating its 70th anniversary this week, which makes it one of the oldest continuously operated PGA Tour events. Through the decades, the tournament has changed names and venues, but in a small state lacking a professional franchise in one of the four leading North American sports (the N.H.L.’s Hartford Whalers left 25 years ago), the Travelers has been a prized mainstay of Connecticut’s sporting calendar.It has also been valuable to the PGA Tour, reliably drawing some of the biggest crowds of the tour season. It is beloved by golfers because of its homespun approach that showers players’ wives and children with personal attention, and that in turn has produced a host of marquee winners like Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Jordan Spieth and Bubba Watson.Xander Schauffele playing his shot from the first tee during the second round on Friday.Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesThe 1995 winner was Greg Norman, then the No. 1-ranked men’s golfer worldwide. Norman is the chief executive of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf series, which has roiled the PGA Tour by luring top golfers with guaranteed contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In the span of two months, the upstart circuit has threatened the primacy of the PGA Tour, and, potentially, the tour’s legacy events like the Travelers — which, in addition to entertaining southern New England golf fans, has attracted sponsorships that have led to more than $46 million in donations to 800 charities.The chief beneficiary most years has been a camp in northern Connecticut that helps about 20,000 seriously ill children and their families each year and was founded by a state resident, the actor Paul Newman.The focus of the intense showdown between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, whose major shareholder is the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, has been garish monetary offers to already wealthy golfers — along with a host of geopolitical underpinnings — but unseen in the struggle are other connected entities, like Connecticut’s treasured golf tournament.Could LIV Golf, which has planned eight events this year, including five in the United States, eventually upend or diminish the Travelers Championship and the other 30-plus PGA Tour events like it around the country? Already, Mickelson and Johnson, who were recently banned from the tour along with every other LIV Golf defector, are missing from this week’s field. Mickelson, 52, probably would not have played, but Johnson, the 2020 champion, had enthusiastically promised in February to return to Connecticut.Scott Halleran/Getty ImagesPGA TOUR Archive via Getty ImagesThree past champions, from top left, Phil Mickelson, Greg Norman, and Dustin Johnson, who are all involved with the LIV Golf series.Bill Streicher/USA Today Sports, via ReutersStanding on a hillside in the fan gallery overlooking the 18th hole during the first round of the Travelers on Thursday, Jay Hibbard of Woodstock, Conn., said Johnson was missed, “but not that much.”“Dustin took the money and made a choice, but I don’t come here to root for any one golfer,” Hibbard, 39, said. “Most golf fans come for the atmosphere and to see great golfers up close. And there’s enough other major champions out here this week.”Standing nearby, Mike Stanley of Plainville, Conn., said: “It’s a little depressing to see things get split up because I think it’s natural to want all the best guys playing together. But there’s still a bunch of top guys — I was following Rory McIlroy today and then Scottie Scheffler.”Scheffler and McIlroy are first and second in the men’s world rankings and were joined in the Travelers field by four other top 15 golfers. By contrast, no player committed to the LIV Golf tour is ranked in the worldwide top 15.Inside the players’ locker room here this week, Sahith Theegala, a 24-year-old PGA Tour rookie, said the players his age are of a similar mind: Their loyalty is to the PGA Tour.“I come from a modest upbringing,” Theegala said, “and I feel like the value of money has been kind of lost. It just seems like a million dollars, which a lot of guys earn on this tour, gets thrown around like it’s nothing, right?”Sahith Theegala lined up a putt on the seventh hole during the first round on Thursday.Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesAsked if he was worried about the future of PGA Tour events like the Travelers, Theegala shook his head.“There’s a history and legacy of this tour that the young guys have longed to be a part of,” Theegala said. “A new tour has no standing; you’re literally just playing for money.”A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More

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      Under Pressure From LIV Golf, the PGA Tour Defends Its Perch

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      Jay Monahan, the tour’s commissioner, announced prize money increases for next year to try to appease players and called the rival circuit an “irrational threat” that was trying to “buy the sport.”CROMWELL, Conn. — For the last month, as the upstart, Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit has poached some of the most widely known players from the established PGA Tour, there has been speculation that eventually the rival organizations might have to learn to coexist.But a passionate Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour’s commissioner, did not sound conciliatory on Wednesday. Using forceful language in his first news conference since mid-March, Monahan continued to assert the PGA Tour’s primacy, announced a substantial increase in future tour prize money and accused LIV Golf of trying to “buy the sport.”“If this is an arms race, and if the only weapons here are dollar bills, the PGA Tour can’t compete,” Monahan told reporters on the eve of the Travelers Championship in central Connecticut. “The PGA Tour, an American institution, can’t compete with a foreign monarchy that is spending billions of dollars in an attempt to buy the game of golf.“We welcome good, healthy competition. The LIV Saudi golf league is not that. It’s an irrational threat, one not concerned with the return on investment or true growth of the game.”Monahan, who met with about 100 PGA Tour-affiliated players Tuesday, said he told the group that the tour “will ultimately come out of the current challenge stronger because of our loyalty and support of our players and fans.”The LIV Golf series, however, did not let Monahan have the stage to himself Wednesday. About two minutes into Monahan’s news conference, LIV Golf announced that the four-time major champion Brooks Koepka had officially left the PGA Tour to join the alternative tour. LIV Golf also announced a majority of the field for its first tournament in the United States, to begin June 30 at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club outside Portland, Ore.There was also other news in the sport. As expected, officials for next month’s British Open said they would not bar players aligned with LIV Golf from the major tournament. Several of those golfers, like Koepka, have already qualified for the British Open because of their current world rankings or past major titles. That could change in the future, but as was the case for last week’s U.S. Open outside Boston, British Open officials were unwilling to exclude players who had already met the stated criteria for eligibility at this year’s event.And on the player front, several PGA Tour players at the Travelers Championship privately grumbled about how Koepka, just a week ago, was openly supporting a show of solidarity from a majority of top-tier golfers who have remained loyal to the tour. When asked about Koepka’s defection Wednesday, Rory McIlroy, who is second in the men’s world golf rankings, said: “I’m surprised at a lot of these guys because they say one thing and then they do another.”He added: “But it’s pretty duplicitous on their part.”Asked if he was talking about something Koepka said months ago or recently, McIlroy answered: “The whole way through, in public and private, all of it.”In addition to announcing the PGA Tour’s plans to enhance the payouts at eight tour events next year by $54 million, Monahan continued to pay tribute to his tour’s ethos as a meritocracy in which players are awarded prize money based on performance as opposed to the LIV Golf series where several golfers have signed guaranteed contracts reportedly worth hundreds of millions of dollars. LIV Golf events also have no cuts, meaning every player is assured at least a six-figure payday.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More

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      As Koepka Leaves for LIV Golf, the PGA Tour Mulls Changes

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      Brooks Koepka, a four-time major winner, and another top-20 player committed to the new series Tuesday. In a players’ meeting, the PGA Tour commissioner outlined tweaks that included a revised schedule.Since March, Brooks Koepka has emphatically denied he would consider joining the breakaway, Saudi-backed LIV Golf series.“Money isn’t going to change my life,” Koepka said at the time with a disdainful sneer. As recently as two weeks ago, Koepka was still telling fellow players he was not interested in leaving the PGA Tour.On Tuesday, he defected to the rival LIV Golf circuit, which will hold its second event, outside Portland, Ore., starting on June 30.What changed for Koepka? It would be easy to say there were most likely more than 100 million reasons for him to reverse course since other former PGA Tour players such as Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau have reportedly received nine-figure contracts to align with LIV Golf. The new circuit promises a limited, shortened schedule that gives golfers more flexibility and hosts no-cut tournaments in which every player is guaranteed a hefty payday.But every player who entered the inaugural LIV Golf event outside London earlier this month was suspended by the PGA Tour, and future entrants to upcoming LIV Golf tournaments will be treated similarly.Koepka’s decision is not a surprise — he telegraphed it with a scornful news conference at last week’s U.S. Open outside Boston — but it is another victory for LIV Golf in its fight for credibility against the established PGA Tour. Abraham Ancer of Mexico, who is 31 years old and ranked 20th in the men’s world rankings, also committed to the LIV Golf series on Tuesday.Koepka, 32, who won four major championships between 2017 and 2019, has been injured and struggling for years. His world ranking has slipped to No. 19 this week from No. 1 in 2019. In a bit of irony, Koepka is joining LIV Golf about 10 days after DeChambeau, his longtime antagonist, switched his allegiance. DeChambeau has also been dogged by health issues. Once viewed as a hard-swinging, bulked up game-changing phenomenon who captivated younger fans with his audacious length off the tee, DeChambeau has tumbled from fourth in the rankings to 30th. He was an afterthought at last week’s U.S. Open, finishing tied for 56th. Koepka missed the cut at this year’s Masters Tournament and finished outside the top 50 at last month’s P.G.A. Championship and at last week’s U.S. Open.But Koepka’s exit nonetheless provides another noteworthy bit of unexpected momentum for LIV Golf, whose major shareholder is the Private Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. Only six weeks ago, there was nearly universal solidarity among the PGA Tour’s player ranks.Each reversal of opinion sends little tremors through the close-knit community of PGA Tour players and has meaning. A fear of getting left behind can pervade the group, as with any other, especially when players keep going back on their word. Their colleagues may ponder: Should I jump ship now, before it’s too late and the top LIV Golf contracts are gone?Some perspective is necessary. A considerable majority of the best young players have remained loyal to the PGA Tour. Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Collin Morikawa and Justin Thomas — ranked first through fifth — affirm their commitment to the PGA Tour weekly. Morikawa did it again Tuesday when he tweeted: “To state for the record, once again, you all are absolutely wrong. I’ve said it since February at Riviera that I’m here to stay on the PGA Tour and nothing has changed.”But it is easy to wonder how many more new faces there might be in the field by June 30, when LIV Golf makes its first appearance in the United States. The full list of entrants is expected this week.How many will be in the field when the upstart tour arrives at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., on July 29? That tournament will be held after the mid-July British Open, the last of this year’s major men’s golf championships.Abraham Ancer, 31, also committed to LIV Golf on Tuesday.Andy Lyons/Getty ImagesWhat is known is that the pressure continues to ramp up on the PGA Tour to respond to the credible threat LIV Golf is posing. And Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, has the framework of a plan to at least partially appease players attracted to a shorter schedule and greater earnings. (Hint: It looks an awful lot like the LIV Golf schedule and prize money.)A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More