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As Saudi threat fades, professional golf can now take its collective breath

LOS ANGELES – The dominoes fell like so many rumors, one by one.

In just four winter-shortened days, everything that Greg Norman, LIV Golf and untold millions from the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund hoped to create unraveled. No, it’s not officially over, largely because it never officially started. Norman and LIV Golf never unpacked the worst-kept secret in golf: a Saudi-backed super league bent on wooing the game’s best players away from the PGA Tour.

The details were unveiled to a select group of journalists last fall with a strict embargo. Now, there’s no need for the details or the embargo following an eventful week at Riviera Country Club.

After several top players, from Jon Rahm to Tiger Woods, pledged their allegiances to the PGA Tour, the deconstruction began on Thursday with the reveal of a fiery interview with Phil Mickelson. In a single paragraph, the 51-year-old six-time major champion appeared to torch both the startup league and his future on the PGA Tour.

“[The Saudis] are scary motherf---ers to get involved with,” Mickelson told The Fire Pit Collective’s Alan Shipnuck last November in an interview for Shipnuck’s biography of Mickelson. “We know they killed [Washington Post reporter and U.S. resident Jamal] Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates. They’ve been able to get by with manipulative, coercive, strong-arm tactics because we, the players, had no recourse. As nice a guy as [PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan] comes across as, unless you have leverage, he won’t do what’s right. And the Saudi money has finally given us that leverage. I’m not sure I even want [the SGL] to succeed, but just the idea of it is allowing us to get things done with the [PGA] Tour.”

Aside from torching both leagues with an alarming economy of words, Mickelson’s acknowledgment that the super league concept was nothing more than “sportswashing” was the line that couldn’t be crossed for those who may have been considering a move to the super league. By saying the thing, Lefty, in turn, made everyone else second-guess their decisions.

Dustin Johnson, who had remained noticeably quiet about the super league, sent a second shockwave across the professional landscape on Sunday morning, saying in a statement released by the Tour: “Over the past several months there has been a great deal of speculation about an alternative tour; much of which seems to have included me and my future in professional golf. I feel it is now time to put such speculation to rest. I am fully committed to the PGA Tour.”

No players had publicly committed to the super league, but the line in recent weeks had started to crystalize, and Johnson, along with Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau, were the most high-profile and marquee names on the thinking-about-it list. Those who appeared interested in the super league riches normally spoke in code with references to growing the game and a general agreement that competition is always a good thing.

Wild rumors and speculation had boiled over in recent weeks that LIV Golf was poised to announce that anywhere from 17 to 20 players had joined the rival league, which would have set the stage for an epic showdown.

At the 2019 Players Championship, just three days before the COVID-19 pandemic shut the Tour down, commissioner Jay Monahan forged a hard line for any players considering a jump to a rival league when he promised he would, “vigilantly protect this business model.” For many, vigilantly protect translated to banned from the playing the Tour, and it appeared there were those who were willing to test the commissioner’s resolve.

That all changed when the final star-studded shoe dropped just before noon in Los Angeles: DeChambeau joined Johnson, and many others, on Team PGA Tour.

“While there has been a lot of speculation surrounding my support for another tour, I want to make it very clear that as long as the best players in the world are playing the PGA Tour, so will I,” DeChambeau posted on Twitter. “As of now, I am focused on getting myself healthy and competing again soon.”

In what very much felt like a coordinated and concise assault, the Tour ended years of speculation and arguably the greatest challenge the circuit has ever faced.

The super league isn’t finished, though. As one top player explained back in 2019, there is still an enormous amount of money awaiting anyone who is interested – and where there’s money, there’s hope. There’s still the chance players will be drawn to the idea of massive purses, guaranteed paydays and a limited schedule, but without the likes of DeChambeau, Johnson and (apparently) Mickelson, the appetite to be bold has likely faded.


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The drumbeat of a rival league will probably persist, but it won’t dominate the conversation the way it has the last few months. Instead, the narrative will swing toward the Tour and its ongoing efforts to evolve, from the Player Impact Program to a proposed fall series for the game’s top players.

“While there will always be areas where our Tour can improve and evolve, I am thankful for our leadership and the many sponsors who make the PGA Tour golf golf’s premier tour,” Johnson said in his statement.

Mickelson has repeatedly used the term “leverage” to describe his apparent interest in the super league, and many have pointed out the threat of a rival league has already changed professional golf for the better.

That threat has now passed. Not entirely, not irrevocably, but substantially enough for Monahan, the PGA Tour and the rest of professional golf to take a collective breath.