PGA Tour boss Monahan faces calls to resign after LIV Golf merger

The inevitable reaction from the players he had fronted for the last two years were swift in coming and PGA Tour (PGAT) Commissioner Jay Monahan faced the brunt of their ire at a late meeting in Toronto.

Hours after the LIV Golf-PGA Tour-DP World Tour (DPWT) merger with the Saudi Arabian wealth fund PIF was made public, Monahan met his member players ahead of the Canadian Open and according to a golfer who was present, there were calls for him to step down.

Tour Advisory Council member Johnson Wagner was quoted as telling reporters,“There were many moments where certain players were calling for new leadership of the PGA Tour and even got a couple of standing ovations.

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“I think the most powerful moment was when a player quoted Monahan from the 3M in Minnesota last year when he said, 'as long as I'm commissioner of the PGA Tour, no player that took LIV money will ever play the PGA Tour again'. It just seems like a lot of backtracking.

“Players were mad, they were calling for his resignation,” Wagner, a three-time PGA Tour winner, added.
Monahan was stoic in the face of the barrage of criticism, “I recognise that people are going to call me a hypocrite,”he was quoted as saying. “Any time I've said anything I've said it with the information I had at that moment, and I said it based on someone that's trying to compete for the PGA Tour and our players.

“I accept those criticisms, but circumstances do change, and I think looking at the big picture got us to this point.It probably didn't seem this way to them, but as I looked to those players that have been loyal to the PGA Tour, I'm confident they made the right decision.

“Obviously, it's been a very dynamic and complex couple of years, and for players, I'm not surprised. This is an awful lot to ask them to digest, and this is a significant change for us in the direction that we were going down.

“They have helped re-architect the future of the PGA Tour, they have moved us to a more competitive model. We have significantly invested in our business in 2023, we're going to do so in '24.”

Monahan also said at the meeting that all those who had joined LIV Giolf would be readmitted to their parent tours next year, and the issue of compensation for those who did not jump ship was on the table.

“Those are the serious conversations that we're going to have,” the embattled official said. “Ultimately everything needs to be considered. Ultimately what you're talking about is an equalisation over time and I think that's a fair and reasonable concept.”

Earlier on Tuesday, a joint press communique from the involved parties said that the three main tours in contention – the PGAT, the DPWT and LIV Golf – would be merging under a new banner with golfers from the parallel Greg Norman-fronted league being readmitted o the fold.

Defending champion Rory McIlroy who was one of the leading opponents of LIV Golf and those who had switched sides told reporters in Toronto on Wednesday that he had resigned himself to the merger.

“I’ve made my peace with it. I’ve seen what’s happened in other sports and businesses. I’ve just resigned myself to the fact this is going to happen. How do you keep up with people who have more money than anyone else?” McIlroy, the RBC Canadian Open defending champion, said.

“LIV has got nothing to do with this. It’s hard for me not to sit up here and feel somewhat like a sacrificial lamb. I still hate LIV, I hate them,” and added that he was not in favour of readmitting those players who had crossed over, some of them for astronomical sums.

“Whether you like it or not, the PIF is going to keep spending money in golf. At least now the PGA Tour is going to control how that money is spent. Would you rather have one of the biggest sovereign wealth funds as a partner or an enemy? At the end of the day, money talks and you’d rather have them as a partner.”

Meanwhile, Amnesty International and an association of relatives of those who died in the 9/11 Manhattan attacks also criticised the merger news and said the PGAT and DPWT should be ashamed of their step that was driven by “hypocrisy and greed”.

“Mr Monahan talked last summer about knowing people who lost loved ones on 9/11, then wondered aloud on national television whether LIV golfers ever had to apologise for being a member of the PGA Tour. They do now - as does he. PGA Tour leaders should be ashamed of their hypocrisy and greed,” a spokesperson for the group was quoted as having said.