Deal or no deal: You're still away
Hatton: 'just want to play golf'; Fitzpatrick: 'past the point of caring'
Jay Monahan and Yasir Al-Rumayyan at Carnoustie (David Cannon/Getty Images)
The two most important parties in golf were in St. Andrews, Scotland, this week. So, let’s make a deal.
That’s just too damn simple.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan tried this before. Remember June 6, 2023?
Then, it was called the “framework agreement,” which was, as the title suggests, a framework for the PGA Tour, LIV Golf and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia to work collaboratively.
According to the parties, it would be a done deal by the end of 2023.
We’re still waiting.
Someone forgot about the players, and they decided to offer opinions — many opinions.
So now we come back to Scotland. With hundreds of hours of discussions and negotiations between both sides, the answers are still in the wind.
But maybe this week — with Monahan and Al-Rumayyan playing together in the first round of the Dunhill Links Championship at Carnoustie — produced some additional bit of clarity.
Start with Rory McIlroy. He’s been in the middle of the LIV vs. PGA Tour situation from almost the beginning.
McIlroy has clearly flipped-flopped on the issue but is now in the Monahan camp of “let’s make a deal.”
On Wednesday, on BBC Northern Ireland with McIlroy, the world No. 3 was clear on the future and the timeline for a deal. When asked if he was optimistic about seeing a deal on the immediate horizon, McIlroy again surprised.
“I’d say we’ll know by the end of the year whether that’s a possibility or not,” he said. “But I think all tours are going to keep trucking along and doing their own thing for the foreseeable future, and I think the best thing we can maybe hope for is a bit of crossover between them and then maybe while that is happening over that period of time, whether it be one year, two years, three years, just trying to figure out the rest.”
Then McIlroy discussed the fly in the legal ointment.
“I think the hard thing is there are legal precedents that have been set in America and here and that makes it very different. That’s the big thing. No one likes lawyers — I certainly don’t — and, yeah, that’s a big part of the issue.
“I think there is a willingness there from all parties to try and get it to happen, but you’ve got tons of lawyers in the middle of it.”
While most can agree with McIlroy on lawyers, that seems like the only thing to be agreed upon.
Others were there to lend support: European Tour Group’s CEO Guy Kinnings; chairman Eric Nicoli; ringleader Johann Rupert, the chairman of Richemont and the owner of Dunhill.
LIV’s Tyrrell Hatton won his third Dunhill Links (Warren Little/Getty Images)
With 14 LIV players in the Dunhill pro-am field — including winner Tyrrell Hatton, Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Peter Uihlein and Patrick Reed — many questions revolved around striking a deal.
“I mean, there’s guys that were obviously playing this week that are having those conversations to figure out how we come back together as a sport,” Hatton said. “From my side, I’ve enjoyed playing where I’ve played this year, and I’ve enjoyed coming back and playing some DP World Tour events, as well, and events that mean a lot to me. So, from my side, I know what events I want to play, and hopefully I can continue to keep playing them. I certainly don’t have the power to make decisions that need to be made, and from a player’s perspective, I just want to play golf.”
Oddly, the Hatton victory allows him to attend Matt Fitzpatrick’s wedding this weekend. When asked about LIV before the tournament, Fitz had an interesting take.
“I don’t think they are going to decide the future of golf in five hours around Carnoustie. I know Carnoustie is pretty bloody hard. Not much time for talking,” Fitzpatrick joked. “I think in terms of bringing the game together this week, I’m past the point of caring. I just don’t care. Me saying things to the PGA Tour board, me saying things to the DP World Tour board, it’s not going to change, so why am I going to waste my time talking about it.”
Fitzpatrick went on to say that there are probably some players in the U.S. who wouldn’t be very happy with a deal.
“If I’m probably brutally honest, at the start, I probably was pretty against, and it was not of any interest to me to go and play LIV,” Fitzpatrick said. “But I’ve always said that I understood why people went. I’ve got no issues with that. No issues at all. My issue was always, at the start, anyway, is you’ve gone over there. Like I don’t feel like it’s fair for you to try and come back and play, as well. But I would say I’ve changed on that now. Again, I just don’t care. I just want to focus on myself. I think that’s what’s important, and try and play the best golf I can, and that’s — I don’t want to get ten years down the road, obviously, and look back and I’m not going to sit there and think, ‘Oh, I wish I’d got more involved in that LIV and PGA Tour.’ It’s like, you’re wasting your time.”
Just multiply these thoughts by at least 100, and that’s what both sides have to deal with.
“But I think it’s been good. It’s good to get most people together in terms of like, look at the field, you’ve got a mix of everyone in there, which is good,” McIlroy said of the Dunhill. “It is something that we don’t see as often as we should, but, you know, time will tell.”