Stray Shot: Annotated 'agreement' anniversary

Our distressed M&A contributor takes a deeper look at Ogilvie's Golfweek conversation; Late Murray's rankings conundrum; St. Andrews Links raking in profits

PIF’s Yasir Al-Rumayyan and PGA Tour’s Jay Monahan (CNBC screenshot)

By Peter Kaufman

One year ago today, the RBC Canadian Open was the scene of chaos. It was in Canada where many players on the PGA Tour were congregated when the bombshell dropped on CNBC that PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and Public Investment Fund governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan had reached a “framework agreement” to cease legal hostilities and work out some kind of merged interests between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf’s benefactor.

It came as a complete shock to the players who had no idea any kind of agreement was being negotiated. Rory McIlroy, the tour’s most loyal mouthpiece, used the term “sacrificial lamb” to express how he was feeling,

It’s June 6, 2024, and we’re still waiting for an actual agreement.

It’s been a long year to get nothing tangible done to bring the unification of the professional to a successful conclusion. Just vague reports of “progress.”

Lots of chirping has been ongoing on from the PGA Tour quarters (all the while silence from PIF). Sometimes the chirps come from Rory “get this done yesterday” McIlroy, sometimes from Jordan “we don’t need to get a deal done unless it’s on our terms” Spieth. It’s mostly hand-waving in an attempt to mask the reality that no deal is getting done — at least anytime soon.

Most recently and in depth, former PGA Tour player turned financial player Joe Ogilvie, a member of the PGA Tour and PGAT Enterprises boards and all the committees doing the negotiating with PIF, spoke to Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch for an exclusive Q&A and had a lot to say about it.

Let’s examine in a special edition “Stray Shot” some interesting excerpts from Ogilvie’s conversation with Lynch, and offer some annotated commentary.  It should be noted that Lynch posed some excellent questions, mostly deserving of better answers than received.

Ogilvie: In retrospect, if you had a big mulligan you’d certainly handle the Framework Agreement differently. I think everybody involved would say they bungled the rollout of that.

Stray Shot: Duh. Except “retrospect” was not really needed; any sophisticated business person knew that when it happened.

Lynch: Two independent directors have resigned recently, Jimmy Dunne and Mark Flaherty. Jimmy was involved in the framework agreement. Was his departure necessary in your mind?

Ogilvie: Unfortunately, I think long-term it probably helps. Jimmy’s a force of nature and a highly-regarded figure in golf and investment banking. A legend. I think it was handled very poorly to not bring other board members in.

SS: You think? This is a penetrating glimpse into the obvious and, again, something very clear at the time.

Ogilvie: Patrick (Cantlay) is incredibly detail-oriented. I joked with him one time that if he wasn’t a professional golfer he could be a distressed debt investor and probably make more money.  

SS: Yes, that is indeed a joke. Would Ogilvie invest money in Cantlay Distressed Asset Management? I sure hope not. That tour players actually may be involved in negotiating strategies and tactics remains a truly frightening thought.

Ogilvie: “I had heard that he’s (Yasir) a nice man and that he loves the game of golf, and nothing told me otherwise after meeting him. It would be naive to think that we’re going to come out of that meeting with a handshake deal and say, ‘We’re done here.’  It was a very good meeting and you could see that there was a mutual respect between he and Jay, which is also good.”  

SS: Actually, one suspects Yasir thinks he has died and gone to heaven, what with Monahan as his negotiating counterpart. Yasir is one of the world’s most experienced and sophisticated board members and investors. Monahan? The fellow who completely whiffed on the existential threat posed by LIV? Who went to fight a war he didn’t have the means to win? Who was wrong-footed from the jump? Not exactly.