Peace In Golf?
Litigation, government investigations, player discontent and barrels of cash have been the hallmark of men’s professional golf for more than a year now. The PGA Tour and the Saudi-backed rival LIV Golf Invitational Series have been in a furious fight over money and player free agency in a bitterly contested match play event.
With Greg Norman as its driving force and the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund as its oil-fueled bankroll, LIV had poached Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka, among others, from the Tour, laying out what many reports said were hundreds of millions of dollars. LIV began play in June 2022, offering a different game, with 48-player fields playing 54 holes with no cut and $25 million purses. The events were held around the world in a party atmosphere with the “Golf, But Louder” calling card. In response to LIV, the PGA Tour upped purses at certain events.
The court fights soon followed, with LIV suing the Tour over antitrust issues and the Tour countersuing by alleging LIV unlawfully interfered with the Tour’s business. Mickelson made a series of accusations about the Tour, saying it was rife with “obnoxious greed.” Lines were drawn between the players on each tour. “They shouldn’t be here,” Rory McIlroy said about LIV golfers playing in the 2022 PGA Championship.
Golf hadn’t experienced anything like this in decades. It was all-out war.
Then, suddenly, the week before the U.S. Open began in June, the unthinkable occurred and the two tours made a deal—of sorts. The organizations, who until then wouldn’t have given each other a six-inch putt, announced a merger agreement (which also included the DP World Tour) saying they would work together going forward and the lawsuits would be dropped.
Really?
It was a bombshell that fell from the sky and left a massive divot of uncertainty that has yet to be filled in. Stunned golfers weighed in on social media, many of them incredulous. PGA Tour golfer Michael S. Kim summed it up in one sentence: “The hell is going on?”
As this magazine shipped to the printer, there were far, far more questions than answers about what the men’s tour would look like in the future. Norman, who was left out of the negotiations that led to the agreement for what would be ostensibly a combined tour in some form, asserted that the LIV tour would remain in place. His name did not come up for a management role. The agreement put PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan in charge as CEO, and LIV tour chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan would have the same role with the new enterprise.
In the middle of it all was Jimmy Dunne, the investment banker who was the subject of a 2019 Cigar Aficionado profile. Dunne is a majordomo of the golf universe, a PGA Tour board member, president of Seminole Golf Club and a member of many other prestigious clubs across the States and the United Kingdom. He’s a deal maker, a rainmaker and a good and passionate player who is friend to many on the PGA Tour.
Dunne joined the PGA Tour’s policy board in January and immediately wanted to find a way to end the turmoil that was engulfing the game and casting uncertainty over the Tour’s future. Monahan gave Dunne permission to contact Al-Rumayyan.
In a lengthy interview with ESPN, Dunne explained how it all came to pass. “I didn’t understand what the LIV Tour was really trying to accomplish,” Dunne told ESPN. “And so at some point in time, between the legal expense and them basically recruiting our players, I thought it was important that we would speak to the main guy and not to anybody else. Over time, and after we had gotten some good legal victories, I was able to convince Jay that we should go over and try to find out if there is a middle ground here. Is there something we can do so that we can put the legal battle and the whole sort of conflict behind us?”
On April 18, Dunne sent Al-Rumayyan a message on WhatsApp, according to the interview. Al-Rumayyan responded a few minutes later. They spoke on the telephone and Dunne later met Al-Rumayyan at a hotel outside London. They had dinner and smoked cigars.
“We spoke about golf, his career and his view of what he wanted to grow in the game of golf,” said Dunne. “My impression was that we can work together. He really loves the game of golf. He’s very thoughtful and very calm, and I found him to be extremely decent.”
They played golf the next day in England.
In May, Dunne and Monahan flew to Venice, Italy, where Al-Rumayyan was attending a wedding. Monahan spent time with Al-Rumayyan and the entire group met for several hours the next day, negotiating the framework for a potential alliance. On May 28, the men met in San Francisco, where they finalized a formal plan. The next day, Monahan and Al-Rumayyan signed a two-page framework agreement for a partnership.
“I think there was a desire for both sides to come together to some kind of peace,” Dunne said. “It was extremely complex and difficult, but people really wanted, in my mind, to do something that was going to be good for the game of golf.”
The players weren’t happy, and Monahan was in the crosshairs. He held a meeting with Tour players at the Canadian Open that was described as tense and antagonistic. After all, the players had been kept in the dark about the negotiations. They had stayed loyal to the Tour even though some were said to have received offers from LIV, and Monahan’s own words since the start of the LIV league had been highly critical, including bringing up the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed by agents of the Saudi government.
“We don’t trust you, Jay. You lied to our face,” shouted Tour player Grayson Murray at the meeting. He and others called for Monahan to resign. The next week, the Tour announced that Monahan had a “medical situation” that was taking him away from his day-to-day duties.
Dunne’s role negotiating with the Saudis also led to criticism. Dunne was managing director of Sandler O’Neill Partners, a firm that was devastated by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, with 66 employees of the firm dying that day, including Dunne’s close friend Chris Quackenbush and his mentor Herman Sandler. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi nationals.
Dunne was asked what his feelings were when dealing with the Saudis on a golf venture.
“I am quite certain—and I have had conversations with a lot of very knowledgeable people—that the people I’m dealing with had nothing to do with it,” said Dunne of the attacks. “If someone can find someone that unequivocally was involved with it, I’ll kill them myself. We don’t have to wait around.”
To say that hard feelings remain is an understatement. The once-bitter rivals need to hammer out a new plan for golf in the future—if it goes through. Various U.S. government entities have announced they will be looking into the deal. And many still sound like they’re far from ready to kiss and make up.
“I still hate LIV,” said McIlroy, when the deal was announced. The future of both the deal and tour golf in general is anyone’s guess. Will PGA players who didn’t jump to LIV be compensated? Dunne said it’s possible they will get a stake in the new enterprise. Will Tour players who moved to LIV and were subsequently banned from the Tour have a pathway to rejoin?
As we print this issue, we know there is an agreement. What we don’t know is everything else.
