ROCHESTER, N.Y. — PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh mentioned he does not consider the LIV Golf League is an enduring enterprise mannequin however counseled the startup circuit on Tuesday for bringing disruption to skilled males’s golf.
“We do not suppose division is in the most effective curiosity of the sport,” Waugh mentioned throughout a information convention forward of the one hundred and fifth PGA Championship at Oak Hill Nation Membership. “As a former businessman who seems at issues, I believe disruption is an efficient factor. I believe good issues have occurred from that. Definitely, the gamers are higher off in a variety of methods from what it was.”
Final week, Waugh instructed The Occasions of London that the Public Funding Fund, which has dumped greater than $2 billion into the circuit being fronted by two-time Open winner Greg Norman, will not proceed spending cash and not using a return.
“Their logic concerning the workforce play being one thing important that individuals can get behind I believe is flawed,” Waugh instructed The Occasions. “I do not suppose folks actually care about it. And I do not see the way it’s a survivable enterprise mannequin. They will fund it for so long as they need to, however irrespective of how a lot cash you could have, in some unspecified time in the future, burning it does not really feel superb.”
For now, the elite males’s golfers on the earth will play solely in opposition to one another within the 4 main championships. There are 17 LIV Golf League gamers within the PGA Championship area, together with previous champions Brooks Koepka and Phil Mickelson.
In 2021, Mickelson grew to become the oldest man to win a significant championship when he claimed the PGA Championship at Kiawah Island in South Carolina. He skipped final 12 months’s event at Southern Hills Nation Membership in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after his controversial feedback about LIV Golf and the Saudi Arabian monarchy had been printed by creator Alan Shipnuck.
“I’m happy with Masters as a result of they returned civility to the sport,” Waugh mentioned. “That is how they handled it. That is how we need to cope with it. Once more, all people is our invited visitor. That is constant, and I will say that in the present day, and I will greet the gamers after I see them for certain. They’re all invited to our dinner [Monday night], previous champions. We’re treating them in the way in which that we might deal with all people else.”
Waugh can also be a member of the Official World Golf Rating’s governing board, which is contemplating the LIV Golf League’s utility for recognition. Gamers have not obtained world-ranking factors for his or her finishes in LIV Golf occasions in the course of the league’s first two seasons, inflicting most to plummet within the rankings.
LIV Golf officers submitted the appliance in July. The governing board additionally contains PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, DP World Tour CEO Keith Pelley and Keith Waters, who represents the Worldwide Federation of PGA Excursions. They recused themselves from discussions about LIV Golf final 12 months.
“What I’ve mentioned and what I will say now could be there was wholesome forwards and backwards,” Waugh mentioned. “It has not been acrimonious. There’s been collegial forwards and backwards of them making an utility as different excursions have completed. We have responded, they’ve responded. The ball, from my understanding, is of their court docket from our final response at this level.
“This isn’t an us versus them. I believe the OWGR, in case you take a step again, the entire level is to create a degree enjoying area, a yardstick by which to measure the sport. Our job is to measure excursions. Not gamers however excursions and the way they carry out on these excursions to give you that yardstick. That is what we’re all trying to attempt to do. We have been, I believe, very aware of them when it comes to their requests, and so they’ve been aware of us. It is not some battle.”
