Our golf reporter didn’t see the PGA Tour-LIV golf deal coming either

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Alan Blinder’s plans exploded around 10am last Tuesday.

Mr. Blinder, who covers golf for The New York Times, had just returned home to his home office when he received a heads-up from a source of shocking news: the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, the rebellious league funded by billions of dollars. of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, had agreed to a partnership, suspending a bitter and costly battle for supremacy in men’s professional golf.

“I yelled down the hallway to my wife that LIV and the PGA Tour were joining forces and I probably wouldn’t be coming over for dinner,” Mr Blinder said in an interview. “And then I had to go to work.” For the next 13 hours, he barely left his desk.

Below Mr. Blinder how he moved from shock to the news, the implications of the deal outside of sports and the questions he still has as he heads into the US Open, which kicks off today at the Los Angeles Country Club. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

How surprised were you?

It was one of those things that people thought was a definite possibility at some point in the future, but all the reporting we’d done, all the signals were that the tour and LIV were preparing to face each other in court in the near future to fight. There was a monstrous case in a federal court in California over contract interference and antitrust law. And suddenly all that would disappear.

Who was the first person you called?

My editors, to tell them their day was about to blow up too. We published an article with the news less than 10 minutes after I told my editors, and that quickly grew into live coverage. Once the news was published, I tried to work out in great detail what the hell had happened and what it meant. Because the announcement was riddled with legal terms and jargon, I spent the rest of the day on the phone with sources and experts, both inside and outside the gulf, trying to understand what this framework agreement meant.

Why is this happening now?

The main factor is that the PGA Tour came under increasing financial strain. I’m not saying the tour was going out of business tomorrow, but I think the tour realized it was an exceptionally expensive fight that wasn’t going to get any easier. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has tons of money, but things haven’t been entirely smooth sailing from his perspective either. LIV had had its fair share of setbacks in court.

Who benefits most from the deal?

It depends on your perspective. The PGA Tour claims it will receive a majority of board seats and its commissioner, Jay Monahan, will be the CEO of the new company. . But the Saudis have great influence. Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund governor Yasir al-Rumayyan will be the chairman of this new entity, and the Saudis will have extensive rights to invest in this partnership. What this looks like in the future remains to be seen.

Will we see a relaxation of PGA Tour standards to align more with the LIV Golf version of the game, which includes music at events, looser dress codes, and no golfer cuts?

The PGA Tour says it still has everything under control the competition and play. We don’t expect the overarching rules of golf to change, in part because the tour doesn’t monitor them. Do you see some elements of LIV borrowed and integrated into the PGA Tour? Maybe. The PGA Tour is trying to appeal to a younger audience and increase the game’s appeal.

There have been vows from Washington to delay or stop the deal – or at least make it very inconvenient for golf managers. What are the chances that lawmakers will succeed in blocking the deal?

Many pundits expect the Justice Department to go to court to try to block the deal or push for changes. This is also somewhat unusual because it’s not like this deal was announced last week and suddenly the Justice Department was intrigued by pro golf. Their antitrust people had been watching professional golf for months and months and months. So they have a bit of an edge if they really want to take a closer look at this deal.

Why should people who don’t follow golf be concerned?

This is a golf story, but it’s a story that could play out in other sports in the future. Is it possible that Saudi Arabia or other wealthy states are trying to make their mark in other sports?

This is not just a story about sports, business or geopolitics. It’s a story that encompasses all those different threads and more. We had a big article in Monday’s paper with four bylines, and only two of them were sports writers’ bylines.

What are the biggest questions you have going forward?

Aside from tour memberships and where you play, how does golf breathe after all this tumult? The golf industry is quite a small world. A lot of people know each other well and have known each other for a long time, so they’ve been pretty shaken up over the past year. So one of the big questions is, when will all these wounds be mended?