In 2023, mergers in the golf sector were the big story

Golf is a sport where certain years stand out above others, and 2023 could be one of those years. It’s an impressive list.

In 1860, Willie Park Sr. won the first British Open, held at Prestwick Golf Club. This marked the start of the oldest major tournament.

In 1913, amateur Francis Ouimet won the US Open, beating the two best English golfers of the time and popularizing the sport in the United States.

In 1930, Bobby Jones completed the first and only Grand Slam, winning the four majors of his era in one go. year.

Babe Didrikson Zaharias became the first woman to make a cut on the PGA Tour in 1945, competing in the Phoenix Open and Tucson Open. She dominated that decade of golf.

In 1950, the LPGA was founded.

In 1968, a group of professional golfers, led by Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer, broke away from the Professional Golf Association of America to form the PGA Tour.

Tiger Woods completed the Tiger Slam by winning all four major men’s championships in consecutive seasons, from 2000 to 2001.

This year could prove to be crucial for both men’s and women’s football as both top tours consider mergers.

For the PGA Tour, June 6 represents a before and after in professional golf. That morning, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan announced a “framework agreement” for the PGA Tour to work with LIV Golf, the Saudi-backed golf league he had largely disparaged for the past year.

“I would ask every player who has left or every player who would ever consider leaving: Have you ever had to apologize for being on the PGA Tour?” Monahan had said a year earlier.

It was one of a number of comments he and the officials made linking the LIV, which is funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), to the country’s history of human rights abuses.

But that day in June, in a reversal, Monahan sat next to the fund’s governor, Yasser al-Rumayyan, and called for cooperation.

“There are only a handful of people who weren’t surprised given the last two years,” said Kevin Hopkins, vice president of Excel Sports Management. “Not knowing where this is going to go is going to be the next headline.”

The announcement came as a surprise to golf fans, but also to members of the PGA Tour, who were largely taken by surprise.

The year in women’s football was more positive: exciting major championships, the debut of a promising young star, a fiercely contested Solheim Cup that ended in a draw between the two teams — but the women’s tour is also clouded with uncertainty.

After the LPGA and its counterpart across the Atlantic, the Ladies European Tour (LET), reached an agreement to merge, the LET’s vote to approve the merger was abruptly postponed. Here’s a look back at a rollercoaster year.

Behind the scenes

The PGA Tour-LIV announcement is notable for the tour’s sudden turnaround and the way it angered and alienated some of its top players, including Rory McIlroy, who had been one of Monahan’s closest allies. He has since resigned of the PGA Tour board.

“My reaction was surprise, because I’m sure a lot of players were surprised by it, by what happened,” Woods said last month during his Hero World Challenge. “So quickly, without any input or information about it, it just got thrown out there.”

The move prompted top players to push for control over the tour’s governance. Woods, who now sits on the board, said players wanted to ensure that, in the future, “we would not be left out of the process as we were.”

Monahan, for his part, has expressed regret over the manner in which the announcement was made. “The rollout was a failure on my part,” he said last month at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit. “I’ve owned it and I’ve continued to own it.”

On the other hand, LIV Golf got a boost, if not a lifeline. The competition had been rolled out haphazardly. The first tournaments in 2022 were marred by problems such as the lack of a television deal and team uniforms.

The PIF invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the new competition, but after the first wave of stars left for LIV — Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and then-reigning British Open champion Cameron Smith — attention shifted to low attendance at events and the lack of a major media partner to broadcast the events.

The announcement on June 6 gave the emerging league relevance.

“We went from being unfairly portrayed as outsiders in the game of golf to our chairman sitting shoulder to shoulder with the commissioner of the PGA Tour,” said Gary Davidson, interim CEO of LIV Golf through 2023. “We always knew LIV could coexist.”

With the LPGA and LET, their merger talks went smoothly. The two tours are operating in a joint venture since 2020, a period in which prize money on both tours increased.

This year, the two boards negotiated the terms of a merger, with the LPGA effectively taking over the LET. Whether this actually happens depends on a vote of LET players.

“The vote was postponed by the LET Board from its original date of November 21st because more time was needed to evaluate all relevant information,” said Mollie Marcoux Samaan, LPGA Commissioner. “A new date for the vote has not yet been set. The LPGA Board remains excited about the opportunity to bring our two organizations together.”

In the spotlight

Both the women’s and men’s games produced fascinating storylines on the court.

The first men’s major, the Masters Tournament, came down to a duel between Jon Rahm, a longtime PGA Tour fan, and Koepka, a multiple major champion who had moved to LIV. Rahm won, but in the next major, the PGA Championship, Koepka ran away from the field to win his fifth major.

LIV saw this as confirmation. “Getting to the Masters and then winning the PGA Championship was huge for us,” Davidson said. “It showed LIV’s competitiveness, that it could prepare the guys well for majors.” (On Thursday, LIV announced that Rahm would join (his tour next year.)

The five major women’s championships also provided excitement. Lilia Vu won the first and last of the majors, rising to the No. 1 ranking and claiming the player of the year title. Céline Boutier became the first French player to win her home country’s Amundi Evian Championship. And Allisen Corpuz, a young American in her second year on the tour, won the U.S. Women’s Open.

The LPGA also got a feel-good story with Rose Zhang, long ranked No. 1 amateur woman in the world. Zhang turned pro in June and won the first event she entered.

“It’s been a whirlwind for her, but she’s done what people expected her to do,” said Hopkins, who leads Excel Sports Management’s LPGA practice. “The LPGA is excited to have her as one of the stars.”

The team competition was intense in both the men’s and women’s events, but in different ways: the Solheim Cup was exciting and thrilling, while the men’s equivalent, the Ryder Cup, was a rout. Team Europe defeated the American team, which only managed to maintain its 30-year losing streak in Europe.

There is one thing that is bothering prospective European teams, and that is the partnership that the PGA Tour and DP World Tour have entered into. The PGA Tour has effectively turned DP World into a feeder tour, by granting membership to the top 10 players in the annual Race to Dubai rankings. This effectively eliminates the best players in Europe.

With just weeks left in the year, there is still the potential for more drama. While all eyes are on whether the PGA Tour-LIV framework agreement will be signed before the end of the year, questions remain as to whether the LPGA-LET merger will go through. It’s a fitting end to a tumultuous year.