Folks teed off about PGA, LIV golf merger

About a year ago, the Saudi Arabia-based LIV Golf teed off for the first time as Professional Golf Association Tour’s new rival. A handful of PGA golfers, which include Phil Mickelson, defected to LIV Golf amid criticism.

Fast forward a year later to Tuesday when a golf-shattering announcement was made that the PGA Tour and LIV Golf are going to merge. In fact, the news came quicker through Twitter than by any other means — even before PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan could send a memo to PGA players.

“Nothing like finding out through Twitter that we’re merging with a tour that we said we’d never do that with,” Mackenzie Hughes tweeted.

“Everyone thought yesterday was the longest day in golf,” tweeted Collin Morikawa, who also said he found out about the merger on Twitter.

However, not all PGA golfers heard the word through Twitter. Rory McIlroy didn’t get in on the social media reaction. He spent the past year vehemently defending the PGA Tour against LIV before going quiet on the topic in recent weeks.

Mickelson, among the loudest LIV defectors, called Tuesday “an awesome day.”

Just how the merger would be handled was uncertain. Players who switched to LIV inked lucrative signing bonuses — in Mickelson’s case, a reported $200 million — yet now might have a way to rejoin players who opted not to take money from a league that some have called a Saudi Arabia “sports-washing” initiative.

According to KFSM Channel 5’s report, J.J. Spaun retweeted ESPN sportscaster Scott Van Pelt’s take on that issue.

“So, you preach loyalty to a tour and convince guys not to take eight- and nine-figure deals based, in part, on that loyalty and, in part, on the source of the money. Then those guys find out on Twitter YOU took the very same money?” Van Pelt tweeted.

PGA Tour member Byeong Hun An joked that Hideki Matsuyama “could have bought spirit airlines” if he had signed with LIV (Matsuyama was seen boarding a Spirit Airlines flight after the Memorial). He also said his guess is “LIV teams were struggling to get sponsors and PGA Tour couldn’t turn down the money.”

“Win-win for both tours, but it’s a big lose for (players) who defended the tour for last two years,” he tweeted.

Dylan Wu, a 26-year-old second-year player on the PGA Tour, called the merger “hypocrisy.”

“Tell me why Jay Monahan basically got a promotion to CEO of all golf in the world by going back on everything he said the past two years,” Wu tweeted, adding: “I guess money always wins.”

Monahan told The Associated Press he was aware the merger would be criticized.

“They were going down their path, we were going down ours, and after a lot of introspection you realize all this tension in the game is not a good thing,” he said in a phone interview with the AP.

PGA Tour players at the Canadian Open were to get a bit more insight Tuesday from Monahan, who was headed to Toronto to discuss the merger with those at the Canadian Open (some of the tour’s top golfers are not at the tournament).

Michael Kim thinks it’ll be an interesting meeting.

“All right, guys. How much to live stream the player meeting at 4 today??? (I’m KIDDING) … But seriously …,” Kim tweeted.

He added: “Very curious how many people knew this deal was happening. About five to seven people? Player run organization, right?”

So, we’ll see what happens moving forward. For right now, there are several who are teed off with the move — and they didn’t even have to get to the tee box to get teed off.

David Seeley is sports editor at Your TIMES. He can be reached by telephone at (918) 775-4433 or by e-mail at davids@cookson.news.