LIV Golf got one thing right, and the PGA Tour might have to copy it

There must surely be days when Jay Monahan can empathize with Winston Churchill’s wry observation that the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. As commissioner of a “member-led” organization, Monahan is bound by the political reality that the PGA Tour’s lower orders—many of whom couldn’t be identified in a line-up by fans—wield power equal to its upper echelon, upon whom the success of his product depends.

Those are some awfully tight handcuffs when you’re fighting an outfit fueled by personal animus and financed by Saudi Arabian oil money, with no apparent accountability on either. Which raises the question of whether the PGA Tour’s very business model may one day be a sacred cow that Monahan and his board are forced to slaughter.

The negatives associated with LIV Golf are almost as plentiful as the social media bots it employs to “whatabout” critics and otherwise rally those whose susceptibility to automated arguments is painfully evident in the body politic. There’s the sportswashing on behalf of a loathsome regime, the questionable competitive standards, the laughable shotgun starts, the shallow fields, the ever-changing teams component. But LIV also may have gotten one thing right that its rivals face an uphill battle to copy: contracting its talent.

It has long been the self-congratulatory gospel of golf professionals that they only eat what they kill, that they don’t get paid if they don’t perform. That isn’t true in most major sports, where guaranteed contracts are the norm. LIV has brought that concept to golf, but predictably bastardized it. Contracts don’t assure athletes of a place in the game nor protect them from being benched in big moments, but the washed-up beneficiaries of LIV contracts will remain in tournaments no matter how lousy their performances. They are required to continue soiling themselves publicly with execrable scorecards.

Report: PGA Tour has paid law firm to lobby against LIV Golf on Capitol Hill

In normal commercial endeavors, contracting talent makes sense. Athletes trade freedom over their schedules for financial security, and teams or leagues have the ability to control their product and protect assets. The response to LIV by the PGA and DP World tours has been to apply lipstick to a dated model that might no longer be fit for purpose. The increases in prize money and bonus payouts that have been announced come with a significant…