The humorist Will Rogers described diplomacy as the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ until you can find a rock, but not every act of statecraft comes with an option for going on the offensive. So it is with the memorandum Jay Monahan sent to PGA Tour players on July 26, which left an unmistakable impression that the commissioner has a pack of rabid hounds at his heels, and that he’s about all out of rocks.
The reaction to Monahan’s letter focused on its parts rather than the whole. Like the creation of a task force to decide how LIV golfers might rejoin the Tour or his stiff-arming the governing bodies on rolling back the golf ball. The latter isn’t a pressing matter and its inclusion was intended to signal to players that he has their backs on any issue they feel strongly about. That Monahan felt the need to tip his hand on the proposed rollback before the official comment period concludes shows how eager he is to notch something, anything, in the win column. With good reason.
On July 9, hours after Monahan announced his plan to return from medical leave, Randall Stephenson resigned from the PGA Tour’s Policy Board, citing opposition to the agreement with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia and concerns with a governance structure that permitted an end run around the board to cut that deal. It was an Archduke Ferdinand moment for Monahan, a clear sign of the coming war to be waged by those who feel similarly. So when his memo addressed the process by which Stephenson will be replaced, it exposed how besieged the commissioner is.
Protocol dictates that if a non-player director leaves the Policy Board, the four remaining non-player directors suggest a replacement for approval by all board members. Monahan has instead appointed a four-person committee to source Stephenson’s successor and it includes two player directors: Webb Simpson and Patrick Cantlay. In private, Cantlay has been a vehement critic of the Tour’s leadership since the PIF deal was announced on June 6.
The concessions to critics continued in every paragraph of the placatory memo. Colin Neville, a partner at The Raine Group, a venture capital firm, was named as an advisor to players on the board. Neville is an astute dealmaker in the sports world and earned the respect of top players when Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy brought him to last year’s meeting in Delaware that helped reshape the Tour to meet the LIV threat. He should prove a valuable resource, but his…
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