BROOKLINE, Mass. – PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan described the Saudi-funded golf league that has signed up Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson as a “series of exhibition matches” that spends billions of dollars on players without getting a return on its investment.
Monahan also said golfers getting paid an exorbitant amount of money would “have to be living under a rock” to not know they would be criticized for the source of the cash. LIV Golf is backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
“I would ask any player that has left, or any player that would ever consider leaving, ‘Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?'” Monahan said Sunday from Toronto on the CBS telecast of the RBC Canadian Open.
They were Monahan’s first public comments since Thursday, when Greg Norman’s LIV Golf series began and Monahan suspended all PGA Tour members who played at Centurion Club near London.
LIV has eight tournaments this year – five in the United States – with $25 million in prize money for each one of the 54-hole events with no cut and 48-man fields. Charl Schwartzel completed a wire-to-wire win Saturday in the inaugural event and earned $4.75 million, with $750,000 of that his quarter of the winning team’s payout.