To Understand the PGA Tour-LIV Golf Battle, Start With Conflicting-Event Releases

News last week about the PGA Tour granting releases for the Saudi International was a reminder of where the rift began that has split the pro game.

More Weekly Read: Could Tiger Play in the Ryder Cup? | A Taste of the Ryder Cup | Fore! Things

A tumultuous year in golf has taught us some things that perhaps many were fine without ever knowing.

The intricacies of the Official World Golf Ranking. The PGA Tour's status as a 501c-6 (with its individual events acting as 501c-3 charitable organizations). The millions of dollars it (rightly) keeps in a reserve fund. And the Tour's rules for how it allows members to compete in conflicting events around the world.

Aside from the huge sums of guaranteed money that LIV Golf offered those to sign, the issue of conflicting-event releases—and them not being granted by the PGA Tour to compete in LIV Golf events—is at the crux of the angst between the two sides.

Bottom line: The PGA Tour has rules; LIV Golf players broke them; the Tour dished our harsh penalties; LIV Golf contends the rules in the first place are wrong, if not illegal.

Golfweek last week reported that a few PGA Tour players have been granted releases to play in the PIF Saudi International, Feb. 2-5 in Jeddah. Among them are PGA Tour rookie of the year Cameron Young, former PGA Championship winner Jason Dufner and Jhonattan Vegas, who played in the Saudi International last year.

The tournament location is the home of LIV Golf’s benefactor, the game’s great disruptor and where at this very tournament a year ago, Phil Mickelson’s comments about the PGA Tour’s "obnoxious greed" set in motion of year of acrimony.

Phil Mickelson, pictured at last year's Saudi International, made his infamous "obnoxious greed" comments while there and essentially kicked off a year of tumult in the pro game :: Eoin Clarke/Golffile

The Public Investment Fund is the tournament’s presenting sponsor, the same sovereign wealth fund that backs LIV Golf. Nearly every LIV Golf member will play in the tournament. The event is the first of the Asian Tour’s 2023 schedule.

A year ago, before the LIV Golf controversy took over, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan granted releases to the Saudi event with conditions: a player had to commit to playing at the conflicting AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in future years, some once, others twice.

The Tour’s stance is typically three releases without question. After that, it will usually negotiate some sort of other commitment in return for getting the release. It is an aspect of the process that incensed Hall of Famer Greg Norman, who believed long ago he should be able to play where and when he wanted, as long as he fulfilled his 15-event PGA Tour minimum.

Now LIV Golf’s commissioner, Norman has relayed how it frustrated him to have to get permission—and then sometimes return favors—to play in his native Australia. (There is now a "home tour" rule that allows for unlimited starts on that tour provided the PGA Tour minimum is met.)

The Saudi tournament provides another layer to the story as Monahan and PGA Tour brass clearly would prefer their players to skip it. Last year, knowing a fight with LIV possibly loomed, Monahan allowed for releases to the tournament, with stipulations put in place to protect AT&T, a long-time Tour sponsor at Pebble Beach as well as now the Byron Nelson Championship.

"There were release requests and then the release requests for 2023 will be treated in the same exact manner that they were in 2022 because that event in sanctioned by the Asian Tour, and our players as members have the ability to apply for conflicting event releases," Monahan told reporters last week at the Sentry Tournament of Champions. "We’re going to treat it the way that we do in every circumstance."

Monahan reiterated the rules put in place for Pebble Beach, and also noted that the nobody who had applied for a release for the Saudi event at the time had been denied.

Again, this is getting into the weeds of how the Tour regulations work, but it became very important in 2022 and will likely be the same way going forward in instances unforeseen.

It’s a simple formula that every PGA Tour member should know: you need to release to compete in a conflicting event. Why? Because as a member, the PGA Tour has control of your media rights, which means you cannot appear in a golf event not part of the Tour’s television rights package. The point is to protect Tour sponsors and broadcast partners, who are paying a hefty sum for those rights.

Even without a conflicting TV problem, the Tour has a player’s rights for a competing event, hence why a Korn Ferry Tour player would also need permission.

But here’s where all of this seemed to veer off the Tour’s path, at least as far as one high-profile tournament: the LIV Golf London opener last June.

The Tour has never allowed releases for domestic events, a fact undoubtedly known to any player or agent seeking one. But LIV’s opener was an international tournament, one for which a player seeking a release should have been granted the opportunity, provided the player was in good standing otherwise.

So why deny the LIV Golf release? Although Monahan had previously threatened players with punishment (it was never fully spelled out until after players teed it up in London), there was reason to believe such releases would be granted.

At the time, LIV Golf was an invitational series, meaning players had the opportunity to play as many or as few events as they wanted. While it became clear that Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia and others signed long-term commitments, some were just testing the LIV Golf waters.

Had the Tour allowed them and then denied releases for domestic events such as the first one in Portland, it would have been simply following its own policy.

Perhaps the Tour simply didn’t want its members to have the opportunity to sample the LIV lifestyle. Either way, when it denied the releases, and players competed anyway, they were in violation of the rules.

Lawsuits followed and are pending, and the situation plays on today, all of us possessing knowledge of Tour business that might otherwise have gone blissfully unknown.