The Time Has Come for Jay Monahan to Resign As Commissioner of the PGA Tour

Losing Jon Rahm to LIV Golf is only the latest in two years of missteps, Alex Miceli writes, which shows the commissioner is unfit to lead whatever shape the Tour takes next.

As a Dec. 31 deadline nears, the future of the PGA Tour and commissioner Jay Monahan is in the balance.

Since the June 6 announcement that the PGA Tour was entering into negotiations with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, many in golf from players to agents to fans have asked one question: How is PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan still in his job?

And after Jon Rahm signed with LIV Golf on Dec. 7, the question was raised anew: How is Monahan still in his job?

Monahan by all accounts is a good person, a silver-haired New Englander with the matching accent who comes across as a person you can talk to—and who will truly listen.

He was successful before joining the PGA Tour, then a rising star when he got to Ponte Vedra. In his early years as commissioner he had significant victories, including guiding golf through the COVID-19 pandemic as a model for the entire sports world.

Jay Monahan's series of missteps have hurt the PGA Tour as rival LIV Golf has emerged :: Peter Casey/USA TODAY Sports

But LIV Golf’s signing of Rahm, one of the few players in professional golf who moves the needle, was the last straw in a series of mistakes beginning in 2021 that makes the case against Monahan clear.

The miscommunication

In making the case for dismissal, the first gaffe in a long list of missteps was not communicating with the other side, in this case LIV Golf.

Because Greg Norman would have been on the other end of the phone, Monahan was unwilling to even start a dialogue.

Norman to many in professional golf has become a pariah, and his relationship with the PGA Tour hierarchy, from former commissioner Tim Finchem to Monahan, is nonexistent.

But talking to him could have happened, either by someone else in Monahan’s orbit at the Tour or someone he trusted outside the Tour.

Simply picking up the phone and at least attempting some type of dialogue would likely have put the Tour in a much better position with the public and its players, not to mention saving millions of dollars in future legal and consulting fees.

It’s also possible that making it known to LIV Golf that Monahan would not be willing to discuss a deal with Norman may have opened the door to Yasir Al-Rumayyan much sooner than spring 2023.

The futile fight

The next misstep came in how the PGA Tour conducted golf’s war, with skirmishes involving the White House, Congress, the Department of Justice, 9/11 families and many others inside and outside the government.

The PGA Tour spent at least $500,000 on lobbying before and after LIV Golf got off the ground in May 2021, and, as a result, the White House tried to set up a meeting with Monahan and Saudi Arabia ambassador to the U.S. Reema bint Bandar Al Saud to discuss the issues between the PGA Tour and LIV, but according to a July ’22 CNBC story, the Tour declined to meet.

That’s the second time a potential meeting could have changed the collision course between LIV and the PGA Tour only to be again dismissed by Monahan. Instead, he spent most of 2021 and ’22 on a smear campaign against Saudi Arabia, PIF and LIV Golf.

He also got many of his players to join in and take on those that went to LIV as well as the source of LIV’s funding.

It was ugly, and many believe it fractured golf.

During that two-year period the only thing that made sense was when Monahan stated the PGA Tour could not compete with LIV on a monetary basis.

“I am not naive; if this is an arms race and if the only weapons here are dollar bills, the PGA Tour can’t compete,” Monahan said in a press conference at the Travelers Championship in June 2022. “The PGA Tour, an American institution, can’t compete with a foreign monarchy that is spending billions of dollars in an attempt to buy the game of golf.

“We welcome good, healthy competition, but the LIV Saudi Golf League is not that. It’s an irrational threat, one not concerned with the return on investment or true growth of the game.”

After proclaiming not being able to compete with dollar bills, the PGA Tour upgraded eight event purses from $15 million to $25 million, on top of an additional $145 million through the expansion of the FedEx Cup playoffs, Comcast Top 10 and the Player Impact Program.

The Tour dipped into the reserve fund to get these plans off the ground for 2023, but that could last only so long.

For 2024 and beyond, the Tour has decided to find additional ways to generate additional revenue by hitting up the tournaments and taking dollars from their bottom lines—which could result in pulling money from the charities they have always been steadfastly behind.

Then there was the costly litigation reported to be between $80 million and $100 million, with the Tour’s cost hovering around $50 million.

Many players wondered whether this was the best use of PGA Tour funds, and, while told it was necessary to defeat LIV and eventually PIF, they learned on June 6 that the enemy is no longer an enemy but now our friend.

The “Framework Agreement”

After more than two years of fighting LIV and its benefactor, Monahan came to an agreement where litigation would be ended, and the PGA Tour would negotiate with PIF to create a new for-profit entity called PGA Tour Enterprises.

The negotiations and agreement between the PGA Tour and PIF was done with a small group on the PGA Tour side that included Monahan and two board members, Ed Herlihy and Jimmy Dunne.

All other board members, including the five player members, were left out of the negotiations with only a few of them notified before the morning announcement on CNBC.

After recriminations from his players on the content of the announcement and how he handled its disclosure to players and the public alike, Monahan did an immediate 180 on how he handled the announcement, saying he owned the decision and it was a mistake to not bring more of his constituency into the loop.

On July 9, just after Monahan’s decision to take a leave for health issues, longtime board member Randall Stephenson resigned from the PGA Tour Policy Board.

“I joined this board 12 years ago to serve the best players in the world and to expand the virtues of sportsmanship instilled through the game of golf,” Stephenson wrote. “I hope, as this board moves forward, it will comprehensively rethink its governance model and keep its options open to evaluate alternative sources of capital beyond the current framework agreement.”

While out, Monahan left the Tour in the incapable hands of PGA Tour chief operating officer Ron Price, failing in one of his responsibilities—having competent members of his staff available to step in if need be.

Price was most visible during Monahan’s absence when he testified before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, yet before that hearing he had written an op-ed in The Athletic admitting mistakes in the rollout of the deal.

“Due to the confidential nature of negotiations surrounding the framework agreement, much of the initial reaction has been negative, colored by misinformation or misunderstanding,” Price wrote July 10. “That’s something we take full ownership of and deeply regret. Moving forward, we firmly believe that the more the facts are discussed and understood, the further our constituents can support a potential definitive agreement—if reached—and look forward to the positive and lasting impact on all levels of our game.”

In the Senate hearing, Price could not convince any of the lawmakers that the decision to join forces was a good idea, and, as the hearing progressed, it was clear the PGA Tour would have been better off staying home as PIF representatives had decided to do.

By mid-July, Monahan was back at the helm, but the world had decidedly changed on the PGA Tour: The players were fed up, wanting more control of the future of the Tour and their future as part of it.

On Aug. 1, Tiger Woods was added as the sixth player director, and, for the first time, the player directors outnumbered the independent directors.

“This is a critical point for the Tour, and the players will do their best to make certain that any changes that are made in Tour operations are in the best interest of all Tour stakeholders, including fans, sponsors and players,” Woods said in a statement. “The players thank Commissioner Monahan for agreeing to address our concerns, and we look forward to being at the table with him to make the right decisions for the future of the game that we all love. He has my confidence moving forward with these changes.”

On Aug. 9, Monahan, in a press conference at the FedEx St. Jude, said:

“To have the sponsor support that we have is, I think, a testament to the strength of our business model and more importantly the strength of our players and everything that has been accomplished inside the field of play, that supports the strong position that the PGA Tour is in. On the PIF discussions, as you’ve heard us talk about on a number of instances, we were obviously in a conflict, and that conflict posed a long‑term existential risk, and the PGA Tour was and is stronger than we’ve ever been. We wanted to wait until the absolute right time to initiate a conversation, a time when we were in a maximum-strength position.”

Since the announcement of the framework agreement on June 6, Monahan has clung to a misguided notion that they won and LIV and PIF lost.

What Monahan fails to discuss is that the Tour’s tax-exempt status is under threat, Congress is trying to find ways to throw a monkey wrench into the deal with PIF, the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department are reviewing antitrust issues that have emerged from the Tour’s actions against PIF, his players are still in a mood to revolt, he has lost control of the board numerically with the players now in control, two longtime corporate sponsors in Honda and Wells Fargo have decided to leave and the board—not Monahan himself—is providing updates about exactly what is happening in the negotiations with PIF and other potential financial suitors.

Oh, and nearly two dozen lesser-profile players are asking for transparency in the negotiations between the PGA Tour and likely suitors.

At the same time, LIV and PIF have said absolutely nothing about the potential deal with the PGA Tour but have signed sponsors and one high-profile player in Rahm.

The PGA Tour has become an organization in disarray, and, while it may survive this, surely someone must take responsibility for the monumental mistakes of the last two years. That someone should be Jay Monahan.