Stop talking about pathways, and what is good for the PGA TOUR, and start focusing on what is best for GOLF.
- SHANK Media
- Mar 13
- 9 min read
A direct message to Jay Monahan, PGA TOUR Commissioner, and Brandel Chamblee
13 March 2025 - SHANK Media, by Matt Hooper: Ahead of the 2025 Arnold Palmer Invitational PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan sat down with Rich Lerner of the GOLF Channel to discuss the TOUR and the latest from the negotiations with the PIF, he expressed his satisfaction with the alliance with the DP World Tour, and the pathways to the PGA TOUR.
Earlier this week, ahead of THE PLAYERS Championship, Irish golfer, GOLF Channel and Sky Sports pundit, Paul McGinley outlined his ideas for fostering unity in the game going forward, during LIVE FROM THE PLAYERS.
Paul McGinley's proposal for unity:
PGA TOUR and LIV Golf to continue
LIV Golf players get unrestricted access to the DP World Tour
Leading 10 players from LIV Golf get to play in The Players, and 5 Signature events
LIV Golf gives two teams from the PGA TOUR access to the LIV Golf Team Championship
PIF matches SSG investment of $1.5billion into PGA TOUR ENTERPRISES.
McGinley commented: "The PGA TOUR would benefit from LIV players getting unrestricted access to the DP World Tour, because it would empower the DP World Tour, and the PGA TOUR own 40% of the media rights of the tour.
"by inviting the leading 10 LIV players to The Players Championship and 5 signature events you would really empower those events"
"In return LIV would give 2 teams of players from the PGA TOUR access to the LIV Finale, so the likes of Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa, Rory McIlroy going to compete in the finale of LIV. I think that would certainly be a fun tournament to watch."
"I don't find this complex, there is a lot of commonality there and I see there's wins everywhere. No on Tour is going to absolutely win or lose. That would be some kind of a common ground, to get the top players in the world coming together ELEVEN times a year (10 of which count for the PGA TOUR), you would have the 4 Major Championships, The Players, 5 signature events and the LIV finale."
"It also ticks for the box for the game becoming a little bit more global" said McGinley. However, only one of those 11 events in 2025 are outside the United States (The Open), but the Irishman's suggestions are certainly an welcome change in tone.
My Vision for the Future of Professional Golf was published earlier this month, but there can be many different variations of this, and I completely agree that the proposal put forward by the 2014 Ryder Cup captain is a very good start, and one which the DP World Tour should take very seriously. Even if the PGA TOUR do not.
The simple fact is that LIV Golf and the PGA TOUR are NEVER going to merge. All this talk about "integrating the better elements of LIV Golf into the PGA TOUR" is absolute nonsense. This is the same PGA TOUR which professed to care about global golf when it launched the World Golf Championships back in 1999, branding it 'This time it is for the world' and proceeding to play the vast majority of the series in the United States, before the series cease completely in 2023. The launch of the WGC's and the inclusion of the World Cup of Golf caused the Alfred Dunhill Cup to be replaced by the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, and the eventual slow painful death of the IMG-run World Match Play Championship. The World Cup now pretty much is dead, or in a severe coma after 7 years without an event, and only 4 editions of the event in the last 16 years.
The PGA TOUR does not care about global golf, it has hijacked the sport at the elite level, and long-time LIV Golf critic Brandel Chamblee as good as admitted that when debating McGinley's proposal on LIVE FROM THE PLAYERS on Tuesday:
"The PGA TOUR could not be more global
"The PGA TOUR has played in Japan, China, Canada, Mexico. They play in England (nope), they play in Ireland (nope), they play in Scotland. Every single country on this earth has an opportunity to create a tournament and purses which are so organically interesting, that players organically will want to go and play. By my count the PGA TOUR COULD NOT BE MORE GLOBAL"
"Everyone comes here because its where the best courses, the most people playing golf, the most corporate interest.
"The PGA TOUR has done more than its share to create interest globally"
This is Gaslighting on an industrial scale. To suggest the "PGA TOUR could not be more global" when ONLY 7 OF ITS 46 EVENTS ARE OUTSIDE OF THE UNITED STATES (only 4 of those 7 are outside of North America) is a complete insult to the intelligence of golfers, golf fans and probably, every professional golfer on the planet. Of the 4 events outside of North America, 1 is an event played in Dominican Republic, opposite the RBC Heritage in the week following The Masters. The others are the Genesis Scottish Open, The Open Championship and the Baycurrrent Classic (Japan). The Open Championship is The Open Championship, and whether the PGA TOUR sanctioned it or not, the best players in the world would play, and the Baycurrent Classic is played as part of the TOUR'S FedEx Fall. In 2024 the event ONLY 8 OF THE WORLD'S TOP 50 PLAYED in the Japan-based event.
The fact is the PGA TOUR doesn't even care about the other existing tours, which it professed it was going to co-sanction events with when they launched the WGC's in 1999. The Japan Golf Tour already has the Dunlop Phoenix Tournament, which was launched in the early 1970's explicitly to attract the world's best golfers to Japan each Autumn. Yet, the PGA TOUR chooses to launch its own event, impacting upon the schedule of the Japan Golf Tour, and inviting only 10 members of the Japan Golf Tour to play.
The PGA TOUR likes to think of itself as being in the same league as Formula 1 or the ATP Tour, so let us compare those three premier competitions:
Events Countries Continents % of events in USA
2025 PGA TOUR 46 6 3 87% (39/46 events)
2025 FORMULA 1 24 22 5 8% (3/24 events)
2025 ATP TOUR 64 23 5 14% (9/64 events)
The statistics make stark reading, and illustrate that Brandel Chamblee is spouting complete inaccuracies. He is either being economical with the truth, or he is just ignorant, perhaps he is just a barefaced liar, either way his opinion is just downright wrong. The facts present a picture of a PGA TOUR which is almost universally American, something we have all known forever, which is why many refer to it as the USPGA TOUR.
Something else Chamblee said was that the Korn Ferry Tour plays in Chile, Colombia and Argentina. He is right. They do. Which means the best golfers in the world will NEVER play in one of the world's oldest National Opens - the VISA Open de Argentina. First played in 1905 the Argentina Open has winners which span almost every generation of legendary golfer from the 19th to the 21st century. Established as 'The Open Championship of the River Plate' the first decade of the championship was dominated by 'the founding father of golf in Argentina' Mungo Park Jr. Mungo was part of the Musselburgh golfing dynasty which won a combined 7 Open Championships, and he won 3 Argentina Opens, including the very first. Mungo was born in 1877, in the 19th century, and over the next 130 years some 11 major championship winning golfers would claim the very same title the Scot would inaugurate.
Henry Picard (1937), Paul Runyan (1938), Jimmy Demaret (1941), Lloyd Mangrum (1946), Roberto De Vicenzo (1944, 1949, 1951, 1952,1958, 1965, 1967, 1970, 1974) Tom Weiskopf (1979), Craig Stadler (1992), Mark Calcavecchia (1993, 1995), Mark O'Meara (1994), Jim Furyk (1997) and Angel Cabrera (2001, 2002, 2012) are all past champions of the Open de Argentina, but a great collection of the sports best players have never congregated in Buenos Aires.
Argentina is a country with a population of some 47 million people, with 157,000 playing golf - by far the highest number in South and Central America. VISA has been the title sponsor of the Argentina Open since 2003, and there can be little doubt that if the VISA Open de Argentina attracted a similar strength of field that the Cognizant Classic had (16 of the worlds top 50), then they would invest in the event to the same level, giving South America a $9million tournament.
Instead, the VISA Open de Argentina is a $1million event on the Korn Ferry Tour, with no hope at all of any of the world's leading players ever participating, until changes are made. Chamblee also made the point that other countries could create events with a $20 million purse and get the best players to play organically. Except, Brandel, they cannot. Why? Because the PGA TOUR only issues 3 releases per season between January and August for members to play on other tours in events which conflict with PGA TOUR events. And, cronies like you in the mainstream media outspokenly criticise them for taking appearance fees to go and play around the world - like for example, Tiger Woods playing in the Johnnie Walker Classic in Thailand and Taiwan, and the Deutsche Bank SAP Open TPC of Europe, in Germany.
As I said, LIV Golf and the PGA TOUR won't merge, and neither should they. LIV Golf is the Indian Premier League, and the PGA TOUR is County Cricket (The Majors are Test Cricket to continue the analogy). You cannot merge two such distinctly different products and platforms into one another, without destroying one of them. The only merger which should be happening is between the established tours, primarily the PGA TOUR and the DP World Tour. The current alliance benefits one party only, the PGA TOUR, and its members. The Genesis Scottish Open provides the perfect preparation for The Open Championship, and enables them to play in Scotland and earn FedEx Cup points whilst doing so. It does though, offer a glimpse at what a truly global PGA TOUR could look like, and investment from the PIF could easily enable it to come to fruition.
A fully merged and truly global PGA TOUR could begin in the first week of October, with the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, and run until the middle of August, with the individual season ending with the TOUR Championship, and the season could climax with an expanded Ryder Cup. The PGA TOUR season would be structured as follows, with 139 events:
4 Major Championships - Masters, PGA Championship, US Open, The Open (1,000 FedEx Cup points)
3 Playoff events - FedEx St Jude Championship, BMW Championship, TOUR Championship
16 Signature events - The Players, Genesis Invitational, Arnold Palmer Invitational, Memorial Tournament, Truist Championship, Colonial National Invitational, AT&T Pebble Beach pro-am, RBC Canadian Open, Genesis Scottish Open, FedEx Open de France, AMGEN Irish Open, Australian Open, South African Open, Japan Open, Argentina Open, World Match Play Championship (800 points)
12 events - Farmers Insurance Open, Waste Management Phoenix Open, The Sentry, The CJ Cup Byron Nelson, Hero Dubai Desert Classic, Valspar Championship, Houston Open, Texas Open, RBC Heritage, Zurich Classic, Travelers Championship, Wyndham Championship (600 points)
18 events - Abu Dhabi Championship, Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, Hero Indian Open, Volvo China Open, Brazil Open, KLM Open, Open D'Italia, BMW International Open, Danish Golf Championship, Betfred British Masters, OMEGA European Masters, The American Express, Sony Open in Hawaii, Mexico Open, Cognizant Classic, ROCKET Classic, John Deere Classic, 3M Open (500 points)
15 events - Australian PGA Championship, Alfred Dunhill Championship, AfrAsia Bank Mauritius Open, Bapco Energies Bahrain Championship, Commercial Bank Qatar Masters, Magical Kenya Open, Joburg Open, Turkish Open, Soudal Open, Austrian Alpine Open, Puerto Rico Open, Corales Puntacana Championship, Myrtle Beach Classic, ISCO Championship, Barracuda Championship (350 points)
26 Events which currently are on the Korn Ferry Tour schedule (150 points)
29 Events which currently are on the Hotel Planner Tour schedule (100 points)
16 Events which currently are on the PGA Tour Americas schedule (75 points)
This version of a merger would still see 24 of the leading 35 tournaments in world golf played in the United States, but it would ensure the rest of the world had 10 significant events outside The Open every year.
Then, to conclude the new global golfing calendar, at the end of August, two weeks after the TOUR Championship, you have a newly expanded Ryder Cup which would feature the USA, Europe and The Internationals, played every year. The Super Bowl of Golf. Followed by a six-week off-season.
Will the PGA TOUR accept McGinley's proposal? Would they entertain mine? Most likely not. So the next thing which may have to happen is down to the European Tour Group. What do they see themselves as - The feeder tour to the PGA TOUR? Or the world's global tour? If it is the latter then they need to do an about turn and approach PIF and LIV Golf, something they should have entertained 4 years ago.
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