Phil (and others)... just say you "did it for the money" and stop the BS with other reasons...(growing game of golf, lol).

First, I think Phil did what was best for Phil in playing on LIV for $200 million. After all, even at let's just say $2 million/tourrnament win nowadays, that amounts to nearly 100 tournament wins and by no means was Phil going to even win 3 more PGA tournaments (imo). So he did the math and went with the money.

I wish everyone who went that route would just say so and stop the BS with other reasons.

Second, dislike immensely the selfishness that Phil demonstrated to try and burn down the PGATour-house, conflict of interest style, in order to pad his pockets. It was unnecessary. Kudo's to everyone else who made their decisions, walked away from PGA Tour without denigrating it, and even more so, those who resigned. Phil seemingly is one that wants to eat his LIV-cake and eat the PGATour's-cake too. They won't have it because they only gave out waivers to play other tour on the other continent. LIV is planning to compete directly on USA soil and PGA has always been against that. Sorry Phil, but I now see your character flaws and I no longer like you as a person. If I watch you, it is out of curiosity and no longer out of hope that you do well.

One argument for LIV I've seen is that "well, if PGA tour was so well, they should welcome competition", likening the reasoning that NFL did not care about XFL or USFL, just let them do their thing...they could not compete with NFL on an equal footinng. LIV vs PGA Tour is not an apples-to-apples comparison. Billions is being poured in by Saudi money (without even getting into the evil side of things).... Norman/$100 mill, Phil/$200 mill, DJ/$150 million..... $450 million right there, if all the other 46 players, officials, etc combined is another $500+ million, then that's a free $1 billion poured into this tour. The PGA Tour is run like a business and needs to show profit from their activities. LIV has 'free money', doesn't have to show profit to survive (maybe in the future they may have to if there is no continuation of Saudi support).

*And for all those mega millions, you'd think LIV would have a decent web site, spend $100k maybe on that, you'd think? Anyone find how those 'teams' are fairing? I couldn't find anything.

*The LIV product:
* Player's perspective: If everyone starts on a different hole, then they end on different holes. So if someone is in the lead, say by 1 stroke with 2-3 holes to play, how do you assess how to play your remaining holes when the currently 2nd place guy may have a par-5 in his finishing holes while you only have a tough par3 and par4?
* Spectators perspective: Where do you go to watch the winner? They don't finish at hole 18 anymore. The winner might end up at hole 7, or 12, or 15? So there won't be that bunching up of spectators at the 18 hole to watch a captivating finish. This could have easily been thought of and rectified by now.

I respect the way most of the other players handled their entry into LIV.......except for Phil. I am starting to believe that background noise about Phil is not really the guy he portrays himself to be in public....he's actually worse.

I just can't get excited about LIV. The money they are receiving is blood money in my opinion. Watching a little of the first round, there are not a lot of spectators. I read they were handing out free tickets.
I just don't see LIV being successful in the long run. If it fails, I wonder how long these players will be banned from the PGA. I was hoping to see Phil play in the Champions Tour, but right now that does not seem to be happening any time soon.

If this is blood money, then how dare ANYONE drive. Just stay in your homes and starve yourselves to death

Isn't that more moral than using Saudi Oil?

Many Masters champions have or are likely to soon join LIV

Schwartzel,
Mickelson
Garcia
Reed
Johnson
Watson (likely)
Scott (likely)

I still suspect Augusta is who is behind this. Gary Player hitting the opening tee shot wearing the Golf Saudi logo? Phil wearing an Augusta logo?

Or at least a subtle warning to Monahan that they are not going to play ball with the PGA Tour

[quote="dortt"]If this is blood money, then how dare ANYONE drive. Just stay in your homes and starve yourselves to death

Isn't that more moral than using Saudi Oil
?[/quote

Nobody condones the human rights issues but simply put its "selective outrage" The general population has no idea how intertwined the USA is with these other countries.

I just booked hotel for the LIV event at Trump National in Bedminster. Really looking forward to it. Phil obviously the draw for me but by then there will be more pgatour guys who crossed over.

Well, I wasn't trying to go down the path of 'blood money' (said in the opening remarks that 'without even getting into the evil side of things').  I was just trying to say the LIV golf league is not based on a business outcome of revenue/profitability to support their costs, they are based on free money from deep pocket Saudi money.  I don't know how the PGATour is to compete against that.  It is like the Saudi's are throwing tons of money to destroy the PGA Tour (I'm sure Greg Norman loves that part of it). It would be like some other country financing/subsidizing a their national chip maker to to compete with Intel, AMD, NVidia by allowing them to sell computer chips below cost, get their market and ruin those US companies.  Not much different in that scenario than what's going on with the LIV financing.  But the other issue is the LIV PGA players, are somewhat two-faced to argue they should be allowed to play in the PGA, really?  They have rules about not playing in leagues that are competitive to the PGA, they got releases in the past to play overseas where the tournies don't interfere with the PGATour, now they want to play the LIV and PGA too? Kinda brash.  I don't see how they win in court, the rules/bylaws were there, they knew them (or should have), and now they want the benefit of the tour who's rules they breached?  Good luck.

And Phil, the inside man who tried to set fire and sabotage the PGA Tour, with all those claims of 'media rights' (did you ever bring that up before or challenge PGA Tour on that?, and what other sports league allows that?). Shameful, self-aggrandizement for sake of $$$ in his pocket. I agree though, the $$ were too much to overlook, but golly just all of them (or even just one) say "they did it for the money" and stop the other excuse BS.

As far as Phil bringing these topics up in the past. We'll he did but more behind closed doors. Back when they first started the FedEx cup Phil ...and Tiger had gripes about it and other things with Tim Fincham. If you research it you will see I believe after the Duteche bank win against Tiger , Phil hinted about skipping a playoff event because several issues didnt sit well with him.. Anyway back then that was I think 2007 , Phil was younger. Now at 52 he can make more waves because his career is virtually behind him and he realizes it. Yes it's about money but all players would likely benefit, but according to Bob Harig Phils greed comments about the tour unfortunately overshadowed some valid points . Had Phil been more politically correct the backlash IMO would have been much less.

j58golf wrote:As far as Phil bringing these topics up in the past. We'll he did but more behind closed doors. Back when they first started the FedEx cup Phil ...and Tiger had gripes about it and other things with Tim Fincham. If you research it you will see I believe after the Duteche bank win against Tiger , Phil hinted about skipping a playoff event because several issues didnt sit well with him.. Anyway back then that was I think 2007 , Phil was younger.  Now at 52 he can make more waves because his career is virtually behind him and he realizes it.  Yes it's about money  but all players would likely benefit, but according to Bob Harig Phils greed comments about the tour unfortunately overshadowed some valid points . Had Phil been more politically correct the backlash IMO would have been much less.

Finchem listened to the stars. Something Monahan refuses to do

Finchem understood who he worked for. Liddle Jay Monahan thinks it's all about him

I apologize, I should not have said "blood money". I am just so pissed that Phil decided to join the LIV. Phil was one of the most well-liked players on the tour. He just won the PGA Championship, becoming the oldest player ever to win a major. All of what he has accomplished has been tarnished due to greed. How much money does he need? He was making $60 million a year during his prime.
My hope is the LIV is not successful and shuts down in the next few years and Phil will be allowed to play on the PGA tour again.

I understand how you feel but IMHO I think in the long run the pgatour is going to accept and come to some sort of compromise with LIV. The grapevine is reporting many more guys jumping over once they start playing on us soil.

j58golf wrote: Had Phil been more politically correct the backlash IMO would have been much less.

Absolutely. There's been no backlash against any others, except sponsor drops, but no one else tried to torpedo the PGA Tour like Phil did.

Funny thing about the LIV, I've heard some comments players have made (Patrick Reed for one...and he's not even there?) about how the LIV tourney has had such a great player's experience and fans that are so appreciative, "like I've not witnessed before". Oh come on, really? like what? You mean to tell me that TPC, WGC events, FedEx events, all of the tour events that I've heard 'treat players the best'....that all of a sudden, this 1st event by LIV tops out all that's been witnessed by entirety of the PGA Tour? I find that a bit hard to believe.

Just in case anyone is interested, the breakdown on LIV London payout:

Full breakdown of prize money and payouts from the LIV Golf Event in London
Win: $4,000,000 - Charl Schwartzel
2: $2,125,000 - Hennie Du Plessis
T3: $1,500,000 - Branden Grace, Peter Uihlein
5: $975,000 - Sam Horsfield
T6: $800,000 - Oliver Bekker, Adrian Otaegui
8: $625,000 - Dustin Johnson
9: $580,000 - Talor Gooch
T10: $560,000 - Graeme McDowell, Justin Harding, Louis Oosthuizen
T13: $360,000 - Pablo Larrazabal, Ryosuke Kinoshita
T15: $250,000 - Martin Kaymer, Jinichiro Kozuma
T17: $232,000 - Richard Bland, JC Ritchie, Laurie Canter
T20: $200,000 - Ian Poulter, Scott Vincent
T22: $172,000 - Shaun Norris, Wade Orsmby, Sergio Garcia
T25: $166,000 - James Piot, Matt Jones, Ian Snyman, Phachara Khongwatmai
29: $158,000 - Lee Westwood
T30: $156,000 - Hudson Swafford,Viraj Madappa, Jediah Morgan
T33: $150,000 - Kevin Yuan, Phil Mickelson, Travis Smyth, Kevin Na, Chase Koepka
T38: $140,000 - Oliver Fisher, Blake Windred, David Puig, Hideto Tanihara, Ratchanon Chantananuwat
T43: $130,000 - Bernd Wiesberger, Sihwan Kim
45: $126,000 - Turk Pettit
46: $124,000 - Sadom Kaewkanjana
47: $122,000 - Itthipat Buranatanyarat
48: $120,000 - Andy Ogletree

Team-Event Payouts at LIV Golf Event in London

Win: $3,000,000 - Stinger GC, -20 (Schwartzel, Du Plessis, Grace, Oosthuizen)
2: $1,500,000 - Crushers GC, -6 (Uihlien, Bland, Smyth, Khongwatmai)
3: $500,000 - Majesticks GC, -5 (Horsfield, Poulter, Westwoon, Canter)

If you’re basically done with Phil as you said in the original post then why continue to log in and bother typing 25 long winded paragraphs ?  While you’re at it please remove all the products in your home made with Chinese child slave labor while their government continues to commit genocide against ethnic groups and make political dissidents disappear.  The PGA tours ties to China run deep in various ways as do every other professional sports league.  The hypocrisy of some of the virtue signalers is mind blowing.  Nobody makes the kind of money pro athletes do without some of it being “dirty”.  The concept of LIV definitely has its merits.  From a capitalistic perspective guys like Tiger and Phil basically subsidized the entire PGA Tour membership for 25 years.  They sold the tickets, drove the TV ratings, and raked in the sponsors that padded the purses where these sub top 50 guys that nobody cares to watch made generational wealth.  Phil doesn’t owe the tour anything.  It’s a shame it’s the Saudis who have backed this venture but it was bound to happen eventually.  Getting the top 50 golfers to go head to head in this type of format while allowing them basically free agent contracts let’s these guys cash in on their true value.  In my opinion the WGC concept should have been turned into an elite Premier League style series that would coexist with all the various tours.  The powers that be sat on their hands too long and we’re left with what’s happening today.

Of course they are doing it for the money...what professional athlete isn't? And most athletes don't just come out and say it.

That doesn't mean they are insincere about the others reasons