The PGA Tour is bracing itself for an imminent legal challenge from LIV rebels trying to overturn injunctions so they can appear in next month’s FedEx Cup play-offs.
The lawyers’ intervention would be a further escalation in a controversy that one former US Ryder Cup captain said could even mean Tour players threatening to boycott majors en masse to force out the Saudi-paid players.
That staggering claim was made by Davis Love III, a hugely respected figure in the locker room who has captained his country twice in the biennial match in Europe, most recently the 2016 victory, and who is leading Team USA again in September’s President’s Cup.
Love has heard the rumours of the Tour being dragged to court next week and believes this will exacerbate an ever-growing divide between the two groups of pros, with players fearing that the defectors might still be able to tee it up alongside them despite receiving tens, and in some cases of hundreds, of millions to join the rival league. Love has a solution for the band of loyalists if they feel powerless.
“Here’s the biggest lever and it’s not the nice lever,” Love said. “But if a group of veterans and a group of top current players align with 150 guys on the Tour, and we say, ‘Guess what? We’re not playing,’ that solves it, right? ‘If LIV guys play in the US Open, we’re not playing. If they sue in court, and they win, we’re not playing.’ You know, there won’t be a US Open. It’s just like a baseball strike.”
It would be no surprise to see LIV unleash the lawyers when, as expected, the Tour issues bans from the three-week end-of-season series that, as well as rewarding the winner with a cheque for $18 million, decides who retains their full playing privileges.
As it stands, with two events left in the regular campaign – the Rocket Mortgage Classic that concludes on Sunday and next week’s Wyndham Championship – there are 10 on the LIV roster who would qualify for the first event in Memphis in a fortnight, with Brooks Koepka the biggest name (Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Sergio Garcia are among those who have already resigned their Tour membership).
Earlier this month, Ian Poulter had his DP World Tour ban overturned for the Scottish Open in an 11th-hour ruling in which a judge declared that Wentworth HQ had not followed correct procedure and should have waited until the over-riding appeals into the suspension and £100,000 fines were settled, a case that could take until Christmas to be resolved.
That means the likes of Poulter, Lee Westwood and even Henrik Stenson – who last week was stripped of the Ryder Cup captaincy after accepting a £40 million LIV offer – can continue to play in Tour events and, as of now, are still officially eligible to earn Ryder Cup qualifying points, a fact infuriating the Tour’s rank and file.
The PGA Tour went even further than its European counterparts by issuing indefinite suspensions and, even though they are under Federal investigation by the Department of Justification on anti-competition laws, Sawgrass is almost duty-bound to follow this through into the play-offs.
Players not in the top 125 in the FedEx standings will lose their cards, but if the LIV 10 are banished this lets in high-profile performers such as Rickie Fowler, Webb Simpson and Italian Francesco Molinari.
No doubt, Love’s “majors strike” suggestion is apocalyptic and, certainly premature, but there is no question that passions are stoked. Luke Donald, the Englishman who will be named as Europe captain early next week, took a swipe at Stenson for signing a contract that stipulated he would not switch to LIV, promising “I will not do a Henrik.” Donald added: “I was surprised that [Stenson] would put his name forward if his plan was to go to LIV.”
Stenson is making his series debut in the third £20 million event, the 54-holer which began on Friday here at Trump National Bedminster. As the 48-man field was preparing for the shotgun start a protest was being hosted three miles away by a 9/11 group of family victims and survivors, demonstrating against the Saudi-funded tournament being hosted on a former president’s course less than 50 miles from Ground Zero. Of the 19 9/11 hijackers, 15 were from Saudi Arabia and the FBI last year released a memo highlighting “significant logistic support” for two of the hijackers.