Golf’s New World

don't think anybody knows what's going to happen. But if you would have asked me, I mean a year ago today, I was in London for the first Live tournament, And if you'd have told me in a year that Jay Monahan would be merging with the PIF and Live and all of those things, I just wouldn't have believed you. And I think the reason why I wouldn't have believed that this was going to happen, or was ever going

to happen, in all honesty, it was Jay Monahan. It was the stance that Jay and the PGA tour and everybody kind of that wasn't a part of Live. I mean everybody took that stance, right, everybody took the anti Saudi, the blood money, the murderous dictators, the human rights, the nine to eleven. That was that was the stance that that was definitely one hundred percent the stance jay Monahan took.

I mean, I think we're all seeing, you know, the clips of him last year at the RBC Canadian Open with Jim Nantz, you know, talking about the families of nine to eleven and talking about all the things associated with that and saying, you know, if you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour. And then a year later, he's now doing business with the same people that he was telling people not to do business with. So I think it's it's it's it's fascinating.

I think it's a stunning turnaround. But I guess in a lot of ways, it's not surprising because listen, at the end of the day in twenty twenty three, and I've been saying this for a while, some people like this, some people don't like this. In twenty twenty three, sports is a business, and professional golf is a business, and I think what we've seen in the last forty eight hours is this is business. And I think Jay Monahan

made a business decision. I find it fascinating that Jay Monahan made the identical same business decision that the forty eight guys that went to play Live made and were vilified, crushed, crucified in the media, and it's been a stunning one hundred and eighty degree turnaround. Why did this happen? Listen, I'm a golf instructor, right, I'm not smart enough to know why things like this happened. But what I do know is I've been a part of the live ecosystem

for a year. I went to every live event last year all of my players. Not by design, but it just happened that all the players that I worked with went to live and the last year, the amount of criticism, some of the things said about them written about them.

Every time I would post a video of Dustin Johnson's golf swing, or Brooks's golf swing or Pat Perez's golf swing, the DMS I would get from people on murderer you work for murderers, you work for you know, people that support blood money sports watching it was just it was crazy and I think it's been fascinating to watch, you know how this entire thing is unfolded. I met Yaser from the PIF. I met Yaser in twenty seventeen in

Abu Dhabi at the Abu Dhabi Championship. I think he was either playing with the Brooks or DJ and got to spend eighteen holes walking around with him and listening to him talk about his vision, his love of the game of golf, how much he wanted to get involved in professional golf, how much he wanted Saudi Arabia to be a part of the fabric of professional golf. A lot of people see that as sinister, and I just

I just don't. Maybe it's because I've met Yaser, and maybe it's because I grew up in you know, in Morocco and lived in Dubai and lived in the Middle East, and I've been to Saudi Arabia, you know, almost every year since twenty eighteen, So I don't see it as sinister.

I got invited at my academy in Dubai. We have coached and worked with the Saudi national team to try and help them improve, and you know, all my staff work with the kids and the players that play for the Saudi national team, so I knew a bunch of

the players involved in this. I got invited to the launch of the Saudi International and the European Tour in twenty eighteen and got invited over by Yaser and Majad and I saw jayme on Hen I think not long after that at the Players Championship, and I said this, Jay, Listen, I was just in Saudi Arabia. You should really reach out to Yasser. He really wants to be a part of the PGA tour. He really wants to be a part of professional golf. I think he's got some good ideas.

You should talk to him and you should really have a conversation with him. And I remember in twenty eighteen, you know, Jay was like, yeah, you know, we don't know how that would look. And I said, in twenty eighteen, I said to jayme Onhan, Jay just gives whatever the Saudis are trying to do, if they're going to come up with their own tour or whatever it is they

want to be a part, is give them fall. Give them tournaments in the fall that you guys don't want to be involved in because you guys are trying to get out of the fall to try and not go up against professional football. So I told Jay that in eighteen.

I told him that in nineteen. I told him that in twenty, I told him that in twenty one, and I told him that last year, and for whatever reason, I don't know why, but for some reason, Jay just never had an interest in doing that, and the specifically, you know, for the last year, everything that has come from Jay and the PGA Tour aside, and really from the majority of the media has just been anti Saudi, anti lib. I mean, how many times have we heard

Jay Monahan say the Saudi backed league? I mean, I've lost count how many times I've heard him and other players and people in the media say that. So do we talk about is the PGA Tour now a Saudi backed league? I mean, it's crazy. And the abject hypocrisy behind all of this has just been staggering, and I

don't understand why it was always like that. It's been fascinating to me that it took almost a year for anyone to even question what the PGA Tour was doing and why so many of the PGA tours corporate sponsors and tournament sponsors were doing business in Saudi Arabia. And that was okay, But it wasn't okay for the forty eight guys that went to live for them to do business with Saudi Arabia. There's a thing on everybody's phone

called the Internet. It's called Google. If you want to find out information, and if you want to educate yourself, you can. So when I went over to London last year and spent the week at the first Live event, I spent that week mainly a lot at night, just kind of doing some research as too. You know, who does business with Saudi Arabia, which companies do to business in Saudi Arabia. And I was interested because there was so much backlash against the guys that went to Live.

I was interested to see on which companies were doing business in Saudi Arabia. I mean it was a two second Google search to find out that FedEx had given the Saudis four hundred million dollars for their twenty thirty initiative. That took me less than two seconds to find. If you want to find that information, you could find it. You could find which of the PGA Tours Global Partners,

Corporate Global Partners, tournament sponsors. You could find which of those companies and those organizations were doing business in Saudi Arabia. And what I found fascinating last year is not one reporter asked Jay Monahan, why are the majority of your corporate and tournament sponsors doing business in Saudi Arabia, And why do they want to do business in Saudi Arabia. I mean, you've got Jay the majority of last year

standing up in front of every interview he gives. Behind him, there's a giant sign that says FedEx cup, FedEx cup, FedEx cup, FedEx is giving the Saudis four hundred million dollars, and you're telling everybody don't do business with the Saudis,

which to me just it never made any sense. And to me it always seemed that, yeah, this was always about the money, and the reason why a lot of the PGA Tours corporate partners and a lot of their tournament sponsors are doing business in Saudi Arabia was for financial reasons. Obviously, obviously they're doing business in Saudi Arabia for financial reasons. But I just couldn't underst and why the forty eight guys that went to live were just pariahs for a lot of people, the moral argument, the

nine to eleven argument, the forty eight guys. In my opinion, this is my opinion, right, the forty eight guys that went went to live, they had no involvement in in nine to eleven, but they were portrayed as nine to eleven sympathizers. And now you've got the guy that basically pushed that argument turning around and doing a deal with the same people that he was telling people not to do business with, which I think everybody's still trying to make sense of it. I know there are a lot

of people that are outraged by it. I've got to think that there are players on the PGA tour that are kind of just scratching their heads and saying, Okay, wait a minute, I had big offers and listen. I also, I think it's important and I hopefully think that it will come out as to how many players, how many household names were trying to get offers from the Saudist

last year and had gotten offers. And you know, there are already rumors that players and fathers of players that had big offers from Live that turned them down on advice from the PGA tour that they're thinking about and looking into taking legal action and seeing what their legal options were because all of these guys were told don't go, don't go. Stay with the PGA tour. What was it history and trophies, not about money. And you know, in the last forty eight hours. The only thing I hear

people talking about is money. But last year, money was evidently bad. Taking money was evidently bad. Being an athlete, being a professional golfer and doing basically what every other professional athlete does, which is try and make as much money as possible. We see it in American sports. We see it in the UK in football. We see it all over Europe and football. We see it in F one. We've seen it in cricket, and we see it in the NBA, the NFL, NHL, every major professional sports in America.

There are players trying to get big contracts, big signing bonuses. It leads sports news. But for some reason, there was a segment of the population that just wanted golf to just be this. And I've said this. I said this in an article right after Brooks won the PGA. It's like golf is the Truman Show and it has to be the way it was in the forties, fifties and sixties. It can't change. Change is bad, and we just have to have the status quo because that's the way it's

always been. And if you were one of the live guys and you got the bag and you decided to make a financial decision, You're a bad person, You're a trader to the PGA Tour. And none of it made any sense because pretty much the majority of the in my opinion, the majority of the decisions the PGA Tour makes or financial decisions. I mean, their headquarters looks like

something a Bond villain would live in. It's got a it's entirely surrounded by water, It's over one hundred thousand square feet, and there are a nonprofit organization, and I just don't know a lot of nonprofit organizations that have that type of headquarters and have executives flying around on private jets like the PGA Tour does. And listen, I don't have a problem with any of that, right, I don't have an issue with the way the PGA Tour runs their business. I don't have an issue with any

of it. But what I do have an issue is the players that I worked with last year just got crushed because they went to live I got crushed because, I mean I had people coming up to me saying, you know, how are things on the dark side? I mean the amount of DMS on social that I've gotten saying that, you know, I'm a Trader and all of these things. I mean, it got really really personal, and it was really really personal for a lot of people, and the media was basically beating the drum of anti Live,

anti Saudi all of that. So I think it's going to be fascinating to figure out and to see where all of this ends up. I really do. I really think it will be fascinating. I don't think anybody really knows. I think Jay Monahan has a tremendous amount of bridge building to do. There are a lot of people that wonder if he can survive this, if PGA tour players will be able to see him as somebody that they have confidence in. You know, I really don't know. But

what I do know is yah Sir. I consider him a off lucky enough to have spent time with him over the last year, both professionally and privately, and he's one of the most soulful, kind of He's a very very soft person. He's always asking questions. He's easily one of the smartest people I know, and he is absolutely a golf junkie. He is passionate, so so passionate about golf, and every time I'm around him, he's asking me to look at his golf swing. He's talking to me about golf.

When you walk around with him in the pro am and he hits a bad shot, you can tell that it affects him the way it affects everybody that plays golf. And I think the fact that he's from Saudi Arabia, why is that a sticking point. He's a golfer, he loves golf rightly wrongly. He has a lot of money. The Saudis have a lot of money, and they want to invest that money in golf. I don't see the sinister reasons as to why they do it, because I think I don't see that because I've lived in the

Middle East. I love the Middle East. It's like a second home to me. And you know, I left my dad. We started an academy in Dubai in two thousand and I moved to Dubai and in the summer of two thousand and seven, and I lived there until two thousand and eleven. And when I left the United States, they were massive, massive talks about you know, gun control, school shootings, abortion, all of those things. We're still talking about those in twenty twenty three. None of that. Nothing has changed there

hasn't been any changes. We're still talking about gun control, We're still talking about school shootings. And if you look at a country like Saudi Arabia when I first went there in two thousand and eighteen, every year when I go back, I'm really surprised, you know, the changes that are happening in the country. My daughter went to the

Jetta Film Festival earlier this year for a week. She's studying film at Dartmouth and she went there and a friend of mine got her an internship and asked her if she wanted to go to the Jeda Film Festival. You would when I lived in Dubai, I would never even contemplate sending my daughter, you know, ten years ago to Saudi Arabia. It would just be a very different experience. She had a great experience. She really really enjoyed her

time there. I have found it fascinating that an enormous amount of the people in the media and that have been adamantly against, you know, the Saudi's involvement in golf and live have never once been to Saudi Arabia. They've never spent any time in the Middle East. They know

nothing really about the culture. They don't have any friends from those from those parts of the world, and everything they're doing is is is making their own opinion based off of, you know, what they're hearing from other people. So I think what the Saudis have been trying to do in golf, I see it as positive. I've been

in talks, you know, for the last five years. You know, when I went over in twenty eighteen, the first thing Yaser said to me was, I want you to help me bring golf to our children in Saudi Arabia's that's my vision. My vision is for young people to see golf, to have it play the role that golf has played in my life. And you know that has been something that has been very very important to me and a really good friend of mine, a young kid named Noah Ali Raza. I used to teach Noah as a as

a golfer when I was in Dubai. He was one of the first lessons that I ever gave. He was trying to play professionally, went to school in the US. He was a very very good player, loved golf. He was in the first ad we used my dad and I for our academy in Dubai. Noah was the guy in our advertisement with my dad and I about you know, golf,

about trying to get better. Noah is now take and over golf Saudi and I've been in constant conversation, you know, since I went to Saudi in January, and Noah's been saying, listen, we need to try and bring golf to Saudi Arabia. We need a grassroots approach to try and build golf in the kingdom. And you know Bob Diamond, who used to run Barklay's, was big into golf, started you know, Barkley's sponsorship of the Premiership in football in the UK. He's a big golfer. He's a member at my club.

And you know I was having dinner with him and he was talking about the things that the Saudis were trying to do, and he said, you know, the Saudis say that they want to change their country, that they want to change from what they've been and want to try and do something different. And I'll never forget this that Bob said, if that's what they're saying, why wouldn't we want to try and help them. Why wouldn't we want to try and help them change their country? And

if golf can be a vehicle to do that. Then I'm here for it. I really am. I think having lived in that region, I think a lot of people in Saudi Arabia look at what happened in Dubai. I think a lot of people in the US had never really even heard of Dubai if it wasn't for golf. We saw Tiger playing in tournaments over there. We saw all the big buildings over there. Every major player, every person pretty much it's won a major championship in the

last fifteen to twenty years. They've all been paid an enormous amount of appearance money to go play in Abi Dabi. They've been paid an enormous amount of appearance money to go play in Dubai. I don't have a problem with that. I've said this, Rory McElroy should be paid to play golf, in my opinion, wherever he goes. He's earned that right. That's how great of a player he is. And there's a dirty little secret that a lot of what's happened over the last years golfers get paid. Golfers get paid

appearance fees. Golfers get paid appearance fees outside the its fate golfers have been getting paid for a number of years now in the United States to play tournaments. How they've been paid, They've probably been paid in other ways, to go to lunches, to go to dinners. I've seen that. I've watched that. And it's not just the live guys that we're doing that. Everybody that was a great player has been getting paid. It's not news, it's not a surprise.

That's the way the world works. And I think Jay Monahan made a business decision. And there are a lot of people that think he sold a bunch of people out. I think, you know, I think time will tell. I think Jay's a pragmatist. But what I do think is I don't think we ever needed to get here. I

really really don't. I think these conversations could have happened last year, two years ago, three years ago, because everybody in golf, all the agents, all the players, all the governing bodies, everybody PG Tour, everybody at the DP World Tour. If you need an example as to it's always been about the money, ask yourself this question. Why is the European Tour no longer called the European Tour, It's the

DP World Tour. If it's not about the money, why did the European Tour need to have a corporate sponsor and no longer be called the European Tour and be called the DP World Tour. It's no longer called the European Tour, it's called a corporate sponsor's name of that tour. Kids, it's always been about the money, and I just think it's been fascinating and I think it's going to be interesting.

You know, I watched Rory's press conference yesterday. Rory has always been fiercely, fiercely anti lib so it's going to be very interesting to see how all of that plays out. Because Live is Yau's idea, it's his passion, it's his baby. He basically came up with all the ideas. He was involved in all of it. And I think it's going to be interesting because there are a lot of people now,

especially after Rory's comments yesterday. Rory was very very It was important for Rory to say yesterday that this isn't a deal with Live, it's a deal with the PIF. The PIF owns Live, So we'll see how all of that plays out. On a personal note, I feel sorry, I really do. I feel sorry for Rory, not Roy. You could see last year how much him being the spokesperson for the PGA Tour, for the PGA's tours, stance against live, against the Saudi's, against the money, all that,

you could see that it was wearing on. It's my opinion. I don't have any facts around this, but I think it has affected him as a person, and I think it's affected him as a player. I think it's affected his game. I think he volunteered, but I think the tour asked Roy to do a lot last year, and he did that job unbelievably well. The passion and the conviction that Rory speaks in his voice, you can hear it, you can feel it. I'm a massive, massive Roy McElroy fan,

both on and off the golf course. He is a joy to talk to when whenever I have time to spend talking to him, asking him questions. He's a thinker, he's got good ideas, he's introspective, he's he's a thinker and that's what I really really love most about him, and I just love him as a golfer. I think he's an unbelievable player, so obviously he has been fiercely anti Live. I think it's going to be interesting to see where all that plays out. I've heard some people

say that this is great for Live. I've heard some other people say that this is the end of Live, that Live won't be around after this year. I honestly don't know. I don't think anybody knows. I think everything this is a moving target. It's fluid. But I do think that Jay Monahan made a business decision. And at the end of the day, you know, they always say it's about money, and follow the money. You know. It was funny. I was at the the at Augusta this year.

I was standing on the range talking to one of the members in his green jacket, obviously a very very successful person, and we were talking about, you know, how the week was going to play out, and he was saying he was surprised that there hadn't been really a lot of animosity between the players, and he thought that was a good thing and hopefully golf could move forward. And I said to him, I said, you know, it

doesn't have to be like this. I mean, everybody is doing business in Saudi Arabia, and I said, if you look at the corporate sponsors that the Masters had this year. I think all of them, I think all the majority of them are doing business in Saudi Arabia. I mean Delta Airlines, who's part of sky Team Saudi Airlines. And I mentioned all of this to him, and I talked to him about all this and he said to me, yes, but Claude, that's business, and we're business people. We're doing business.

And I looked at the driving range and I'm thinking, so all of these people aren't in business. All of these people are not business people. Athletes are business people. They are their own business. And there are people that like that. There are people that don't like that. But

that is a reality. And it is my hope that this partnership, this merger, whatever it is, it is my hope that we can get back to talking about golf, talking about all of the great players we have in the game right now, all the great young talent that's rising all over every tour. But I've been saying for a year when everybody, if DJ won a tournament, I'd post something and everybody would go insignificant, nobody cares, nobody's watching. They're all losers. They went to live. It's not real golf.

It's all that well for all those people that thought that the PGA Tour is now part of the same group that everyone for the last year a lot of people have been against. So is that narrative going to change. I think it's going to be fascinating to see where a guy like Brandal Shamblee shakes out in all of this. I mean, Brandell has been probably the ultimate anti live person. He has used his platform on Golf Channel to use it as his own kind of personal bully pulpit to

just talk human rights Saudi. He now works for a company that televises an event, televises events, tournaments, and all that money is coming is going to be coming from the Saudis. And everybody said they didn't like the source of the money last year. For all the people that didn't like where the money was coming from, you know, I guess you have to figure out how your moral compass works. I mean, Brandal talked NonStop last year moral compass,

moral compass, moral compass. So I guess we'll see if Randall's got a moral compass, because based off of all of the things that he said last year, I mean, does he quit, does he resign in protest the way Piers Morgan did on Live TV, and stand by the tenants, stand on his convictions, and say I won't work for an organization that is involved in Saudi Arabia, because that's what he said. Every single player that went to Live

last year should do that. They were all morally bankrupt because they worked with an organization that was backed by the Saudis. Well, Randall now works for organizations and comments on organizations that work with the Saudis. So I think it'll be interesting to see, you know, what he chooses to do. But I do hope that everybody can understand that at the end of the day, this is golf.

We're talking about golfers regardless of where they play, and hopefully moving forward, we can quit talking about which tours players play on, and we can talk about how great they are as players, how great they are as golfers, how great the shots are that they hit under pressure, And you don't have to choose you like golf, you can watch golf regardless of where it's being played. I've

been saying that for a while now. I find it very interesting that the guy, in my opinion, J Monahan wanted everybody to choose between the PGA Tour and Live in Saudis, And in my opinion, that was his litmus test. You're either on the side of the PGA Tour or you were on the side of Live, and if you were on the side of Live, you're on the side of the Saudis And he wanted you to choose. He wanted you to choose between the PGA Tour and Live. And now he has chosen to merge with the people

that he wanted you to choose against. And I think it's going to be fascinating to see where all of this plays out. But I know a lot of people won't like this or won't agree with this, But I think this is good for the game. I think this is good for I will not for the game of golf. I think this is good for professional I think people need to make a distinction between professional golf and golf. Golf is what the rest of us that aren't professionals golf.

That's what we play. And I don't see how any of that is going to change. Professional golf is going to change. And whatever side of the aisle you're on on that is fine. But at the end of the day, if you're watching professional golf, if you're watching professional football, basketball, baseball, motor racing, suck, whatever it is, the sport is still the sport, and I just don't think that this needed

to happen. Hopefully we can move forward now. I think what the Saudias are trying to do in golf because I've seen it firsthand. I haven't just listened to the rumors. I've been over there, I've been involved. I know what they're trying to do, and I think it's good. I think it's good for golf. I think it's good for professional golf, and I guess time will tell. But as I said earlier, hopefully we can start talking about how great the golfers are and the shots and the tournaments

that they're winning. And I might be in the minority, but I think professional golf is in a good place and I think it's only going to get better. Just my opinion. I understand that not everybody's going to agree. But here's the thing. It's important to remember that even if you don't agree with my opinion or other people's opinions, it doesn't have to be the end of the world. We have gotten so polarized in my opinion, on one side or the other side, and there's no middle ground.

And I think if we can try and all live and work more towards a middle ground instead of digging in and only living in our own echo chambers, I think golf would be a better place, and I think the world would be a better place as well. Son of a Butcher comes to you every Wednesday. We will see you all next week. US Open Week.