How Men's Professional Golf could have looked with PIF investment used wisely

Oh, what a missed opportunity.

LIV Golf arrived four years ago, and the established Tours railed against it.

They took the moral high ground, criticising the source of the money, when we all knew it was about the established tours controlling men's professional golf.

Meanwhile, the Saudi's invested in Football, Tennis, Motorsport and Boxing, helping to elevate and change those sports in a positive way. Golf continued to battle, the established tours banned and fined players who joined LIV Golf, before announcing the most poorly executed merger of all-time in June 2023. The assets of the PGA TOUR, DP World Tour and LIV Golf were to be merged into a new for-profit entity called PGA TOUR Enterprises.

It never came to pass, and it was never meant to.

The Tours entertained PIF Governor Yasir Al Rumayyan at consecutive Alfred Dunhill Links Championships, and they dragged their heels when considering LIV Golf's application for Official World Golf Ranking points, before eventually caving after near four years of players losing points.

It was all part of a long-term plan, enabled by many members of the golf media, including and especially the PGA TOUR's rights partners, to destroy LIV Golf.

Shockingly the PIF pulled their funding of LIV Golf earlier this year, and with that, their investment potential in the wider structure of men's professional golf was ended. $6billion poured down the drain.

The investment has, in all reality, achieved absolutely nothing.

Opportunities for emerging talent in Saudi Arabia have been limited to certain Asian Tour events, including the Saudi International, and the Saudi Open, and there are currently no Saudi golfers ranked inside the world's top 2000 golfers.

Saudi Arabia's investment in the Asian Tour through LIV Golf has also come to an end, and the future of both the Saudi International and the Saudi Open seems to be in doubt after the conclusion of this season, leaving Saudi Arabia without a flagship men's professional golf event.

What, a massive, missed opportunity for this sport. What a waste.

It did not need to be like this.

Saudi Arabia entered golf just prior to the Pandemic with the launch of the Saudi International, Saudi Ladies International, and the Aramco Team Series. Covid-19 changed the landscape of men's professional golf, and the European Tour and Asian Tour came out of the Pandemic on the precipice of going out of business. One Tour looked to Saudi Arabia, and the other looked to their rivals across the Atlantic, the PGA TOUR.

No single tour, group of players or organisation is responsible for the divide in golf, it came about due to necessity and a fight for survival. Cool heads and outside the box thinking could have seen PIF welcomed into the sport as a valued investor, and a unifying one.

Global golf, team golf, history and tradition could all have co-existed on a single platform, a unified PGA TOUR merging all the existing tours including the PGA TOUR, Korn Ferry Tour, PGA TOUR Americas, European Tour, Challenge Tour, Asian Tour, Japan Golf Tour, Sunshine Tour and PGA Tour of Australasia. We could have had what the International Federation of PGA Tours promised to deliver when it was formed in 1996 in response to the World Golf Tour proposal from Greg Norman.

The announced changes to the PGA TOUR make it more US-centric than ever before, and I won't hold my breath waiting for news on this supposed global series in collaboration with the DP World Tour. Yet more announcements have been made about strategic alliances between tours, but in reality what it is doing is forming a feeder system to the US-based PGA TOUR, it is not staging world class tournaments across the globe.

PIF's $6billion invested in LIV Golf, or to be more accurate, wasted on LIV Golf, could have paid for the development of professional tournaments across the globe, without paying the artificially inflated salaries of players which have been recruited for LIV Golf. A PGA TOUR Championship Series event is said to be costing a sponsor $30million per event, which means the PIF investment into LIV Golf could have paid for approximately 200 tournaments. A World Golf Championship series which featured up to 10-12 events outside the USA would mean that the PIF investment would have been stretched over 20 years, securing the future of tournament golf around the world, and giving PIF a return on their investment.

The PGA TOUR had the FedEx Cup, and now it has the Championship Series, the DP World Tour has the Race to Dubai and the Rolex Series, and for a casual golf fan it is confusing and the system we have is failing the sport, with no tour truly fulfilling its potential. The sport needs truly unifying, and did so long before the arrival of LIV Golf. Let's end the so-called Strategic Alliances, and have a full merger of the PGA TOUR and DP World Tour, unifying the highest levels of the sport and working together with the Sunshine Tour, Asian Tour, Japan Golf Tour and PGA Tour of Australasia.

How would a new, global PGA TOUR work?

Saving, amending and elevating the World Golf Championships

The International Federation of PGA Tours launched at a meeting at the 1996 Presidents Cup, and they committed to developing 'world competitions jointly sanctioned by the tours' and in 1999 the World Golf Championships were launched. The World Golf Championships were supposed to 'determine the true champions of the game. Traveling to world-class courses that span five continents, each player competes to prove their worth.'

Sadly the World Golf Championships never fulfilled that mission, and the large majority of the events staged over their 24-year existence were played in the United States of America. Yes they did visit Spain, Ireland, England, Mexico, Argentina, Japan, Australia, China, Barbados, and Portugal, but on many occasions the fields were missing top players, and they did not replicate the standards of the Major Championships. No WGC ever had a half-way cut, and the biggest field was around 75 players, so it is questionable whether you can even call them Championships in the first place.

Does that mean that they didn't provide great moments? No, there were several fantastic moments in the history of the WGC's, but most of them revolved around Tiger Woods, who won 18 out of the 63 he played in over a 20-year period.

What the WGC's did have though was an excellent brand, and incredible potential to unify the world's tours.

PIF Investment could have been used to supercharge this, and under a unified global PGA TOUR the WGC brand would explode. The World Golf Championships could feature a mix of elite invitationals, established professional tournaments and traditional national Open Championships, taking the best golfers in the world to every corner of the world.

Below are the events which could have been included in the World Golf Championships:

Hero Dubai Desert Classic Genesis Invitational

Emirates Golf Club, Dubai Riviera Country Club, Los Angeles

South African Open Bridgestone Invitational

Sun City or Leopard Creek Firestone Country Club

Australian Open Arnold Palmer Invitational

Rotates around Australia Bay Hill Club and Lodge

Hero Indian Open Memorial Tournament

DLF Country Club or Delhi Golf Club Muirfield Village

Amgen Irish Open Colonial National Invitation

Rotates around Ireland Colonial Country Club

World Match Play Championship Truist Championship

Wentworth Quail Hollow

Genesis Scottish Open Western Open

Rotates around Scotland Cog Hill

FedEx Open de France Met Open

Le Golf National Rotates around NY Met area

Open de Espana Pebble Beach pro-am

Valderrama Pebble Beach

RBC Canadian Open WM Phoenix Open

Rotates around Canada TPC Scottsdale

Mexico Open THE PLAYERS Championship

Chapultepec TPC Sawgrass

Volvo China Open Dunlop Phoenix Tournament

Mission Hills Phoenix Seagia

There would not be an expectation that every eligible golfer would play every WGC in a single year, but the events/locations in bold are the ones Rory McIlroy played in a single year in 2025. Rory's schedule shows the potential if all the best players in the world were to follow suit. PIF investment would have made that more likely, only without the shotgun start, music and franchise golf.

Nations Championship, road to a relaunched Alfred Dunhill Cup and team golf truly helping to develop the sport around the world

Sadly, franchise-team golf will not ever work in the way franchise leagues have worked in Cricket, but National team golf has, can and will in the future. The Alfred Dunhill Cup was launched by IMG and Mark McCormack in 1985. At the time, the Alfred Dunhill Cup was a revolutionary event, a visionary event, arguably the world's biggest event outside the Major Championships. At its launch in 1985, the Dunhill Cup was the richest tournament in world golf, with the first £million prize fund ($1.2million), which at the time was more than the combined prize funds of The Open and US Open. In 2025, if that was the case, the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship would be awarding a prize fund of $38.5million.

Mark McCormack said: "It's the most exciting golf event created for several decades. The sport needed a genuine world team championship - I regard this as the Davis Cup of golf."

European Tour Executive Director Ken Schofield said "The splendid presentation in London last January, announcing the 1985 Dunhill Cup, represented the PGA European Tour's single most significant and spectacular participation in any golf event. It received a huge welcome from all over the world."

The Dunhill Cup proved to be a spectacular success and attracted many of the iconic figures of the men's golfing world between 1985 and 2000.

The new Alfred Dunhill Cup would be extended to five days with group matches Wednesday to Friday, and the Semi-Finals and Final played over the weekend. 12 countries represented by teams of 6 golfers would play 18-hole medal matches, like the former Dunhill Cup, with each match worth 1 point. Matches which finish all-square earn 1/2 a point during the group stage, and are decided in extra holes on Saturday and Sunday.

Last weekend the Australian team of Ripper GC won LIV Golf UK, that earned the team $5million, and in the new unified PGA TOUR's Nations Championship that $5million would be paid to the national PGA and the national golf federation of the winning team. This means the PGA of Australia and Golf Australia would have a vested interest in ensuring golfers are prepared for the world of professional golf, and their success is the success of the national federations. The Nations Championship would truly help develop the sport on a global basis.

At the new Alfred Dunhill Cup there would be a $40million purse, as there is for the LIV Golf Team Championship, and half the prize fund would be awarded to the participating golfers, and the other half would be awarded to the national federations. So under the new PGA TOUR, team golf would not be just a gimmick, it would have real life consequences for the federations around the world trying to develop this sport.

So for some teams, simply qualifying for the Alfred Dunhill Cup would be a huge deal and help to transform the future of their sport in their country. Throughout the season the Nations Championship results would be based on the first two rounds of each tournament, thus avoiding the issue of differing numbers of players from each country making the cut.

Magical Kenya Open presented by absa team leaderboard:

South Africa -41

Sweden -30

France -27

Scotland -26

Italy -24

England -23

USA -21

Spain -20

Denmark -16

Australia -15

Kenya -9

Germany -6

India +2

For every event outside the Major Championships the additional team prize fund would be worth 30% of the individual prize fund, so in the case of the Magical Kenya Open presented by absa the team prize fund would be $900,000, and the distribution would be in line with the percentages of the individual event prize fund. So South Africa would win 15% of the $900,000 (split evenly between Golf RSA and the PGA of South Africa).

The Major Championships rescheduled to help elevate them and give breathing space in the golf calendar

Padraig Harrington, speaking to Bunkered at the ISPS HANDA Senior Open: “It’s ridiculous that we’re waiting until April for the next major."

“The Open gets no benefit out of being the fourth major of the year. They don’t play the three major champions together; it’s not known as the last chance.

“I grew up and played in the PGA Championship at the end of August, when it was the last chance to win a major. You’ve got the three major champions playing together, sweltering hot. That’s what we think of the PGA.

“It’s a big gap, it’s too long, definitely too long between The Open and The Masters. And there’s no benefit for The Open, whereas there is for the PGA.”

To me, the solution is a simple one, but one the Americans would rail against because they obsessed with not playing opposite the NFL, imagine if global golf held that attitude about not playing opposite Premier League Football? The PGA Championship needs to move to autumn, specifically the first week in October, and it needs to be truly Glory's Last Shot at Major Championship success.

The PGA Championship should have a field of no more than 120, with the world's best 100 golfers, plus 20 PGA Professionals, and it needs to be the autumn spectacular that golf needs. Play it in the Northern states of the USA, including Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Maine, Virginia, West Virginia, Illinois, Wisconsin, and stop chasing the sun.

This would spread the Majors out, with the spring classic in April and The Masters, the two summer Opens in the US Open in June, and The Open in July, finishing with The PGA in October. This new schedule would also see The Open move back by a week to the last full week in July, meaning there would be four full tournament weeks between the US Open and The Open. There would be 9 weeks between The Masters and the US Open, and 10 weeks between The Open and The PGA.

This new schedule would be better for everyone, including the players, who would be able to plan a much more manageable schedule, unlike the nonsense we see now.

LIV Golf is going down like the Titanic, and very soon the ship will be under the water, but unfortunately golfers and golf fans will have to endure a men's professional landscape which is utterly in the vision of the PGA TOUR, a US-centric schedule with a couple of token gestures overseas. It could, and should have been so much different. It is to the universal shame of everyone involved that it hasn't.