SAN DIEGO (AP) — Rory McIlroy believes reunifying with players who defected to Saudi-funded LIV Golf is what's best for the PGA Tour membership and “everyone's just got to get over it” and move forward.
Adam Scott will understand if there's still bad feelings. He has been thrust into the forefront of such discussions since joining the PGA Tour board at the start of 2024, right about the time the PGA Tour brought on Strategic Sports Group and its $1.5 billion investment.
“I wouldn't be surprised — or I wouldn't judge anyone, the members — if reunification happened and they weren't happy with how it happened,” Scott said, pausing to rub his eyes with both hands before adding, “I hope they're not spending as much time talking about it as I have.
“I wouldn't hold it against anybody if there were negative emotions attached to it, the thought of players coming back.”
PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said reunification was a priority in the tour's negotiations with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. Scott shared some insight on why it has taken time, even as talks seem to be progressing.
Asked if reunification was the only way forward, he replied, “It's one way forward.”
“But it's not solely the tour's decision, you know what I mean?" he said. “There's two people in this discussion, more to be honest — the DP World Tour, a lot of other stakeholders in the pro game. The tour and its representatives talk a lot about it. But we're not in control of the entire situation. There's another side to the story.
“It's not been an easy thing to solve, otherwise we'd have solved it, I believe.”
Scott has no regrets about agreeing to be on the Player Advisory Council for the first time at age 42, and then winning an election to be PAC chairman that led to being a player director and ultimately a trip to the White House with Monahan to meet with President Donald Trump.
But it's been a lot.
“I'll be honest, it took a couple of months to wrap my head around stuff,” he said. "Within the first few weeks of me coming on the board, we're voting for a minority shareholder to take equity in the tour. There aren't easy answers to any of this stuff. Everyone is entitled to feel something about what's happened.
“The one thing I do know is we're not going to please everyone, but everyone should know that I will stand behind these player directors,” he said “They're trying to do the best thing for the entire membership. They've been faced with some tough decisions the last two years — tough calls, big consequences — for whatever we vote on.”
Getting a move on it
One of the perks to the limited-field signature events was avoiding too much traffic on the golf course, which often leads to long rounds. PGA Tour officials managed — barely — to stick to the plan of twosomes off one tee at the Genesis Invitational, a rarity on the West Coast when trying to fit into the CBS broadcast window.
It helped that 54 players made the cut at Torrey Pines from the 72-man field (the cut is not a bad idea for the other signature events — not just Genesis, Bay Hill and Memorial). One more group and the tour likely would have gone to split tees.
The weather certainly helped, too. When the tour was at Torrey Pines a month ago, it was a full field (cut to top 65 and ties) with bouncy, blustery conditions.
Meanwhile, the LPGA Tour is not fooling around with trying to move things along. It has a new policy effective when the tour resumes its domestic schedule in Arizona at the end of March.
Players will be fined for taking up to five seconds over the limit. They will get a one-stroke penalty if they are six to 15 seconds over the limit and two strokes if they are over the limit by 16 seconds or more.
The first player in the group to hit on par 3s, approach shots and putts will get an extra 10 seconds, but not for teeing off on par 4s and par 5s (unless it's a reachable par 4).
Justin Leonard's coaches
Mike Thomas was walking the final round of the Genesis Invitational at Torrey Pines watching his son, Justin, record another top-10 finish. And every now and then, he would check his phone to get a scoring update — on the PGA Tour Champions.
There at the top Sunday in the Chubb Classic was Justin Leonard, who went on to win for the first time in nearly 17 years.
The connection to Thomas is South Florida and Leonard's son, Luke.
Thomas, who retired after a long career as PGA professional in Kentucky, is best known for his work with junior golfers. Having moved to Florida, he was helping out with Luke Leonard.
That led Justin Leonard, a former British Open and Players Championship winner, to ask Mike Thomas last year at Royal Troon if he wouldn't mind taking a look.
Leonard grew up working with PGA Hall of Fame coach Randy Smith at Royal Oaks, and that's still the case. Thomas gives him a set of eyes close to home, and the work has been paying off.
“Luke, my 18-year-old son, has worked some with Mike Thomas and I’ve always enjoyed the way he communicated and his eye,” Leonard said. “So I reached out to him when I was at Troon after the first round and he kind of showed me what was going on and why I was struggling. So we tried to get a little work in there."
Leonard won for the first time since the St. Jude Classic in 2008.
“I’ve got a great situation with Randy Smith and Mike Thomas,” he said. “It’s just so fun to finally be here because I always felt like I would be.”
Ranking updates
The Official World Golf Ranking might not mean as much to Jon Rahm since he left to join the Saudi-funded LIV Golf, which doesn't get ranking points largely because its small roster never changes for the entire season.
He hit the wrong kind of milestone, anyway. Rahm fell out of the top 50 this week (No. 52) for the first time in eight years. The Spaniard first cracked the top 50 by winning the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines in 2017.
Justin Thomas is slowly trending the other direction. He now has six top 10s in his last eight tournaments worldwide, and his tie for ninth at the Genesis Invitational enabled him to move back into the top 10 for the first time since he missed the cut in the 2023 Masters.
Next up for Thomas is winning for the first time since he captured his second PGA Championship in May 2022 at Southern Hills.
Divots
Only two of the seven PGA Tour winners this season were not already exempt for the Masters. That is likely to change this week in Mexico, a field that has only 11 players already set for Augusta National. ... Mike Corbat, a former Citigroup CEO, and Bill Rhodes, the executive chairman of AutoZone, has joined the PGA Tour policy board. There had been vacancies since Jimmy Dunne and Mark Flaherty resigned last year. ... Rose Zhang, an NCAA champion from Stanford and two-time winner on the LPGA Tour, has joined the ownership group of The Bay Golf Club on the TGL indoor league. ... With his tie for ninth in the Genesis Invitational, Nick Taylor became the 117th player to surpass $20 million in career PGA Tour earnings.
Stat of the week
The seven winners on the PGA Tour this season have come from seven countries — Japan, Canada, Austria, United States, Northern Ireland, Belgium and Sweden.
Final word
"You don’t have to look too far past our leaderboard to know that outside of the majors, if you want to see the best players in the world, there’s only one place to see it. And that’s at LIV.” — Scott O'Neil, the new CEO of LIV Golf.
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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
Doug Ferguson, The Associated Press
