'Elite Global Golf Tour' on the Horizon?

The world of men’s professional golf is about to change permanently, and it’s time for all of us to suck it up and accept it.

News of a framework agreement among the PGA TOUR, DP World Tour, and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) has brought more questions than answers to fans of men’s pro golf. However, things are slowly becoming more clear (sort of) as time passes and details are hashed out.

Late yesterday, Matt Hughes of The Daily Mail — which, let’s be honest, is still a tabloid — offered readers an interesting rumor that an ‘Elite Global Golf Tour’ could be in development, featuring golfers from the PGAT, DP World Tour and LIV Golf. While the three tours will continue to operate independently, players will be invited to participate in an exclusive 18-event series based on world ranking points. Each event could offer prize purses north of $30M, making them the highest possible paydays for the world’s best. A timeline of 2025 has been projected.

Before I go any further, let me stress that I absolutely hate all of this. I’ve hated the fractured state of men’s pro golf since before LIV and this is just adding fuel to that fire. But I digress, because it doesn’t matter.

Additional details around this elite tour are spotty, but it appears players of a certain ability will have the option to float among the three “lesser” tours independently. This would mean the days of seeing DJ, Bryson, Phil, Jordan, Rahm, and Morikawa compete against each other are returning. You know, if you missed seeing that.

It also means that men’s pro golf will remain segmented to a degree. This is not unlike other major team sports, which pro golf so desperately wants to become for some ungodly reason. LIV Golf’s team element is as polarizing as it is intriguing, if nothing else for the sloppy shoehorned nature of forcing the concept down our throats.

Nobody is asking for pro golf teams. But that’s never stopped rich men before.

This is how professional golf is changing whether we like it or not. The dam has been broken and the floodwaters are here, offering opportunity to a business that experienced a rebirth during a pandemic that coincided with an abatement of Tiger Fever. The stars of today are mere variants of Woods’s initial shock to golf’s ecosystem, dividing fans hungry for the ‘next big thing.’

Perhaps this is needed after all. Maybe an elite golf tour will further emphasize the bifurcated nature of golf that has already existed but many ignored. Golfers across the globe will no longer be made to believe that theirs is the same game as those whom they emulate, but rather two entirely different flavors of the same dish.

During a time when so much attention is paid to having the freedom to choose in other elements of life, golf has suddenly become a beacon of pro-choice in terms of fandom. Far be it from me to ridicule an obviously progressive stance that men’s professional golf has embraced, albeit with a short period of kicking and screaming at the onset.

As fans of the game — whatever that game might become — we are also faced with a choice. We can choose to embrace change and allow it to unfold before us just like we always did. We can also choose to actively resist and/or ignore, instead opting a more passive interest in a professional sport that sometimes serves as a nap-inducing catalyst on a Sunday afternoon.

Personally, the latter seems more enticing to me, but not because I hold some holier-than-thou, “I liked this band before they sold out” mentality about men’s pro golf.

I’m just exhausted with all of it.