Golf is a sport where some years stand out above others and 2023 could prove to be one of those years. It’s a heady list.
In 1860, Willie Park Sr. won the first British Open, held at Prestwick Golf Club, marking the debut of the oldest major tournament.
In 1913, amateur Francis Ouimet won the US Open, defeating the two best English golfers of the day and popularizing the sport in the United States.
In 1930, Bobby Jones completed the first and only Grand Slam, winning the four major championships of his era in one year.
Babe Didrikson Zaharias became the first woman to make a cut on the PGA Tour in 1945, competing in the Phoenix Open and the Tucson Open. He went on to dominate that decade of golf.
In 1950 the LPGA was founded.
In 1968, a group of professional golfers, led by Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer, broke away from the Professional Golf Association of America to create the PGA Tour.
Tiger Woods completed the Tiger Slam — winning all four men’s majors in a row in two seasons, from 2000-1.
This year could prove pivotal for the men’s and women’s games, with the two top tours considering mergers.
For the PGA Tour, June 6 marks the before and after in professional golf. That morning, Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, announced a “framework agreement” for the PGA Tour to partner with LIV Golf, the Saudi-backed golf league that had spent much of the previous year depreciating.
“I would ask any player who has left or any player who would ever consider leaving: Have you ever had to apologize for being on the PGA Tour?” Monaghan had said a year earlier.
It was one of a series of comments he and officials made linking LIV, which is funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), to the country’s history of human rights abuses.
But on that June day, in one view, Monahan was sitting next to the fund’s commander, Yasir al-Rumayyan, calling for cooperation.
“There are very few people who haven’t been surprised in the last couple of years,” said Kevin Hopkins, vice president of Excel Sports Management. “Not knowing what this will lead to will be the next headline.”
As shocking as this announcement was to golf fans, it was also a surprise to the PGA Tour membership, which was largely unexpected.
The year in the women’s game has been more positive – exciting major championships, the debut of a promising young star, a hotly contested Solheim Cup that ended in a draw between the two teams – but the women’s tour also has a cloud of uncertainty hanging over it.
After the LPGA and its counterpart across the Atlantic, the Ladies European Tour (LET), reached an agreement to merge, the LET vote to approve the merger was abruptly postponed. Here’s a look back at a rollercoaster year.
Behind the scenes
The PGA Tour-LIV announcement looms large for the sheer suddenness of the tour’s turnaround and the way it angered and alienated some of its top players, including Rory McIlroy, who had been one of Monahan’s staunchest allies. He has since resigned from the PGA Tour board of directors.
“My reaction was surprise as I’m sure a lot of the players took back what happened,” Woods said last month at his Hero World Challenge. “So quickly without any input or any information about it, it was just thrown out there.”
The move prompted top players to push for control of the tour board. Woods, who now sits on the board, said the players wanted to make sure that, going forward, “we’re not left out of the process like we were.”
For his part, Monahan has expressed regret over how the announcement was made. “The launch was a failure on my part,” he told the New York Times’ DealBook Summit last month. “I have owned it and continued to own it.”
On the other hand, LIV Golf was given a boost, if not a lifeline. The championship had come out by accident. Its first few tournaments in 2022 have been marred by problems such as a lack of a TV deal and team uniforms.
The PIF put hundreds of millions of dollars behind the new championship, but after the initial wave of star shuns at LIV – Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and then-reigning British Open champion Cameron Smith – attention turned to poor event attendance and a lack of major media partner to broadcast the events.
The June 6 announcement gave the fledgling league relevance.
“We went from an unfair role as an underdog in golf to our president sitting shoulder to shoulder with the commissioner of the PGA Tour,” said Gary Davidson, LIV Golf’s interim chief operating officer in 2023. “We always knew LIV could coexist.”
With the LPGA and the LET, merger discussions were proceeding smoothly. The two tours have been operating in a joint venture since 2020, a period in which prize money has increased on both tours.
This year the two boards negotiated terms for a merger, with the LPGA effectively taking over the LET. Whether that happens depends on a vote of the LET players.
“The vote was postponed by the LET board from its original date of November 21 as more time was needed to evaluate all relevant information received,” said Mollie Marcoux Samaan, LPGA commissioner. “A new date for the vote has not yet been set. The LPGA Board of Directors remains enthusiastic about the opportunity to bring our two organizations together.”
In the foreground
Both the women’s and men’s games also provided exciting storylines along the way.
The first men’s championship, the Masters Tournament, resulted in a duel between Jon Rahm, a PGA Tour stalwart, and Koepka, a multiple major champion who had left for LIV. Rahm prevailed, but in the next championship, the PGA Championship, Koepka pulled away from the field to win his fifth major.
LIV saw this as validation. “To compete in the Masters and then win the PGA Championship was huge for us,” Davidson said. “It proved the competitiveness of LIV, that he could prepare the kids well for big events.” (On Thursday, LIV announced that Rahm will join its tour next year.)
The five major women’s championships also provided excitement. Lilia Vu won the first and last majors to climb to No. 1 and claim Player of the Year. Celine Boutier became the first French player to win the Amundi Evian Championship in her home country. And Allisen Corpuz, a young American in her second year on tour, won the US Women’s Open.
The LPGA has also had a happy history with Rose Zhang, who has long been the No. 1 ranked female amateur in the world. Zhang turned pro in June and won the first event she entered.
“It’s been a whirlwind for her, but she’s done what people expected her to do,” said Hopkins, who runs Excel Sports Management’s LPGA practice. “The LPGA is thrilled to have her as one of its stars.”
The team competition was intense on both the men’s and women’s sides, but in different ways: The Solheim Cup was close and exciting, while the men’s equivalent, the Ryder Cup, was a failure. Team Europe dismantled Team USA, who only managed to maintain their 30-year losing streak in Europe.
There is one aspect to the future European teams, and that is the partnership of the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour. The PGA Tour has effectively made DP World a feeder tour, sponsoring memberships to the top 10 players in the annual Race to Dubai rankings. This basically wipes out the best players in Europe.
With just weeks left in the year, there’s still the potential for more drama. While all eyes are on whether the PGA Tour-LIV framework agreement will be signed by the end of the year, questions remain as to whether the LPGA and LET merger will be completed. It’s a fitting end to a tumultuous year.