Jay Monahan: PGA Tour loyalists ‘will be rewarded’ for not defecting to LIV Golf

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan promised Wednesday that the superstars who rejected offers from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund to remain loyal to the Tour will be compensated in some fashion.
He just doesn’t yet know how.

“Their loyalty will be rewarded,” Monahan said Wednesday in an interview on “Golf Today”.

“I’m going to spend every single waking hour as we move forward here, we finalize this agreement and we move into the future, that the players that have created the PGA Tour, have created this pro-competitive, legacy-driven juggernaut, that have articulated and supported the direction that we’re going on – ultimately, the decision we made, I believe, is going to make it better for all of our players, and loyalty, ultimately, as a leader, always needs to be rewarded.

“How that manifests itself is something I’m going to spend a lot of time working on. And I think when we’re having this conversation down the road, that’s something I look forward to being more specific about.”

Though none of the proposals were made public, players such as Tiger Woods, Jon Rahm and Hideki Matsuyama were reportedly offered eye-watering sums of money but turned down the deal to stick with the Tour. Now that the Tour has aligned itself with LIV’s Saudi backers in a new for-profit entity, in a shocking deal that was announced Tuesday, there has been much discussion about if – and how – the Tour could recompensate those players financially.

“The simple answer is yes. The complex answer is how does that happen,” said Rory McIlroy, who added that he was never formally offered a contract with the Saudi-backed LIV circuit.

“That’s all a gray area and up in the air at the moment. But it’s hard for me to not sit up here and feel somewhat like a sacrificial lamb and feeling like I’ve put myself out there and this is what happens.

“Removing myself from the situation, I see how this is better for the game of golf. There’s no denying that. But for me as an individual, yeah, there’s just going to have to be conversations that are had.”