Change is Coming: Biggest Takeaways From Jay Monahan’s Press Conference at THE PLAYERS

Golf is in a confusing place. The world’s best players are playing on separate tours—if we’re being honest, LIV Golf only has four or five of them—and the overwhelming majority of fans want to see the game reunited.

PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan is right there with him.

During his pre-tournament press conference Tuesday at THE PLAYERS Championship, Monahan touched on a variety of topics, with the ongoing discussions with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund being one of them. He also mentioned some pace of play changes coming down the pipeline and the TOUR’s continued effort to collaborate with the game’s biggest content creators.

Here are the three main takeaways from Monahan’s face-to-face with the media at TPC Sawgrass.

The TOUR is Working Hard on a Deal with PIF

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“First, many of you know from your own reporting the talks are real, they're substantial, and they're being driven at the top levels of both organizations,” Monahan said in his opening monologue. “Those talks have been significantly bolstered by President Trump's willingness to serve as a facilitator. President Trump is a lifelong golf fan. He believes strongly in the game's power and potential, and he has been exceedingly generous with his time and influence to help bring a deal together. He wants to see the game reunified. We want to see the game reunified. His involvement has made the prospect of reunification very real.”

“When you're in the midst of complex negotiations, particularly when you may be near a breakthrough, there are ebbs and flows in the discussion. The most important thing is the mutual respect that we've built over the last couple of years. We appreciate Yasir [Al-Rumayyan, PIF governor and LIV Chairman's] innovative vision, and we can see a future where we welcome him on to our board and work together to move the global game forward. As part of our negotiations, we believe there's room to integrate important aspects of LIV Golf into the PGA TOUR platform. We're doing everything that we can to bring the two sides together.”

Monahan went on to mention that while they’ve cleared some hurdles during the negotiations, others remain. The TOUR doesn’t want to diminish its product in anyway, and that’s the key point I was hoping he’d make.

Many characteristics of LIV haven’t been successful with fans. The team aspect fell flat, the shotgun start remains a bit of a joke, and we’ve already seen the league move away from shorts during competitive rounds. The TOUR is in a place with its fanbase that they can’t risk incorporating the same ideas into its own circuit. They need to find a middle ground where the integrity of the game remains, and it sure sounds like that’s a big hurdle for both sides to clear.

“The only deal that we would regret is one that compromises the essence of what makes the game of golf and the PGA TOUR so exceptional.”

We’ll see what happens in the coming months.

Pace of Play Will be Addressed

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“We've committed to addressing the speed of play. To that end, I'm excited to formally announce these recommendations from our player-led speed-of-play working group: We will begin publishing speed-of-play-related statistics later this season,” he said. “We will also begin testing a new speed-of-play policy on the Korn Ferry TOUR and PGA TOUR Americas, beginning next month on April 14th specifically, which will include assessing penalty strokes for slow play. We will be testing range finders at the six TOUR events between the Masters and PGA Championship. We're excited to learn more about the impact of increased transparency and accountability through these efforts.”

The solution to the pace-of-play issue—penalties!—always seemed so obvious, and now the TOUR is on board. This move is a huge win for fans tired of slogging through five or six hour rounds of golf.

I’m curious to see how much rangefinders will impact the speed of rounds, but I can’t imagine it’d hurt. My only gripe with this move is it limits the amount of impact a top-tier caddie can provide their player. I’m sure the loopers have mixed feelings about this potential change.

Content Creation Isn’t Going Anywhere

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“Our relationship with golf's biggest content creators has gotten substantially stronger, helping us to modernize our media regulations, making it easier to create content with our players, and easier for our players to deliver their own content to fans,” Monahan said. “Tomorrow we'll play our second ever Creator Classic, which we expect to build on the tremendous success of last year's inaugural event. But there's far more to come. Thanks to Fan Forward and buy-in from our membership, we're taking concrete action to give our fans more of what they want from the PGA TOUR.”

YouTube golf has exploded over the last several years, and now its in a place where the biggest names in the space are playing the back nine of Sawgrass the day before THE PLAYERS gets underway. That’s pretty incredible.

Fans love both the TOUR and YouTube golf—myself included—so the continued effort from Monahan and the TOUR to include creators from around the game is a no brainer, but it’s nice to see them address it.

The next few months are going to be interesting and a lot of change seems to be coming. I just hope it’s all for the better.