Dustin Johnson Headlines LIV Golf

Well, I didn’t have Dustin Johnson on my LIV Golf bingo card.

On Tuesday, LIV Golf announced the field for its inaugural event next week.

Some of the bigger names are no surprise at all. Sergio Garcia, Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter, Louis Oosthuizen, Charl Schwartzel, and Graeme McDowell form the heart of the new league.

These guys all share the qualities of being highly-recognizable European players on the downslope of their PGA Tour careers.

Good for them for cashing in. The PGA Tour can easily move on without them. Indeed, LIV Golf makes a ton of sense for players in their 40s who don’t want to play on the Champions Tour in the future and are past their prime to earn big bucks on the PGA Tour.

Bravo, well played. I don’t think any of them are losing sleep over being potentially banned from the PGA or DP World Tour. For most of these guys, losing out on future Ryder Cup Captaincy may be the big gamble.

On the flip side, there are players like Dustin Johnson, Talor Gooch, Hudson Swafford, Peter Uihlein, and James Piot. These guys are taking a leap at a risky, but lucrative career change.

Sure, they will be playing golf for money, but it will be against weaker fields, with small galleries, small TV audiences, and fewer sponsorships.

Gooch, Swafford, Uihlein, and Piot all have potentially long PGA Tour careers in front of them. Gooch and Swafford are Top 100 players right now. Uihlein and Piot are decorated amateurs with the talent to be Tour regulars.

Then there is Dustin Johnson.

He is the big fish the LIV Golf league landed. Few saw it coming after this release in February:

At this time, we don’t know exactly why Johnson reversed course, but I’m betting it has something to do with a number that looks like $XX0,000,000.

I’m not here to tell a man to turn down that kind of money. But as they say, “price and cost aren’t the same thing.”

The cost for these players will determine the future of LIV Golf.

• That cost could include suspension or banishment from the PGA and DP World Tours.

• It could include banishment from all four Majors.

• It could include banishment from Ryder Cup and President Cup participation as a player or a Captain.

• It’s already costing them significant sponsorship deals and reputational damage among at least half the golfing fanbase.

Taken together, that is a steep cost.

So the question becomes, what will the PGA Tour, DP World Tour, USGA, R&A, and The Masters do in response to these defections?

As of this writing, the pgatour.com website is down. That means big changes are being made. Changes like scrubbing names from the entire website would qualify as a reason for the site being dark.

It also suggests a swift rebuttal to the announcement of the LIV field. It’s hard to see the site being down as a coincidence.

Many have commented online that the Majors are not controlled by the PGA and DP World Tours. Also, past Major Champions have a number of exemptions that would allow them to play in future Majors.

All true, though I suspect the PGA Championship won’t cross the PGA Tour on any decision.

As for the other Majors, I’m not so sure they’ll defy the Tours either.

The Masters is the most independent and can do almost anything they want. The USGA and R&A put on the US Open and The Open, respectively. Will they cross the PGA and the DP World Tours?

As for exemptions, they both can be given and taken away.

The thing to remember is that all these Tours, events, and governing bodies are tightly intertwined. They consult each other, they try to stay on the same page to create a seamless global golf presence.

This is particularly true when it comes to money from sponsors and dollars spent on global marketing. Together, all these entities form a multi-billion dollar enterprise. I suspect there will be an effort to protect it.

There is also the matter of accruing FedEx Points, OWGR, and money earnings on Tour to qualify for Majors, the PGA Tour, and DP World Tour. If you can’t (or don’t) play those events, you can’t qualify for Majors and Tour status.

There are some huge shoes yet to drop.

If the PGA, R&A, USGA, and The Masters decide to do nothing, it may create a mass exodus of current players to LIV Golf. In effect, gutting their own Tours and tournaments.

That’s not smart business.

The next few days will be critical to everyone involved. The immediate future of professional golf will be redefined. The status quo will hold or a new paradigm will emerge.

Your guess is as good as mine. It will make as dramatic a finish as any tournament you’ve ever watched.