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SALT LAKE CITY — He didn't use the same creative verbiage or a clever joke like fellow pro Collin Morikawa, but one-time BYU golfer and 2003 Masters champion Mike Weir was just as surprised as everyone else when the PGA Tour announced a merger that would settle all active litigation Tuesday morning.
Speaking during opening remarks Tuesday at the RBC Canadian Open, where Weir will tee it up at the St. George's Golf and Country Club in Toronto, Ontario, in his home country's national open, Weir recalled his surprise in hearing news that the PGA Tour would merge with the DP World Tour in Europe and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund to form a new for-profit, commercial entity designed to unify professional golf around the world.
"I'm kind of finding out as just like you guys did," said Weir, who lives in Sandy and recently announced his engagement to former Bachelor contestant Michelle Money in January. "There's not a lot of detail.I don't really know much about it yet. So hopefully in the next few days we'll hear as things kind of unroll or roll out to see what the details, from my perspective, being a Presidents Cup captain, where that leads. I don't have any answers on that now. But I'm as interested as anybody to see where that goes here in the next few days, few weeks."
Weir declined to comment on whether the moral concerns of the Saudi government presented any ethical concerns for the PGA Tour, or the new entity that would place current Tour commissioner Jay Monahan as its CEO and allow LIV Golf defectors a path to return to the PGA Tour after the 2023 season wraps up. Critics of the deal have called the PIF's involvement in sports, including the LIV Golf series, as a form of "sportwashing" — an attempt by the Saudi government to conceal its record of human rights abuses through sports and entertainment.
But the 53-year-old Weir who most plays on the PGA's Champions Tour after winning eight PGA Tour events all-time said it's important to unify the game of golf and bring the world's best players back under one umbrella.
"When the best players are playing together I think everybody wins," Weir said. "When you see, like at the PGA Championship there in New York, when the best players are there, I think it gets everybody's game up to a certain level. And to be frank, when I was playing at my best I wanted to be playing against the best players. So I think that's a good thing for the game."
One of LIV Golf's most vocal critics over the past year, Rory McIlroy, struck a similar tone by Wednesday morning.
McIlroy, who has chaired the PGA Tour players' association since February 2021, said he first heard something may be coming when he received a text message Monday night from Jimmy Dunne, the independent director of the PGA Tour's board who was involved in the merger talks, and learned the full extent of the news early Tuesday morning.
"So yeah, I learned about it pretty much at the same time everyone else did," McIlroy said. "And yeah, it was a surprise. I knew there had been discussions going on in the background. I knew that lines of communication had been opened up. I obviously didn't expect it to happen as quickly as it did. But I really think that, you know, from what I gather, the Tour felt they were in a real position of strength coming off of the back of the DP World Tour winning their legal case in London. It sort of weakened the other side's position ... I look at 10 years down the line, I think ultimately this is going to be good for the game of professional golf. I think it unifies it and it secures its financial future.
"So there's mixed emotions in there as well, as there's going to be," McIlroy later added. "I don't understand all the intricacies of what's going on. There's a lot of ambiguity. There's a lot of things still to be sort of thrashed out. But at least it means that the litigation goes away, which has been a massive burden for everyone that's involved with the Tour and that's playing the Tour. And we can start to work toward some sort of way of unifying the game at the elite level."
McIlroy, a Northern Ireland native who spent parts of his teenage years in Utah playing the junior golf circuit, was quick to point out that the "merger" news was not a combination of the PGA Tour and LIV Golf but a merger with the Saudi's PIF to create a new entity that would be led by current PGA Tour leadership.
"Technically, anyone that is involved with LIV now would answer to Jay. So the PGA Tour has control of everything," he said. "And one thing as well is, whether you like it or not, the PIF was going to keep spending the money in golf. At least the PGA Tour now controls how that money is spent. So, you know, if you're thinking about one of the biggest sovereign wealth funds int he world, would you rather have them as a partner or an enemy? AT the end of the day, money talks and you would rather have them as a partner."
While several golfers have been offered millions in guaranteed money just to show up and play LIV Golf events, McIlroy said he was never offered any money. Yet he and Tiger Woods, the biggest name in the game who LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman said turned down $800 million to join his circuit, have been arguably the biggest proponents of the PGA Tour.
And for those golfers who stayed with the PGA Tour while other colleagues defected to LIV for vast sums of money, McIlroy believes some sort of beneficial compensation should be coming their way.
"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," McIlroy said. "Again, 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."
