In the end, it was unequivocal.
I’d heard from many sage voices in the game over the last year that the LIV players would win their case against the DP World Tour and be allowed to continue to play there without sanction.
Instead, the decision of the Sports Resolutions arbitration panel is a rout, the other way.
The DP World Tour and Keith Pelley have been vindicated, and the LIV players’ challenge “failed, their appeals…dismissed in their entirety,” in the words of the judgement.
Even further, the panel ordered the original £100,000 fines blocked by an injunction last July must now be paid within 30 days.
Effectively a ban of LIV players
DP World Tour statement on Sport Resolutions decision.
— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) April 6, 2023
It’s not an outright ban of LIV players, although is what it will become, effectively. At £100,000 a pop for every tournament clash – and they are contractually compelled to play all 14 LIV Golf League events – they’ll surely just relinquish tour membership.
Even the Saudi PIF’s ‘bottomless pit’ of cash can’t possibly countenance paying £1.4m a player, every year, to a rival tour.
And while Pelley was not definitive in his comments, it also surely ends LIV players’ involvement in the Ryder Cup. They won’t be able to garner enough qualifying points, and Luke Donald isn’t going to spent a wildcard on them.
There’s been some suggestion that the DPWT would have been better off losing the case and thereby access to LIV players would remain. Pelley said he ‘vehemently’ disagreed with that view.
The fact that the Tour pursued this so vigorously shows what the chief executive, the tour’s board, the tournament committee and the wider DPWT membership thought of that notion.
And it’s bogus anyway. Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Cameron Smith, Bryson DeChambeau and other prominent LIVers were never going to become DPWT regulars.
Patrick Reed, as an honorary tour member might play the odd event. But as Pelley correctly identified, it would only be those with significant OWGR points.
The old guard – Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter, Paul Casey, Martin Kaymer, Sergio Garcia, Graeme McDowell and Henrik Stenson – had a short remaining shelf-life. With the notable exception of Westwood, few of them were really that loyal to regular DPWT events.
One tricky situation at the Dunhill
There is one tricky situation. Johann Rupert, the man who bankrolls the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, has publicly expressed his opposition to banning LIV players.
Specifically, one would assume, his fellow South Africans Louis Oosthuizen, Branden Grace and Charl Schwartzel. But there’s surely something in the fineprint where those players could still play the Dunhill on invitations.
There will be other sponsors loathe to lose a prominent figure. Kaymer in Germany, Stenson in Sweden, Garcia in Spain, perhaps.
But in most cases it’s really just one individual. It’s hard to see it being a deal-breaker.
Pelley still has plenty work to do. Particularly a way to make the ‘strategic partnership’ with the PGA Tour more effective for the DPWT. The US tour is looking inward in its own defensive measures against LIV.
But this is a massive victory for the ‘established’ game, no question. And perhaps a pointer to where the case between LIV and the PGA Tour is headed. Once it finally (if at even does) makes a California court sometime in 2024.