We are trying to get in the habit of starting threads for all our written pieces, so here is the latest one.
News: Monahan was asked in December to resign. He did not (obviously).
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This is great and the drive-by on Grayson Murray was greatly appreciated, as all of them are. What a wild, wild time to be a golf fan/observer.
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Read this a bit earlier and was hoping to see a thread! Really enjoyed this, didn’t realize all the SSG connections to Monahan. Looking at the decisions and comments from some of the players through the lens of this article makes things make a lot more sense even if they remain illogical as a whole
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Can you share your sources for this behind the paywall?
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Of course not.
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Sad!
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Can you share who asked him to step down? Players or others?
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It was TC
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Gotta be one of those “many are asking” situations, right?
I have long maintained Moynihan needs to go. He is, as Sonny famously said, “Not a wartime consigliere.”
However, I think Jay can take some solace in the fact that almost no Commissioner in professional sports would be good at dealing with the Saudis because for almost all of them the job is just to keep the trains running on time, not innovate. I think about Roger Goodell, who has never worked anywhere but the NFL. His entire playbook is to keep labor peace, sign new TV deals where his hardest job is pick which network gets to throw the most billions of dollars at him and then push for more regular season games because more is automatically better, right? If the Saudis had bought the XFL instead of the Rock, decided to pour billions into it and then went after Patrick Mahomes and Caleb Williams, would Roger really know how to combat that? I understand it is not a perfect analogy because the NFL has always been teams over players but it is not like Goodell would have any idea about how to pivot if he needed to.
It is weird to find myself in the position of defending a guy I think is comically bad at his job but normally being Commissioner of a pro league would be a pretty sweet gig and I feel like if there was anyone out there who wanted this job we would have heard about it by now. The fact no one is out there campaigning for it is telling.
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I’d take a contrary position and say Monahan is proving to be pretty good at his job. He’s gained more executive control than he had before, and he’s used that to further enrich himself and his supporters. I’m guessing he’s achieved what he set out to.
The problem is Jay’s goals and the fan’s goals aren’t the same.
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I don’t understand this. Clearly most have lost faith, how do they not just have him removed?
Edit…usually they offer the option to resign and if they don’t, said person is then fired.
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Didn’t have the votes.
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Interesting… Crazy to think he even has one person on his side that’s not related to him.
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@KVV - i want to pre-empt this by saying that i thought this was an excellent, well researched and illuminating piece and I am a big fan of yours. It was a breath of fresh air relative to the stagnant swamp of daily takes about the issue.
But, I assume the the thread is also to encourage inquisition and so i will take the bait.
The clear implication from the piece is that Jay has “inexplicably” survived through a combination of personal and working relationships combined with a factional pga tour base. It is also a factual statement that there is a very strong Irish American network at the higher levels of the pga tour and Jay is part of this.
Unstated but also implied is that there was a better investment from a different group, without the connections to Monahan supported by the players board. It does not take much of a logical leap to say that the probability of Monahan surviving with an investment from people he had no prior connection would have been low.
If i marry the article with the facts or the investment and Jay’s new role, you’re argument resolves down to either (a) the investors are retaining the ceo because they like him and he is a friend or (b) they cant possibly see the failures of the business. Even though I tend to agree with most of your points, I find the implication doesnt line up with my experience of how sophisticated investors act once money is actually put at stake.
I’m wondering where you come down on these options? or is this more likely a situation of a ceo who stays until the deal is fully complete (pif) before ultimately being removed which is much more consistent with how private equity deals play out.
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I think the potential conflicts of interest are important to point out and discuss, even if we cannot definitively say there have been unethical decisions made here.
-It’s very possible Jay is being kept on simply because the board did not have the strength to oust him.
-It’s also possible he is being kept on for now because there is some belief that Yassir would like to deal with known quantities in Jay and Jimmy and Ed.
-Was the Friends of Golf investment better? The players thought it was better for the players, right up until a couple of them didn’t. The other members of the board (with a couple of exceptions) wanted to go with SSG/Fenway.
-I would say certain that the players are divided and could not find a way to remove Jay, and then also lost a power struggle when it came time to decide on which proposal to got with. A couple players looking out for themselves, etc.
-I also believe (based on what we know) the SSG group has replacements in mind who are being vetted or groomed for the job.
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Excellent job, as always.
Some random thoughts:
- “I talked to a Tour player at Riviera this year who was still pissed that Monahan never even took a phone call from the Saudis when this whole thing started.”
- Honestly, this should be every players point of view. The Saudis were going to get involved in some way, shape or form and have essentially unlimited resources. From a business standpoint, not taking that call was a complete dereliction of duty.
- “SSG, the new investor in PGA Tour Enterprises, is fronted by The Fenway Sports Group. Monahan was an executive vice president at The Fenway Sports Group before he was named commissioner of the PGA Tour in 2017. (He’d also worked at the Tour in various capacities, including as the executive director of The Players Championship.) He was recommended for the job by Seth Waugh, who was at the time the CEO of Deutsche Bank, but is now the CEO of the PGA of America. He went to Trinity College with Sam Kennedy, the CEO of The Fenway Sports Group and president of the Boston Red Sox. The PGA Tour’s vice president ranks are also rife with various Fenway Sports Group alums.”
- It never ceases to amaze me just how incestuous the 1% is. So, shame on me for always being shocked.
- " in addition to being PGA Tour Policy Board members, are two extremely influential members at Augusta National. Some players have been starting to wonder: What are Dunne’s and Herlihy’s motivations in all this?"
- @KVV any chance you might elaborate on this? I was struck by your inclusion of the fact that they are both Augusta members and what the implication might be?
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I will push back a little here on this player’s opinion and say that opinion is easy to have in retrospect, but partnering with the Saudis right after they snatched a journalist up and cut him into pieces while he was still alive would have actually mattered to some people. Obviously it did not matter to our President and his family at that time, but I think it mattered to a lot of people who weigh moral complications. Should he have taken the call in secret? Maybe.
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