Andrew Johnston slams “crazy” PGA Tour over loyalty bonuses for Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy
Andrew Johnston slams “crazy” PGA Tour over loyalty bonuses for Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy
Andrew “Beef” Johnston criticized the PGA Tour’s push for equality and increased focus on prize money in the professional game, saying the Tour is no different to LIV Golf.
Andrew Johnston thinks the PGA Tour is alienating fans
Andrew “Beef” Johnston says the increased focus on money in professional golf is “hugely damaging” to the sport after the PGA Tour handed out tens of millions of pounds in bonuses to its top stars.
The Tour awarded players shares last month as it continued its efforts to fend off the threat of LIV Golf. Since its inception two years ago, some of the tour’s biggest stars have been lured with big contracts from breakaway leagues, and players are taking stakes in PGA Tour Enterprises to prevent another exodus.
Stock awards were determined by “career points.” This is a metric created by the PGA Tour to track a player’s performance and contribution to the competition over the years. Tiger Woods became a great winner and won 80 million pounds in the area.
Rory Makilra received about 40 million pounds on shareholders, and Justin Thomas and Jordan Sleeps were also traded for £ 25 million. The stock vests over an eight-year period and is likely to increase in value, so if a player wants to reap the financial benefits of the stock payment, he or she must remain a member of the PGA Tour for the entire period.
The move is aimed at encouraging players to resist the lure of LIV Golf, its huge contracts and prize pools, but former DP World Tour winner Johnston said the finance-centric discourse surrounding the sport is believes that it is harmful to the game. “I’m starting to wonder how the PGA Tour differs from LIV Golf,” he wrote in Today’s Golfer. “I remember LIV coming out and Jay Monaghan saying that his tour prides itself on being a meritocracy with a clear pathway for players and rewards for performance. “ Fast forward to today, we have player equity programs where we pay players huge amounts of money to stay loyal: $100 million for Tiger, $50 million for Rory, $30 million each for Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth. dollar. “Basically, this is the PGA Tour saying, ‘Let’s take a lot of money from us because we didn’t take a lot of money from them.'” Crazy, dude. It’s about rewarding the best players and it’s up to the division. That’s very bad for our sport.”
The PGA Tour and LIV Golf have struggled to attract large crowds this season, as evidenced by one of the lowest attendances for the final round of the Masters in history. Johnston believes all the talk about money is keeping fans away.
