Matt Adams | Golf Channel Insider

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That's betterhelp.com slash positive. We are pleased to welcome from Ireland and his Fairways of Life golf tour, Matt Adams, who apparently got called into duty. Matt, how does one find out about a PGA Live merger in the British Isles? Hey, what's going on, Amy? It was interesting. Yesterday, my producer, Dominic Scorano, called me and he said, Where are you? Are you on the golf course right now? And I wasn't. I happened to have just returned from the gymnasium and the beach because there's a heat wave going on over here, believe it or not.

So amazing things are happening that defy logic all over the world. And so I said, No, I'm here. And he said, We need to go on the air right now.

I said, What? He said, We need to go on the air right now. He said, The golf world just exploded. He said, The PGA Tour, Live and the DP World Tour are going to become one under this umbrella from the Public Investment Fund.

And I said, Well, that's the investment fund of the Saudi royal family. I didn't believe what I was hearing. And so if anyone caught the live Fairways of Life show yesterday, it's on YouTube. You'll hear me reading the press release for the first time, meaning not the first time that I did it on the air, the first time I saw it. So it was an experience that we were sharing together. And it's a day that not only for me, for the world of golf, for everybody, it was probably the most tumultuous announcement that's ever taken place in the history of the game as we know it at a professional level.

Some strong words from Matt Adams as he joins us from Ireland now got called into duty. So then you call it tumultuous. But now that you have a chance to read some of the details, maybe hear a little more from the players, their reaction. What do you think?

Um, there's so many different ways to take this, Amy, that the first thing is, is that here you had to and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say warring bodies, you had two distinct philosophies and approaches. Now, the one thing I will tell you so much focus has been upon Jay Monahan as as the one who was the spokesman of it and the architect, as far as we know, on the PGA Tour side of this. But what was very interesting to me is that in reading that press release, and it named everyone and all of their respective roles.

The name Greg Norman was never used. He was not in the press conference at all, which causes me to believe that when the music stops playing, that there just simply isn't a chair there or that when Jay Monahan got into the negotiations at some point or another, he said, look, I can't work with this guy. This is the one scar that cannot heal. And so I thought that was interesting. I don't know. Obviously, we don't know for certain if that is the case, but it looks that way because right now we're forced to kind of read clouds and many of the issues surrounding this. But from the standpoint that, you know, to put it in a bottom line, it is the bottom line. I believe that what this is about is money. I believe that this is about a massive, massive sum of money. We don't know what it is yet.

But I believe that when we find out, we are all going to be shocked. Because if you look at there's different elements of their announcement that start to sound very legal is like meaning that the public investment fund PIF, as they call it, they have the right to basically refuse any other sources of capital. Now, normally in a business contract law circumstance, if someone had that right to refuse sources of funding from other places, then they usually have to at least match that source of fund. And it did say specifically that they have the right to add in additional capital pretty much whenever they want to. So the PGA tour is framing this. And again, this is coming from Jay's comments. The PGA tour is framing this such as to say, look, we're going to have the majority of the people on the board that's controlling all this.

But I still believe that the golden rule holds that he who has the gold makes the rules. So when it's all said and done, this is an absolutely massive shift in philosophy, obviously in partnerships and the way that it was done for an organization that is supposedly owned by the players. And none of the players to the highest ranks of the likes of the Rory McIlroy and the Tiger Woods were in any way involved in this.

All of that to me is shocking. I'm not sure if you have heard from any players directly. There were a few that spoke to the Golf Channel and to others in the wake of this. But I'd love to know what you've heard from them in terms of their reaction about A being kept in the dark, but also this seems so hypocritical of Jay Monahan.

You know, it's it's, again, a complicated answer from from the question that you're asking me, because I have heard from a great deal of players. We reached out to many of them. The vast majority of them wanted to remain anonymous in their answers. By and large, they were shocked. By and large, they're angry at their management that they were not kept informed of what is going on. However, having said that, they also realize that this is going to translate into a lot more money for them. There's a huge amount of money coming in.

And because that part of it has not been vetted from the standpoint of the players yet, I believe that that's the ace that Jay Monahan has up his sleeve. Be mad at me now. Be mad at me for not having you guys involved in this whole thing.

Be mad at me from the standpoint of saying I've been telling you forever and having you guys buy into and having you guys tell the world that everything about live and their source of funds, et cetera, is wrong. And then turn around and say, no, not only are they our partner, they are our main partner. They are going to be the named main partner in everything that we do. Right. And they're going to look back and say, well, if you tell us what the heck that is going on, it comes down to, guys, it's going to benefit you a lot. And that's the piece that we don't know yet. And I believe that's the piece that Jay is depending on. One guy's opinion that when he goes back to the players and goes, you can be mad at me if you want to, but you really don't know how much we're talking about here. And that's it. We're talking about the pension program.

We're talking about purses, all of it. I think it's going to fundamentally rewire the PGA Tour. Well, Yasser Al Ramayan said whatever it takes when asked about the budget.

That's literally what he said, whatever it takes. And he mentioned the one hundred billion dollars that golf has now, PGA has now, and just said we're out to spend whatever it takes to grow this game. It's after hours here on CBS Sports Radio. Matt Adams is with us from Ireland, called into duty. I hope you've had fun while you were there.

Not all work. If you're Rory McIlroy, Matt, and I don't know if you guys reached out to him, I can imagine. I haven't been able to find any comments anywhere. But if you're Rory, what are you thinking?

What are you feeling? Well, everybody is presuming that Rory McIlroy is going to feel somehow slighted because he was cast in the role as being the spokesman for the PGA Tour. In speaking as to how and why the PGA Tour had a, if not a moral high ground, at least a more virtuous approach to the game of golf.

That being true legacy in terms of measuring yourselves against era and measuring yourself against the greats of the game. Whether you go back to the likes of, you know, a Sam Snead, a Ben Hogan, an Arnold Palmer, a Jack Nicklaus, a Tiger Woods, etc. And he spoke passionately about that recently, speaking too about the fact that, look, you could understand if Brooks kept the guests on the United States Ryder Cup team. Because frankly, he's earned his pathway to it with a second place finish at the Masters and then winning the PGA Championship. But as to who all were formerly really good friends of Rory McIlroy, he didn't feel that any of them should be allowed on the European Ryder Cup team. Bearing in mind that in the United States, the PGA Tour does not control the U.S. side of the Ryder Cup. That is the PGA of America.

However, in Europe it's different. The DP World Tour, formerly called the European Tour, does control that side. So there could have been some context there that was missing in terms of what some people understood. But nonetheless, he still said that he doesn't think they should be back.

All of that now seems to be forgiven. I don't think any of this is going to be in place quickly enough to impact this September's Ryder Cup. Although we may get surprised by that, we shall see. There just isn't a mechanism at this point to bring those people back in terms of automatic qualifying. Because so many of the live players have fallen in the world rankings.

Because rankings were not awarded to live previously. So from that standpoint, I think Rory McIlroy, the perception being that he's going to feel slighted. That he's going to feel duped. That he's going to feel used. That he's going to feel exploited for the platform that he had at this time. Because it's not unusual when you go into hardened negotiations that one side is pretty much a good cop, bad cop situation.

That at a public standpoint, everyone says no, no, no, no, no. And behind the scenes, there are negotiations going on where they're secretly whispering to each other and saying yes, yes, yes. So we haven't heard from Rory McIlroy yet. We have been unable to get in touch with Rory McIlroy to answer the question that you asked in the intro to this question. So I'll be very curious what he has to say. He is scheduled to speak at the Canadian Open. I am curious if he's going to. Something tells me that he'll simply say no.

But I don't know. Rory was already dealing with a tremendous amount of weight from the role that he had undertaken. I don't think Rory McIlroy was used to the barbs and arrows that came with asserting yourself in any position, frankly.

But certainly in one that was as polarizing as this one had been and now is in a very different way. So that weighed on Rory McIlroy. He channeled it very much of last year all the way through to a FedEx Cup championship. He nearly won at the Open and it wasn't like he lost it on the final day. Cam Smith let out a shot at 64 just before he went off to live to add to the continuance of this drama. So but I think I think it impacted Rory in preparation through to the Masters of this year. And I think Rory, my impression was, I mean, again, this is just from a guy whose job it is to observe this game and relay that.

I think it looks almost like one of those transcendental moments for Rory where he's sitting back going. Is it all worth it? You know, I've got he's got more money than I've ever spent in his and his kids, kids, kids lifetime. And is it all worth it for everything that we're putting ourselves through?

And now this comes out yesterday to add to it. So I'll be very curious if Rory's perspective on it is to say, you know what, for the good of the game, because in fairness to Rory, a lot of people don't recognize it. Rory has been saying for a long time he does think that people need to come together and talk. Maybe Rory will take the olive branch approach with this and say, you know what, there are things that I don't like, but at least we have the power to have an impact on those things.

Now, instead of it being two separate organizations that are worrying when one organization wants access and the other one refuses to give it to them. So it's it's going to be fascinating to see Rory's a smart guy and things through. And I'll be curious about what his position is once we hear.

I got to ask you this. Phil Mickelson had been saying that the PGA Tour needed change, right? He did tweet yesterday, awesome day today with a smiling emoji. I can imagine he feels validated. Now, you and I have talked about how complicated he is and his position anyway. It was a lot more than just the live tour. There was a lot going on in Phil's life. But what do you think he must be feeling today? Well, obviously, Phil is happy about his position and Phil is brilliant, though he has been over the course of decades at manipulating circumstance. So number one, it casts him in the best light and number two, it makes it look like he had the inside track the whole time. Phil's comments. What happened with Phil, what people don't understand with Phil Mickelson is people who are calling Phil a martyr and people who are saying Phil was persecuted for all of this and now he's proven to be correct. Have to remember that what Phil was saying that the PGA Tour needed to do more for its players was there was nothing wrong with that. Phil's approach to it and ultimately what happened with his interview with Alan Shipnuck was that which brought Phil down. Phil wasn't brought down because he had reasonable comments to say, hey, more needs to be done. Phil was brought down because he attempted to do what he always attempted to do, which was plant the seed, let it grow into a plant of its own that would strangle the truth out of anybody else's perspective.

That's what he's always done. In this case, he planted through an interview with John Huggin from Golf Digest in Europe, and he said that the PGA Tour was guilty of obnoxious greed. He was talking about the rights, video rights from the players, television rights from the players.

There isn't a league in the world that gives those rights up to the players. So from that standpoint, that was Phil posturing. It backfired on him that in February of the following year, all the comments came out that he had with Alan Shipnuck. And people realized that the thumbs up, smiling Phil Mickelson that they thought they knew was willing to do anything that it took to get what he wanted by his own admission. That's what brought Phil down. His comments about what the PGA Tour needed to do are true, were true, and they had meaning and weight when he said it then. How he said it, how he framed it, how he packaged it, and how it was revealed to the public, though, were completely different. What's happening now is Phil, because he's brilliant at it and he's so damn smart that he's already starting to twist the message to put himself in this golden light and say, hey, I've been telling you all along and look at the price that I paid for it.

The price he paid was of his own making. OK, one more thing, Matt, thank you for sharing your perspective. It's always passionate, which I appreciate. Ultimately, is this good or bad for golf or somewhere in between? It's definitely somewhere in between right now.

So from the standpoint of whether it's good or bad for golf, live exists. It was going to exist. It was not going away. So anybody that wanted to turn their back to it and say, I don't like your source of funds. I don't like the connection with 9-11 attack. I don't like the connection with obscene abuses of human rights, etc. I don't like any of that had to come to grips with the fact that if we go out this afternoon and the credit card that we use or the car service that we use to take us to the restaurant for dinner or the entertainment that we're watching, video games or otherwise, dozens and dozens and dozens of companies are backed by the same fund that we use every day.

So I've always said the same thing about this. It is easy to cast moral judgment on other people's decisions that it's very hard to look at ourselves in the mirror and go, wait a minute, I'm benefiting from a source of funding from the same thing. So I don't think anybody has to like the source of funding.

I think everybody has a right to hate it if that is what they choose to do. However, I think we all have to look in the mirror and face up to the reality that the public investment fund of the Saudi royal family is invested everywhere, all over the place. And I happen to think that what happened yesterday will also open the floodgates to the same fund coming into even more American sports. When will they buy an NBA team? When will it be an NHL team? When will it be a major league baseball?

When will it be an NFL team? Money is money. And that's what makes all of these huge sports league teams and players churn. I believe that you're going to see a flood of that in there. To answer the direct question of is this good for the game, with all of these other decisions that come into this, some contemplated, some will be seen as perverse. The reality is, is that the game of golf is going to benefit because the game of golf will no longer have this raging holy war between the top tier and a competitive level. I think it's going to foster massive events. I'm a little concerned about what these massive events might mean in balance against the major championships. But I believe that there will become a series, my opinion, a series of world championship events where all of these different leagues come together and compete for persons that we've never seen before. And this is just scratching the surface because we really don't have all the details yet, but Matt Adams on Twitter, Matt Adams FOL, Golf Channel, Fairways of Life, check out YouTube so you can see the reaction yesterday.

A lot of player reaction as well. And again, we know there's going to be more to come. Matt, we appreciate you.

You're in Ireland. You're still taking time to give us your insight and your perspective and to join us here live on the show. You are the best. Thank you so much. Always a pleasure, my friend.

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