Steve Sands, Golf Channel Analyst

Sansi, appreciate the time as always. How you been?

Anything for you, Zach. I'm doing great, bud. How about you?

I'm doing fantastic. So this news today was shocking and really came out of nowhere to say the least. When you found out about it and got a few moments to process it up until now, how'd you react to it?

Oh, I was surprised, Zach. I thought that the PGA Tour would try to hang on a little longer, but I just think they got tripped up financially. I think money is the reason that this happened and I think that the finances just didn't add up for the PGA Tour moving forward and that's why they're all going to merge together and it'll be so fascinating to see how this all takes shape beginning in 2024. Will there be one league? Will there be three leagues? Who's going to run the league? What's the schedule going to look like?

What are the purses going to be? Are the lived guys going to be allowed to play again on the PGA Tour immediately? Are they going to have to qualify to give back? How about the money that the guys didn't take to stay on the PGA Tour? What are they going to be paid for all this? It'll be really interesting to see what happens when all the details come out.

That was my biggest takeaway. Jay Monahan being a hypocrite and if I was on the PGA Tour and listened to him and trusted him and didn't take the money, now it's like today okay I look like a loser when all these guys that ended up taking the money really ended up being winners and probably not going to really have to suffer much to end up coming on back. Yeah it's going to be a real sticky point for Jay Monahan and the PGA Tour players as to you know to use your word quote unquote be a hypocrite and decide to take the money that you told everybody publicly and privately that you would never do that you told people that you told people publicly and privately who are your constituents and the people who you work for the players to go defend the tour and to say how bad this is for the game and then suddenly do a 180 you know one year into this whole venture and literally Zach I just think you then you need to follow not you personally but you know we all need to just follow the money you know I just think the money is the key here and I think that with these lawsuits and with the discovery phase probably turning up things that the PGA Tour didn't want people to see or hear about it just to me it just reeks of we don't want anybody looking up Cinderella's skirt anymore than they need to let's go merge and get this over with take all the fire we're going to get from this and then try to move on as quickly as we can but this is not going to going to die anytime soon. How much longer do you think Jay Monahan will be the commissioner of the PGA Tour? It's a great question I thought two things were really interesting Zach and there are a lot of things that were interesting but two the most interesting things to me in a statement that was released today they don't know what the new name is going to be of this new entity so let's just say US Airways bought American Airlines years ago American Airlines is the larger brand name so they kept American Airlines as the name even though US Airways bought American Airlines the PGA Tour is by far Zach the larger brand name than the DP World Tour and Liv Golf for them to put it in the statement today from the PGA Tour by the way that they're not sure what the name will be moving forward in this new entity that is fascinating to me and the other thing is that Jay Monahan is the commissioner of the PGA Tour now unlike Goodell and Manfred and Bettman and Adam Silver who work for the owners in hockey baseball football and basketball the PGA Tour commissioner works for the players it's a players league players organization so he had a meeting with the players today and it was contentious and he was called to hit the grid and they went back and forth players I think are going to see what Jay has to say about all this they did today and they will moving forward however Zach he is not going to be the PGA Tour commissioner he's going to be the CEO of this new entity and the chairman of the board is going to be Yasser who is the guy from Saudi Arabia who runs the PIF the private investment fund he's going to be essentially Zach the most important most powerful man in all of men's professional golf and that's just wild to me that those two things were put in that statement today. Can the players Steve Sands can the golfers do anything right now to expedite Jay Monahan being removed? Oh for sure they want to make enough noise they can certainly do that that is not the way golf usually conducts its business usually golfers are not that strong-willed when it comes to these things again you want to talk about the other four sports Zach and the PGA Tour makes it the five biggest sports in North America if you think of it that way they don't have a union all right it's the only one of the five doesn't have a players union and there are a lot of people who go back and forth on whether they're pro-union or not and this is not an ideological debate with me and you Zach or your audience but PGA Tour players you could make a strong case that because they've never unionized they've never had a union they've never really gotten to look at the books so they really haven't played for as much money as the revenue has been brought in well Liv comes around offers these guys a gajillion dollars some of them take it some of them stay and all of a sudden the purses on the PGA Tour go way up it's as if someone at the PGA Tour found a billion dollars of loose change under the couch but you know that kind of thing and you know push comes to shove the PGA Tour raised its purses where they found the money doesn't matter but clearly that money's not adding up because now that they're receiving the money that they could have gotten two three years ago from Saudi Arabia and the people who run Liv golf which is that PIF that private investment fund in Saudi Arabia they're going to be pumping in billions of dollars now into the the leading tour on the PGA Tour DP World Tour Liv golf tour merger and it's just it's just wild times in this sport and I don't think Zach I don't think this is the last sport the Saudis have dipped billions in the soccer billions into Formula One now billions into golf and I don't they own a premier league team in the biggest soccer league in the world I think that North American sports could be altered you know from this day forward based upon some of the money that's going to be pumped in from other places around the world most notably from that PIF that private investment fund from Saudi Arabia and I imagine Steve Sands the players on tour now and they hear about all the unlimited money and right that's been talked about for the last year two years they're gonna want that money now what they would have got going to Liv they're gonna want that now but like where else are you gonna go like you really don't have that much leveraging power but you do because everyone's gonna want to keep these great golfers playing the sport I totally agree I just can't imagine how the play again this is not the union fighting with the league like you have in the form team sports the players are supposed to have a say in what gets implemented on the PGA tour as far as rules none of them knew this was going to take place Zach so are they in charge or are they not do they have a say or do they not they didn't have a say in this and it'll be really interesting now here's the thing when this is all said and done the guys are going to be playing for so much more money that maybe at the end of the day it's not going to matter but in the moment right now it matters greatly that these guys were blindsided and that the stars who turned down hundreds of millions of dollars to go to Liv will now have to bring those Liv guys back who took the money and play the PGA tour we have to wait and see how all the details shake out but if that's what actually takes place these some of these stars are going to be furious and if they really wanted to take you know strike or not play or maybe a sponsor like RBC which is the RBC Canadian Open this week I'm heading to Toronto tomorrow I can't wait to talk to some of these guys in person that who off camera is going to be fascinating you know they could withdraw withhold money that kind of thing I don't know what could take place but without that union without that structure that most of your audience is used to hearing each and every way three four years whenever there's a new CBA and all these leagues it's not like that in golf the players run the show or at least thought they ran the show and I think today they got like slapped down you know by the you know the the people who run the sports at the highest level administratively and I think the players realize that perhaps they don't have as much say as they thought they did Steve Stans here with us from the Golf Channel NBC Sports so you talk about how many people were left in the dark on this and how hush-hush it was and came out of nowhere I thought it was very interesting that Rory McIlroy was really the guy that was carrying the PGA Tour flag and then recently he started to change things do you think Rory genuinely did not know anything about this?

It's a great question. I have a hard time thinking that Rory matters. There's a guy named Jimmy Dunn great guy big time financial guy on wall street he's a great great guy heavily involved in golf and he was recently named I think last year onto the PGA Tour policy board of the you know the board that runs the PGA Tour as far as the administration not the players part and Jimmy was one of the brokers of this deal. Jimmy and Rory are very close. Jimmy is very close with a lot of high level PGA Tour players again he is a wonderful guy. I have a hard time thinking that Rory didn't know a little bit about what was going on maybe didn't know that it was going to be announced today and that they were going to move forward without all of the details of the game all of the details being fully baked but I think they wanted to get something out there Zach because they were afraid he was going to leak in other words you tell Rory you tell someone else all of a sudden it gets that you know how that stuff works but I have a hard time thinking that Rory was a hundred percent blindsided and he didn't know anything because I just can't imagine that the PGA Tour Jimmy Dunn, Jay Monahan, whoever from the PGA Tour putting him out there can be the spokesperson for the last like 12 to 15 months and have him be completely blindsided that would be a really really tough move on the tourist part so I would imagine that Rory knew something. Steve Sands what do you how do you think Greg Norman reacted to this stuff today because he is not expected to be part of the new business partnership as it was explained today and I guess knew nothing about it as well. Yeah I don't know if he didn't know anything about it I would imagine he didn't but he didn't really need to know anything about it I think what's going to happen here is Greg is going to look like a hero everything he promised these guys we're going to pay you a gajillion dollars check you're going to be playing all over the world check you're still going to be playing for you know so much more money and less time on the golf course check you're going to be able to play in the major championships check you're going to get world golf ranking points check and the sixth thing we're going to merge with the PGA Tour and we're going to be able to play with PGA Tour players once again well that looks like it's going to happen too so I'm sure Greg is awfully excited by what took place today even though he probably won't have anything to do with it moving forward because of his relationship or lack thereof with the PGA Tour folks but I don't think he really cares as much as he cares just getting back at the PGA Tour with all that angst over the years and I think he certainly is smiling right now. You're around this all the time Steve Sands and this is just me from afar a year ago this was a huge deal and then when you got to the Masters this year the PGA Championship it didn't feel like it was that big of a deal from the PGA Golfers side of things were cooler heads starting to prevail here where the PGA Tour guys and live guys started to be okay with one another? Individually you mean? Yeah like if you had like the majority you know the guys of the PGA Tour were they okay with the live golfer guys a year later? Yeah I mean they're okay with the guys uh what they're not okay with is some of them taking shots like Phil Mickelson taking those shots you know at some of these guys Greg Norman taking shots at some of the guys um I don't think the PGA Tour players who stayed and didn't take the lay have anything against any of the live guys who chose to go that route they still play and practice with them they still hang out with them they're friendly with them there have certainly been some fractured relationships because of it but I think on the whole I think most of the guys on the PGA Tour are okay with the live guys they think that they betrayed them uh they wouldn't have made that choice they didn't make that choice but I don't think they hold it against them personally not not for the most part I think you literally Mickelson who's always yapping um Patrick Reed a little bit but nobody liked him anyway out there uh and and Greg Norman was always chirping as well so you're talking about guys who weren't immensely popular in the first place with the other PGA Tour players got it last thing I'll ask you because there's going to be a lot of fans that care about the specifics and the money and all that but just in terms of the future of golf I know there's so many moving pieces and so many things that are ambiguous right now what do you tell the golf fan to kind of dumb it down what the future of golf looks like you know what I would say to golf fans is you're probably going to benefit because if you put the three leagues together I think and you have one big league then you're going to be watching the best players in the world go head to head against the other best players in the world at one event not two different leagues two different channels three different continents all these different things and I think that's going to benefit the golf golf audience but again Zach the details aren't out yet as far as how it's going to proceed if per say they have a lot of events internationally and not as many events domestically well you'd get in a different time zones different viewing habits different people it'll be it'll be challenging but I think the structure of the new entity will be something that golf fans will benefit from the question is will golf fans will sponsors continue to support a tour that they've been railing against literally railing against for years and where the money comes from I mean basically Zach basically this was a hostile takeover okay a classic hostile takeover on wall street or any other you know corporation you put financial pressure on the entity that you want so much so that at some point that entity buckles and then you're there to bail them out financially and are suddenly in charge of it well that's kind of what's taking place here the PGA tour got into a little bit of a financial situation COVID and then Liv Liv kept applying that pressure applying that pressure applying that pressure everybody thought everything's okay they're not gonna get any more players but money talks man and they kept applying that financial pressure to them and the PGA tour buckled the PGA tour went to Liv and now they're all one entity and Liv is in charge because Yasser is the chairman of this new entity and all the money that's being pumped in is from that PIF the private investment fund out of Saudi Arabia if sponsors don't want any part of that they're out if fans don't like that because of where the money's coming from well they might not support it as well so we'll have to wait and see how it all plays out but I think for the core golf fans Zach I think they're going to enjoy seeing the best players in the world playing week in week out and not just at major championships well enjoy Canada that trip's going to be really interesting now sans you got that right bud