Quiet Power: The players raise their voices and the world hears them

Golf is the "quiet sport" but when the merger between LIV and the PGA moved behind closed doors cutting the players out of the decision-making, they spoke up.?

Solidarity. Worker empowerment. These are hardly words we associate with the traditionally conservative game of golf as it’s played at elite levels. And yet, in this season, when high profile strikes and “okay, make me” pushback from employees who are unimpressed by the prospect of returning to hot desk offices are in the news, even golfers are turning to collective action.

And no wonder. On June 6, the PGA Tour agreed to merge with LIV, the Saudi-backed golf entity that had been poaching players by offering massive financial packages. The announcement from Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan astonished golf fans and professionals, but Tour members– the actual players- were stunned. The negotiations, the details of the deal, and the financial rewards for the PGA board members and their lawyers, all took place in secret without the players having a say or even any idea what was going on.

Remember that the PGA Tour is, in its own words, “the world's premier membership organization for touring professional golfers.”?In other words, it’s an association of?players. Since golf is not a team sport, there are no owners. There are only player-entrepreneurs, with executives and staffers ostensibly there to serve their needs.

In their rare public statements immediately following Monahan’s bombshell announcement, the players made their dismay apparent. But they did so in the low-key way one associates with the kind of murmuring tones that golf announcers typically employ. Their mostly stiff upper lip statements also reflected golfing tradition, with its emphasis on etiquette and sportsmanship, on not rocking the boat.?

LIV of course was trying to upend this tradition by fostering a bombastic WWE ambiance at its exhibition matches, which featured hard-drinking fans and blaring music. The lack of dignity was very much in line with the faux-populism of a league in which players rationalized their total lack of power by bragging about the massive checks they’d received from their new owner, the Saudi Public Investment Fund.?

In the past, the golfers had not been owned. Yet the secrecy surrounding the PGA-LIV agreement betrayed the Tour’s owner-entrepreneur mentality. Which is why the players’ muted response to having their future decided solely by Tour executives and board members felt baffling as summer unfolded. Sportswriters and commentators opined that the individualism and conservative roots of golf made collective action unlikely.

As it turns out, they were wrong.

Last week, more than 3 dozen of the world’s top golfers signed a letter to Monahan asking that Tiger Woods be added to the Policy Board, which would shift the balance of power to the players, who had formerly comprised a minority of Board members. They also requested that?the Board undertake an immediate review of the Tour’s governance. Woods was the primary signatory.?

The next day, the Tour announced that all the player demands had been accepted, and promised “full transparency,” along with “player authority to approve or decline any potential changes to the Tour.”?

In other words,?players?will have the final say over the PGA’s relationship with LIV, not the two board directors who negotiated it. And over the future of professional golf.

This is the power of collective action at work.?

Such action doesn’t have to be negotiated in public, but it does have to be clear in its demands. And it certainly benefits from having leadership that has earned unchallengeable influence and respect. Tiger Woods has that to a degree that no one else in all of professional sports does, or perhaps has ever had. That he has chosen to use it to the benefit of his fellow players is remarkable. It also exemplifies the kind of lightning-fast change that can occur when we act collectively.?

This is solidarity– rising together– at its finest.

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