LIV players launch lawsuit against PGA Tour
Published
The battle between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour is headed for the courtroom.
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that a group of 11 LIV players including Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau, launched an antitrust lawsuit against the tour challenging the suspensions given to the players for playing in LIV tournaments.
Three other players – Hudson Swafford, Talor Gooch and Matt Jones – are also seeking a restraining order that would allow them to compete in the FedEx Cup playoffs which begin next week. All three qualified for the playoffs while on the PGA Tour earlier this year. Gooch is 20th in the FedEx Cup standings, while Jones is 62nd and Swafford 63rd. They believe they should be allowed to play while their appeals are being heard.
The other players involved in the lawsuit are Abraham Ancer, Jason Kokrak, Carlos Ortiz, Pat Perez, Ian Poulter and Peter Uihlein.
The timing of the suit comes as the PGA Tour gets set for its highest-profile stretch on the calendar. The FedEx Cup playoffs are the circuit’s three-tournament finale to the season.
The lawsuit states that the PGA Tour has used “anticompetitive restraints to protect its long-standing monopoly.” The golfers have asked the court to declare the suspensions illegal and to have the PGA Tour pay their legal fees and damages.
In the lawsuit, it was also revealed that Mickelson’s long break from the tour that began on March 23 was due to a suspension handed out by the PGA Tour. It said the reason was that Mickelson was recruiting players for LIV Golf. It’s believed that Mickelson was the first player signed to a deal with LIV. Neither Mickelson nor the tour had previously released any information of the suspension.
The restraining order request has some immediate issues. If Swafford, Gooch and Jones are allowed to play in the FedEx Cup playoffs, would the tour expand the number of players in the field to 128 from its usual 125 at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, the first of three playoff events? Would three players who expected to be in the first stop be bumped to keep the number at 125?
A precedent was set last month when a ruling in a British court allowed four LIV golfers – Branden Grace, Ian Poulter, Justin Harding and Adrian Otaegui – to play in the DP World Tour’s Scottish Open. At that event, because of the late notice, the four players played together in twosomes and were added to the overall field total.
Optically, a ruling in favour of the LIV golfers would be a big win for the circuit’s CEO and commissioner Greg Norman, who has no love lost for the PGA Tour. Last week, while on the Fox TV program with Tucker Carlson, he said the two tours could co-exist.
"Our model is 100 per cent built around the golf ecosystem from the ground up," Norman told Carlson. "We are not trying to destroy the PGA Tour or the European Tour.
In the past, the PGA Tour has defended its operation and the suspensions as part of any normal business operations. It also warned players who left the PGA Tour for LIV about the suspensions.
This legal action adds to the PGA Tour’s troubles. The Department of Justice in the U.S. acknowledged that it has started its own antitrust investigation into the PGA Tour’s operations. Several reports said the department is looking into the manner in which the Official World Golf Ranking points are awarded and also the suspensions of the golfers who signed with LIV.
LIV Golf has held three events so far with one in England and two in the United States. It plans to play tournaments in Boston, Chicago, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and a season-ending event in Miami at Trump Doral. There have been fresh faces at each of the stops as more PGA Tour players have joined the ranks of the circuit funded by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.