Tom Watson frustrated by lack of answers on PGA Tour, Saudi Arabia partnership
In June, less than two weeks after PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan shocked the golf world with the announcement that the PGA Tour would form a commercial entity with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, eight-time major champion Tom Watson wrote an open letter to Monahan, the Tour’s Policy Board and his fellow Tour members that posed more than a dozen questions.
Speaking on an episode of the 5 Clubs podcast, Watson was asked by host Gary Williams how much trepidation, if any, did he have about penning that letter?
“I had none,” Watson said. “This was a complete departure of where I thought the Tour should go.”
More than two months later, Watson’s questions remain unanswered.
“The sad thing about it,” he said, “is the questions in that letter haven’t been answered. Not a single one. We’re waiting for answers. I can’t comment on it until we get the answers.”
But Watson, a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame and one of the game’s most distinguished players, has never been short of opinions and weighed in on the direction the Tour is headed.
“I think the Board needed a restructuring so that the players had voting power because this is a players’ organization,” he said. “This organization went outside of the due process. It wasn’t transparent at all. There were no players involved at all in the negotiations with PIF and Yasir (Al-Rumayyan, PIF’s chairperson). That needed to be. That was a huge mistake, I think, and I think the players thought so too. A single player needed to be involved in that, at least. We have people that are making decisions that really shaping the future of PGA Tour golf and without player participation in those decisions, we’re going in the wrong direction.”
