5 Reasons Jay Monahan Should No Longer Be Tour Commissioner

I’m not a “fire the coach” kind of guy. If anything, my fault comes in being too loyal. I still have socks that remember the Yankees winning a World Series.

Having said that, I’ve seen enough from Jay Monahan as PGA Tour commissioner, a position he took in January 2017.

We’re nearly eight years in and Monahan has not inspired confidence, particularly in the past few years as LIV has become a factor. While the Tour has succeeded on some levels—such as jacking up purses and retaining corporate sponsorship at a surprising rate—pro golf has continued to suffer.

Ultimately, leaders have to be responsible for results.

Here are the five main reasons it’s time for Monahan to step aside.

1. He mishandled the LIV situation

Everything starts and ends with how the Tour has bungled the LIV situation.

I think you have to start well before LIV even became a reality. The Tour held onto an archaic, dying structure of trying to treat all of its members equally, even when the entertainment value came from a select few. It rewarded all players based purely on results instead of rewarding the top players based on what level of interest they brought. The Tour is starting to make some corrections, but it came as a reaction rather than being proactive.

The landscape was ripe for LIV to step in and poach players. The Tour didn’t take any of those phone calls to figure out a solution prior to the sport getting ripped in half. There was no foresight.

When LIV did start taking players and diminishing the Tour’s product, there was a lot of arrogance, a court battle costing the Tour about $50 million in legal fees and the Tour dipping more than $200 million deep into reserves for increased purses—until a sudden “merger” (that wasn’t really a merger) with the Saudi Public Investment Fund in June of 2023 with a self-imposed deadline of Dec. 31, 2023.

Now 15 months later and Monahan is trotting out lines about how this is a complex negotiation that will take time. There is no deadline.

“I don’t think we want to restrict ourselves in that way,” Monahan said. “We want to achieve the best and right outcome at the right time.”

Why not start from that position 15 months ago? Why start with a deadline that ultimately meant nothing?

And remember, the initial framework agreement said there was going to be no more poaching of players. Well, that also meant nothing apparently as Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton left for LIV.

Monahan previously said that “it’s fair” to assume golf will carry on as it has for the next couple of years given how complicated the negotiation has become. At the same time, he’s unwilling to divulge how many meetings have taken place to bring the game back together. Players like Rory McIlroy have become openly frustrated about the lack of progress and some board members have jumped ship for the same reason.

Reading between the lines, it appears the Tour is taking the approach of waiting out LIV. They are hoping LIV player contracts don’t get renewed—that the Saudis get bored of their struggling investment in golf—allowing the sport to come back together more peacefully and seamlessly.

I highly doubt that will happen anytime soon given how LIV continues to invest heavily, but the Tour seems to believe it is in a position of strength.

If Monahan and the Tour really care about pro golf as a whole, they wouldn’t take this tactic. The 2025 schedules have been released for the Tour and LIV. We’re continuing to move forward, steering into the worst future possible. Both leagues are going to tread water and slowly struggle as fans become more apathetic.

Maybe the Tour “wins” a couple of years from now but the cost of that patience is enormous.

2. Communication is a glaring issue

Where to start with this one?

You could point to players, and most of the Tour’s board members, having no idea about the clandestine deal done with LIV.

You could point to a ham-fisted rollout of the framework agreement which led to PGA Tour Chief Operating Officer Ron Price writing an op-ed for The Athletic where he admitted the Tour “deeply regretted” how the agreement was presented. That included calling the agreement a “merger” despite it not being a merger. (Price then represented the Tour in an embarrassing Senate hearing that went off the rails. Monahan had taken a leave of absence at the time due to health reasons.)

You could point to ignoring LIV and the Premier Golf League (which was not backed by the Saudis) several years ago when they came calling as threats.

You could point to Monahan trying to leverage 9/11 families, making an emotional plea against the Saudis before turning around and making a deal with them.

You could point to the Tour spending at least $500,000 on lobbying before and after LIV began, leading to government officials trying to set up a meeting with Monahan and the Arabian ambassador to the U.S. to discuss the issues between the Tour and LIV. According to a July 2022 CNBC story, the Tour declined to meet.

And this leads neatly into the third point here …

3. He is incapable of giving a coherent press conference

Speaking of communication …

Monahan has spent the vast majority of the past three years out of the spotlight. He gives two meaningful press conferences per year (at the Players Championship and Tour Championship) and pretty much avoids public view outside of those appearances.

When you see him talk, you can understand why—Monahan is a dreadful speaker.

Most responses come out as incoherent word salad with defensiveness as the dressing. The theme is that the Tour sees its product being in the best shape it has ever been, even when the numbers suggest otherwise.

Last week, Monahan went as far to say “the entertainment value of the PGA Tour has never been stronger.”

What are we talking about? Ratings are down virtually every week. More and more people I know are only watching the majors, which the Tour doesn’t own. There is no Tiger, Bryson, Rahm, Koepka, Mickelson or a variety of other players who would draw interest.

Of course, Monahan will protect the Tour’s interests at press conferences. However, he’s not transparent or convincing. He doesn’t look anything like a real leader and that’s a huge problem.

4. The Tour trails behind other leagues in the innovation category

While other sports innovate on multiple levels, the Tour remains well behind pace.

The main complaint here is the broadcast which is borderline unwatchable due to a torrent of commercials and clunky sponsored content.

The commercial load could be helped immensely by new innovations in how sponsors connect with fans on and off the broadcast but a long-term media deal—which Monahan and the Tour negotiated—is apparently too restrictive for significant changes until 2030 when it expires.

So while a sport like NASCAR—a similar product from a TV perspective—is experimenting with its model to show more of the race with fewer commercials, the Tour is stuck in neutral.

Tour TV ratings are down significantly. It’s abundantly clear that audiences are not anywhere near as interested in the Tour as they were a few years ago.

The Tour is also playing catch-up on other fronts. They just started investing in YouTube golf even though it has been wildly successful for a handful of years. The Tour app, while improved as of last year, was arguably the worst app among major sports leagues for more than a decade. They were also several years late compared to other leagues when it came to spearheading a Netflix series like Full Swing. Allowing access to players (such as with player-caddie conversations being mic’d up) remain a challenge, although slight progress is being made.

It feels like golf tends to be at least five years behind other sports when it comes to innovation.

5. There are top players openly questioning him

The Tour is ultimately a member-run organization. It’s run by the players.

So when you see a top player say something like this, it’s problematic:

“Trust is something that’s pretty tender, so words are words, and I would say in my book (Monahan’s) got a long way to go,” Xander Schauffele said in March. “He could be the guy, but in my book, he’s got a long way to go to gain the trust of the membership.”

Four months prior to those comments, Schauffele said, “I wouldn’t mind seeing some new leadership take place on our circuit.”

That is a very tough look for the Tour when the second-best player in golf is openly criticizing a commissioner like that. It’s a public admission that some of the players don’t trust Monahan.

I think it’s also damning that McIlroy seemed to be heavily involved with the Tour’s future, answering difficult press conference questions throughout much of 2022 and 2023 until the framework agreement happened.

“You’ve galvanized everyone against something and that thing that you galvanized everyone against you’ve now partnered with,” McIlroy told Monahan after the agreement.

McIlroy then left the board later in the year only to be brought back onto a negotiating subcommittee this May.

“I think at this point, everyone’s just getting bored of it, just getting tired of it,” McIlroy said of the negations during last week’s Tour Championship . “I think it’s become a bit of a cloud over golf. But a very niche cloud, y’know?

“I wish more would have been done, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of willingness from some people to try to fix it.”

It’s hard to believe there wasn’t a more efficient way for Monahan to utilize McIlroy throughout this process rather than having him be a sacrificial lamb without much of a real voice.

For these reasons, I think the Tour would be best served bringing in someone else to be the Tour commissioner.

Should Monahan continue to lead the Tour? Who should take his place if that ever happens?

Let me know below in the comments.

Top Photo Caption: Jay Monahan has stayed in the shadows, only giving two big press conferences per year. (GETTY IMAGES/Michael Wade)

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