GRAND BLANC, Mich. — Jack Nicklaus, the Ohio State Buckeye decked out in his typical scarlet polo, doesn't consider his regular trips to Michigan to be crossing into enemy territory. He's won a U.S. Senior Open here, at Oakland Hills in 1991.
He's built two of the state's most-talked about courses, The Bear in Traverse City, and American Dunes in Grand Haven. He's a regular visitor to The Ally Challenge, the state's only annual Champions Tour event, taking place this week in suburban Flint.
Last year, Nicklaus and wife Barbara even spent two weeks getting out of the scorching south Florida sun and vacationing in Charlevoix — though, even in his 80s, the pace of play didn't exactly suit him.
"Get up in the morning and have breakfast and do nothing, go to lunch and do nothing, go to dinner and do nothing, and then do the same thing again the next day," laughed Nicklaus, who did squeeze in a couple of rounds at one of Tom Watson's favorite courses, Belvedere.
"I'm not built for that."
Nicklaus, at 82, still is built to do something — and, as is the case of late, say something, as he did again Saturday when he was peppered with one question after another about the upstart LIV golf tour, which has emerged as the biggest threat to golf's biggest stage since Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and a couple others broke away from the PGA of America and created what today is known as the PGA Tour.
LIV golf, which will stage its fourth tournament next week in Boston, has spent hundreds of millions of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund to lure away such big-time names as Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Patrick Reed, Sergio Garcia and Bubba Watson, among others. More players, including possibly British Open winner and world No. 2 Cam Smith, are certain to defect in the coming weeks and months.
And Nicklaus, who won $13,000 for his first U.S. Open title, a personal-best $144,000 for winning the 1986 Masters and a $237,000 pension "that I spent a long time ago," isn't about to criticize anyone for taking what, in many cases, is generational wealth. Nicklaus, through a wildly successful golf course-design firm, has a reported net worth around $400 million. Mickelson reportedly got half that just to sign with LIV.
"I don't begrudge them at all for that," Nicklaus said. "One of the guys said, 'I'm gonna play three years on this and I'm going home to be on my farm the rest of my life,' and that's OK."
Just don't try selling Nicklaus, with his record 18 career major championships, that anyone leaving for LIV is doing so for the good — or growth — of the game.
Nicklaus, one of the game's two fiercest competitors (Tiger Woods, the other), said the PGA Tour remains the gold standard for those who value the competition.
Many, in comparison, have called LIV golf an "exhibition."
"I think most of the guys that play the game are guys that are playing it because they love competition, they love to compete," Nicklaus said, standing on the putting green just outside the Warwick Hills Golf & Country Club clubhouse, preparing to hit his first shot since May in competing in the Ally Challenge celebrity scramble with the likes of Dylan Larkin, Jalen Rose, Charlie Bell and Kane Brown. "They want to play against the best every week. That's not gonna be the case with LIV.
"I can't see if you're really interested in competition that you want to go out and play a 54-hole event and shotgun starts, and the whole day's over in four hours."
More than half of the current 48-player LIV roster is from outside the United States; of the American golfers, many are considered to be past their prime.
And Nicklaus can understand the reasoning for both sectors, particularly the international players.
Few, if any, countries have the developmental system in place for golf like the United States, with its junior, collegiate and amateur circuits feeding right into the PGA Tour. American golfers grew up watching Nicklaus, or Palmer, or Watson, or Woods, and grew up understanding the ultimate progression was the PGA Tour. In most foreign countries where golf is popular, players turn pro much younger. Less process, more profession.
"See, Tiger grew up in our system and Tiger's got a loyalty to our system," Nicklaus said of Woods, who has been an outspoken ambassador for the PGA Tour in the face of the LIV threat. "If it wasn't for our system, you may never have heard of Tiger Woods. Because he had the ability as a young kid to be able to get into junior programs, the ability to get into collegiate programs (Stanford), into amateur programs. Gracious, what did Tiger win, three national amateurs? (Editor's note: Yes, three U.S. Amateur titles, after he won three U.S. Junior Amateur titles) He understands what went on, and where he came from.
"There's a loyalty that's built up with a lot of our guys here."
Legacy is the other "L" worth that's thrown around.
LIV players are putting theirs at stake. They are all banned from playing on the PGA Tour, and the former PGA Tour members have been told they're banned for life — Michigan State alum James Piot, the 2021 U.S. Amateur champ, doesn't fall under that ban, as he's never been a PGA Tour member — but they can still compete in the majors, at least for now. Even if the four majors, run by four different governing bodies, never issue bans, if the Official World Golf Ranking never ends up awarding points to LIV, and they likely won't as long as the fields are so small and the tournaments so short, qualifying for majors will be extremely difficult.
And then what?
"Most of these guys are gonna want to play golf," Nicklaus said, noting the 50-and-older Champions Tour won't be an option eventually either, as it's run by the PGA Tour. "You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
"Maybe you can."
The courts will eventually figure that out. The LIV-PGA Tour dustup already has led to multiple lawsuits.
There has been some good that has come out of this for the PGA Tour members who stayed. Behind strong pushes from the likes of Woods, McIlroy and others, the PGA Tour will have 12 "elevated" tournaments in 2022-23, which will feature $20 million purses and the top 20 players participating in each. There'll be more bonus money up for grabs, a minimum salary for tour pros for the first time ($500,000), and also for the first time a weekly stipend ($5,000) for any participants without tour cards, even if they miss the cut. The PGA Tour also will condense the schedule starting in 2024, moving from a wraparound to a single-year slate.
Some on the LIV have scoffed at the PGA Tour's changes, saying they're just copying the LIV blueprint, which includes $25 million purses, plus travel and lodging expenses for players and caddies.
Nicklaus, who is in semi-regular contact with PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, said many of these changes have been in the works. LIV's emergence certainly sped up the timetable.
"Well, you know, I guess the whole world is changing, and I guess there's not much we can do about it," Nicklaus said. "The PGA Tour, I guess, has got to keep up with it like everybody else. The PGA Tour had their growth pattern that they were looking forward to doing, but they've accelerated it, LIV accelerated it for them. I think the Tour would've gotten there."
Monahan and McIlroy held a press conference earlier this week in Georgia to announce the changes, a week after Woods flew to Delaware to meet with the PGA Tour players. Woods and McIlroy also will launch TMRW, a Monday night golf showcase that will debut in January 2024 — and appears to be a counter to the LIV's party-like atmosphere.
There's been tension among some PGA Tour players, many of whom have since defected, toward the Tour over its mammoth nest egg as a nonprofit corporation. They felt that money should've been spent, and on them. Nicklaus defended the PGA Tour there, too, saving for a rainy day.
"And COVID was a rainy day," said Nicklaus, adding that the Tour spent millions of its reserves every week for many months making sure sponsorships stayed hole and charities continued to receive their donations, even when there were no fans, or limited fans, at the tournaments because of the pandemic.
The purses also didn't shrink during the pandemic.
"The Tour remained loyal to the players from that standpoint," Nicklaus said. "And 95 percent of the players will remain loyal to the Tour for that exact same reason."
Nicklaus revealed in May that he met with the Saudis two years ago, when they were looking for a figurehead to be the face of LIV golf. Nicklaus took the meeting, as a sign of respect, given he has golf-course projects in Saudi Arabia. But he never was interested in the job, and he even called Monahan before the meeting to let him know he was taking it, but wasn't interested in the job.
His pitch was the role that eventually went to Greg Norman. Nicklaus and the Saudis never got to the point of contract negotiations, though it's been reported LIV was prepared to pay Nicklaus $100 million.
"I didn't know how much money it was gonna be," Nicklaus said. "It would've been a lot, and so you know, because I was involved and given that opportunity, I understand what some of the other guys are going through, because you're turning down your financial future for a long time.
"But by accepting, you're also limiting your competitive future."
Speaking of the future, there's all sorts of guesses has to how long LIV can remain in place. By all accounts, it's using the Saudis' Public Investment Fund, worth more than $600 billion and controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to so-call "sports wash" — or, use sports to help clean up its reputation, marred by a horrific human-rights record, as a means to convince more global companies to do business with Saudi Arabia. For now, there is no need for LIV to make money, which is good, because it's not making money, with few corporate sponsors, no television deal, and modest galleries who paid little or nothing for tickets.
That hasn't stopped LIV from paying Mickelson $200 million, Johnson and DeChambeau $125 million each and Koepka $100 million. They reportedly offered Woods nearly a billion dollars. He said nope, and recently officially became a billionaire anyway (and that's to say notion of his pension, which may top $100 million, Nicklaus said). Those LIV contracts are all in addition to on-course earnings; the LIV tournaments pay $4 million for first, and $120,000 for last, plus $3 million for each week's team champion.
The PGA Tour — which also owns PGA Tour Champions, Korn Ferry Tour, PGA Tour Canada, PGA Tour China and PGA Tour Latino America, and has seriously strengthened its alliance with the DP World Tour, or the European Tour, in recent years — will never be able to compete, dollar to dollar, with LIV golf. That's not to say, however, that the PGA Tour won't compete, and ultimately continue to thrive, Nicklaus said.
"I don't know how long LIV will stay around," said Nicklaus, who stuck to the golf talk and avoided any political discourse when discussing LIV on Saturday, perhaps having not enjoyed the reaction when he waded into the 2016 presidential race with an endorsement of President Trump (whose Bedminster course hosted one LIV tournament, and his Doral course will host another). "I think it will stay around for a while. It's not going anywhere. ... But I think that the PGA Tour, the guys that grew up with it and kept their loyalty to it and been brought up by that, they wouldn't be where they are (without it). I think they understand that, and so I think the PGA Tour will probably just be stronger because of it. ... That's all part of the issues, and so golf has go its problems. I call them growing problems, now. I think the game is in good hands.
"The Tour will do fine. The Tour will come out very whole and do well.
"And the players that stay with it will do very well as time goes on."
