The European Super League Should Be a Lesson to those Pushing for A Golf Premier League

Last week two of the sports I follow most closely broke big news. On Sunday, April 18 news leaked out slowly and then in a tsunami, that 12 European soccer clubs had formed a Super League in the darkness of night (think Don Draper and the gang leaving to start their own agency). The Super League was a money grab gushing with entitlement in a galaxy of leagues build on merit.

It took two days for this surreptitious plan to come crumbling down as blindsided players, managers, and fans lashed out in opposition of this new Super League. It was ugly and this NYTimes piece sums it all up beautifully.

Meanwhile, Eamon Lynch of Golfweek dropped a mini-bomb of his own. The PGA Tour has a $40 million Player Impact Program (aka “PIP”) that will be dolled out to the most popular golfers on the PGA Tour based on various metrics. This popularity contest stirred up debate and discussion in the golf world, as some of the metrics seems fluffy and impossible to measure especially for golfers on the fringe (or the wilderness) of the pop-culture zeitgeist.

The most important part of this little “cool kids table” discovery by Lynch is that many believe it’s a reaction to a possible Golf Premier League that would lure the top golfers in the world to play in a small, highly-compensated league. Currently, the idea is lingering like a rain cloud over professional golf, but some of the biggest names have outwardly said they wouldn’t join. The formation of a Golf Premier League would leave the PGA Tour and European Tour with the “also rans” of golf.

European soccer and golf are based on merits more than other sports, I think. In European soccer, a team can be relegated and promoted based on their annual performance. A team in the third division of English soccer can live with the dream of reaching the Premier League, which would then open the door to possible European competitions. On the other side, successful clubs like Sunderland have tumbled to the third division of English soccer (watch Sunderland ‘Til I Die on Netflix) due to poor ownership and mismanagement. When the Super League was announced, a lot of the anger was because it divorced two huge anchors of European soccer: competition and achievement. The 12 teams would automatically be in the Super League no matter their performance the previous year. They’d make the money and leave smaller clubs to fight for the scraps (imagine 12 teams in the NBA deciding they would make the playoffs every year and the final four spots were up for grabs).

The Super League plan did not go well for a host of reasons. The owners and chairmen of the clubs planned the league without the input of managers or players. It was a total surprise to all but about 30 people on the planet, including those who run the governing bodies UEFA and FIFA.

The PGA Tour, in many ways, is organized like a domestic soccer league. The PGA TOUR is the top league, the Korn Ferry Tour is the first division. Players can earn their way into the PGA TOUR and, likewise, players can lose their card if they don’t play well enough during a year. One could argue that Rickie Fowler is the Sunderland equivalent right now. He didn’t receive an invite to The Masters because he’s not good enough right now. Just this week, it was announced that Rickie Fowler would receive a spot in the PGA Championship due to his part performances. Even this pissed people off, as they’d rather see that spot go to someone that has earned it over the last 12 months. Sports are at their best when people earn the chance to compete.

For people who are nervous about golfers breaking off and joining a small Golf Premier League, I think the Super League is an excellent example of how people might react to it. Now, I’m not sure Will Zalatoris fans will act like Arsenal fans and storm the practice facility at TPC Deere Run in protest. However, I do think that fans and golfers left behind would react in a way that would make Golf Premier League players realize that they might have made a mistake and looked awfully selfish along the way.