Confidential PGA Tour documents went public by mistake. Now what?

ST. ALBANS, England — When confidential documents are made public, what sound do they make? 

The golf world is finding out. Last weekend, more than 300 pages of confidential documents were made public — following an apparent mistake by a Palm Beach County Court clerk — the lot of which exposed background communications and strategy decisions implemented by the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and the Official World Golf Ranking over the last three years.

For starters, there’s a June 2021 correspondence between PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and DP World Tour CEO Keith Pelley, drafting a note Pelley would send to Golf Saudi, “hopeful that we can find a collaborative way to work together in the future as we have done in the past.” A month later, in Malta, Pelley sat down with Golf Saudi.

The docs include an assessment of the European Tour Group, commissioned by the PGA Tour, dated June 2022, that encouraged a 100 percent takeover of the European entity by the PGA Tour. The golden goose asset eyed up by the PGA Tour? A majority ownership of Ryder Cup Europe. “Generally, we find European Tour Group an underinvested and borderline distressed asset,” the document reads, detailing a full merger between tours would “protect the global talent flow” in the wake of “other tours emerging that are solely focused on poaching top players.” 

There also is messaging in which Monahan shares talking points for Tour Policy Board director Ed Herlihy to consider invoking at an upcoming meeting, as well as guidance to be sent to other directors by Herlihy. In a document titled “Jay Monahan’s Remarks, PGA Tour Player – Town Hall Meeting” even more talking points were outlined, this time as fodder for Tiger Woods. The scripting includes lines that are complimentary of Monahan, among others, while also serving as a battle cry for Tour members: “LIV Golf is trying to take over the PGA Tour and take over golf.” Ultimately, Woods broke an extended period of silence by tweeting, “I have never seen this document until today, and I did not attend the players meeting for which it was prepared at the 2022 Travelers.”

How does the publication of these documents sit with the PGA Tour? Well, its lawyers filed an emergency motion to seal them — all pages numbered 3 through 357 — asserting that they “include trade secrets under Florida law.”

How does it sit with, say, the captains of the Majesticks, one of LIV Golf’s 12 teams?

“[This period has] made everybody open their books up and show what was going on,” Lee Westwood said Wednesday during a media roundtable at this week’s LIV Golf event; joining him were the four members of his team: Ian Poulter, Henrik Stenson, Sam Horsfield and Laurie Canter. “Deals that were in the pipeline and stuff like that. Positions that people sat in and everything. That’s up to you guys to go through all that, understand that, and fact-check what everybody’s said in the last year — whether they were being truthful or not.”

The “you guys” in this scenario were the dozen or so media members who were seated in a Majesticks-branded lounge behind the driving range. One reporter responded, “357 pages, it’ll take me a while.”

“Well, that’s your job,” Poulter jumped in. “You guys have been given…” 

Poulter trailed off as another question on another topic vacuumed the attention of the group. But he finished his point later in a conversation with yours truly. Poulter seems keenly aware of how much (or, more to the point, how little) ink has been spilled about the 300-plus pages of emails, assessments and presentations. He said there should be a greater response, inclusive of, perhaps, some journalists apologizing for coverage from the last 12 months that may be proven incorrect by this reveal of the judicial discovery process. He stopped short of naming names or highlighting specific reports. 

As part of discovery, the PGA Tour has shared 30,000+ documents with the representatives of Larry Klayman, an attorney who has filed a class action lawsuit against the Tour, the DP World Tour, The Golf Channel and the OWGR on behalf of golf fans. Made public, even if by way of a clerical error, the confidential records were going to be, by nature, a net-negative for the PGA Tour. Is there room for non-confidential recourse of document sharing? That’s not how this works. The toothpaste cannot be put back into the tube. Notably, both sides of the litigation agreed the documents should be confidential, and Judge Luis Delgado ordered them to be stricken from the public docket. 

Whether or not that was timely enough, there is an obvious desire from LIV players for retribution — particularly from golf media — here at the ninth event in the 2023 LIV Golf season. It is the first time LIV Golf has returned to the site of one of its 2022 tournaments, or rather the first opportunity it has had do things differently than a year ago. The build-out of stands is less significant. The branding of the 12 teams is more significant. The press conferences and media coverage — well, so much has changed in the last month that 13 months feels like 13 years.

“The keyboard warriors are one thing,” Graeme McDowell said. “That comes with the territory. But, like, professional media, writing some pretty damning stuff about players that have spent 20 years building a solid reputation for themselves that seem to just dissolve overnight, I look back on it with perspective now and think to myself, those guys were paid representatives for a narrative that — like I say, they were being paid to represent.

“All these players out here are trying to do is represent the golf tour that they’re paid to play on. Everyone has their territory to defend, and they did that, and sometimes it was pretty vitriolic.”

McDowell, like Poulter, stopped short of naming names or specific reporting. Bubba Watson, when asked about his relationship with golf media, said, “First of all, everybody wants to feel loved, right? And when you change jobs, it’s the same job, just a different company. It’s sad when you get talked about, name calling.”

Watson admitted he hasn’t read what was in the lawsuit, and it wasn’t even clear which lawsuit he was talking about. At any given point in the last 10 months, there has been four or five suits to monitor, with documents from each obviously pertaining to the others; its record-keeping LIV players are interested in seeing.

“I just think people are better informed now, aren’t they?” Westwood said during his press conference. “Like I said earlier, there’s more transparency as to what goes on in all of the golfing organizations. It’s not so much vindication, it’s just that people know the true facts now.”

Three weeks ago, Phil Mickelson acknowledged, “I still want to see stuff come out in discovery.” He’s not alone. That sentiment has been percolating around the driving range at Centurion Club.

In the meantime, more information may come from a hearing scheduled for Tuesday in Washington, D.C., where representatives of the PGA Tour will meet with the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, under the watchful eye of Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, who rushed to critique the proposed deal the day it was announced.

Elsewhere, The New York Times filed a motion to unseal court records of the litigation that was dismissed with prejudice between the warring golf tours. Both LIV Golf and the PGA Tour — now with the option to be litigious allies rather than foes — have until July 11 to file a motion of opposition. A hearing on that Times motion is expected for Aug. 3, the one-year anniversary of the initial lawsuit named Mickelson et al vs. the PGA Tour.

If anything is to come from that, it likely will feel similar but different to what came to light this week, mostly because it will involve documents from both sides.

Stay tuned.