Seth Waugh doesn’t believe he showed an anti-LIV Golf bias as it relates to the world ranking. The PGA of America’s CEO said he was simply offering his business opinion on the Saudi-funded league.
Waugh told the Times of London last week he doesn’t see the LIV business model as sustainable, arguing the concept of team play attracting fans was flawed logic.
“They can fund it for as long as they want to, but no matter how much money you have, at some point burning it doesn’t feel very good,” Waugh told the Times.
His comments raised questions of bias because the PGA of America has a seat on the board of the Official World Golf Ranking, and the OWGR still has not decided whether to bring LIV Golf into its system.
“We don’t think division is in the best interest of the game,” Waugh said Tuesday. “And then when asked what do I think, as a former businessman who looks at things, I think disruption is a good thing. I think good things have happened from that. Certainly the players are better off in a lot of ways from what it was.”
Waugh formerly was CEO of Deutsche Bank Americas.
Waugh said there has been a “healthy back and forth” between the OWGR and LIV, which applied to get world ranking points in July. The process typically takes a year, and LIV does not meet certain criteria because of its limited fields (48 players), no cuts and lack of opportunities to qualify for the league.
“This is not an ‘us versus them.’ The OWGR, if you take a step back, the whole point is to create a level playing field, a yardstick by which to measure the game. Our job is to measure tours — not players, but tours — and how they perform on those tours to come up with that yardstick,” Waugh said.
