Instead, LIV Golf is a league. In some ways it more closely resembles the NRL than the PGA Tour. The commitment of the contracted player, as a “fundamental condition” of the playing contract, is that the player WILL participate in each regular season tournament, each team world championship event, and each international series tournament organized by Norman and his people. So much for the notion of playing less, pretty much pleasing yourself and leaving more time for fishing.
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The only exceptions arise where there exists a “legitimate excuse” for a player not playing, where the term is given a constricted definition consisting of medically certified illnesses and injuries preventing a player playing, or any other event or cause which LIV in its “sole discretion” determines as being a reasonable justification for not playing.
Specific examples given in the contract are the birth of a player’s child, and the death or serious illness of a family member. Birthday parties and friends’ weddings then… they’re out unless ‘The Shark’ decides otherwise in his infinite and unbending wisdom.
It’s a complete misnomer then, this fabled concept of less tournaments, a more relaxed lifestyle and all of that. The promise, written in ink in the contract, is that the player will faithfully meet all of his playing commitments and obligations, wherein any failure to do so is expressly prescribed to constitute a “material breach” of the contract. We’ll get to what consequences flow there from a bit later because there’s a sting in the tail.
First, however, some other observations really do need to be made. LIV-contracted players irrevocably and permanently license to LIV all of their personal attributes and image rights for the purpose of broadcasting LIV’s tournaments, commercializing its events, promoting its sponsors and otherwise.
None of these terms are especially unusual in relationships between professional athletes and their sports, but this is a helluva lot of trust for an athlete to place in an entirely untried quantity, which LIV is. The same goes for the controls which LIV seeks to impose over players’ usage of social media and the content deployed. Eighteen months ago, LIV wasn’t a thing and running a sports league wasn’t within Norman’s wheelhouse of experience.
Pat Perez, Talor Gooch, Greg Norman, Dustin Johnson and Patrick Reed at the LIV Golf Invitational in Portland in July.Credit:Getty
Furthermore, there is a definition of “apparel” where basically what is ring-fenced is anything worn, used or displayed by the player. The term does not appear in the unredacted text of the contract released by the order of the US District Court.
Noting however that the likes of Patrick Reed was clothed head-to-toe in LIV-branded items when he played at St Andrews, it might well be that players are obliged to dress a certain way when out and about in the wider world, kind too like Amish people. These are golf’s brave new frontiersmen after all.
The sting in the tail with all of this though ties back to the concept of “material breach” and the contractual consequences which flow if you’re determined by Norman to be guilty of such heinous misconduct.
Specifically, if a player, for whatever reason, doesn’t play in a tournament which he is required to play in, LIV retains the right to terminate the player’s playing contract. If LIV elects to terminate the playing contract, the golfer is then obliged, within 21 days, to refund to LIV any sums previously paid to him by way of any signing-on fees or indeed any amounts other than prize money.
In one sense you might well think this is fair enough and reasonable. Perhaps it is. For there has to be a value extracted if Smith, as an example, is to be paid $140 million to sign on in the first place.
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But the nub of the problem is this: even the shrewdest players probably don’t completely appreciate the full ramifications of what they’re committing to, where they’re of course jeopardising their future prospects and entire reputations if everything in Norman’s Nirvana goes to pour in a handbasket.
The LIV Golf contract is one seriously onerous prenuptial agreement, where players are as much pawns in a chess game as they are supposedly independent and free contractors and the stars of the show.
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