Five Absurdities: PGA Tour Exemptions, Scott O'Neil Payments, and More

Every once in a blue moon, you have to take a step back and admire the absurdity of the professional golf world. It isn’t streamlined or cohesive, and the pieces of the puzzle rarely fit together like they should. Much of the time, it’s just about keeping the train on the tracks.

So today, on a slow fall Wednesday, I’m highlighting five absurdities that have been percolating in my mind. They have varying degrees of timeliness and importance, but all warrant further appreciation and/or scrutiny.

1. Austin Smotherman being exempt into all PGA Tour Championship Series events through 2029. Well, more broadly, all long-term exemptions into Championship Series events as the PGA Tour transitions to its new competitive model that starts in 2028. Because the PGA Tour is honoring all exemptions earned through the end of 2026, Tour players can stack years of eligibility and exempt themselves from the relegation and promotion process as far out as 2031. Smotherman won the Bank of Utah Championship at the beginning of October, granting him status in Championship Series events through 2028. His Monday-finish win at the appropriately titled Butterfield Bermuda Championship tacked on another year, shoring up his eligibility all the way through 2029.

Absurd!

More examples: Rory McIlroy, Aaron Rai, Wyndham Clark, and Ryan Fox are all exempt into Championship Series events through 2031, no matter how they play — or how often they play — in the meantime. Even more oddly, since the Tour is ending the practice of stacking eligibility years after this season, those players actually secured longer-term status with major wins in 2026 than they would by winning a major in 2027.

I get it: the Tour had its hands tied and couldn’t take away a carrot that had already been promised and agreed upon. Still, the result is completely outrageous and antithetical to the spirit of a true relegation and promotion system.

Relatedly, I can’t believe more golfers aren’t motivated by this loophole of sorts to show up at fall events like this week’s Mexico Open. Brian Harman, you’re 39 years old and currently exempt through 2029. With all due respect, it’s fairly unlikely you’ll play well enough in 2029 at 42 to earn your way into Championship Series events in 2030. Why not try to hunt another year of eligibility with a win this week in Mexico? What’s there to lose?

Admittedly, VidantaWorld isn’t exactly a dream course fit for a player with 165-mph ball speed, but stranger things have happened. Brian Campbell is the defending champion!

2. LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil’s $6 million in retention payments. Look, I’m generally not super inclined to go after executive pay. If you’re generating more than $10 million of value as the leader of a nonprofit and take a $10 million salary, for instance, good for you. But court documents released at the end of last week revealed over $6 million strictly in retention payments for O’Neil, in addition to more than $9 million cumulatively paid to six other executives. At a minimum, the optics are bad: LIV owes millions to vendors who have gone unpaid since before these retention payments were made in June.

Congrats to Scott, I guess, on continuing to get paid throughout this whole charade. I hope it doesn’t change who he is. I hope he stays where his feet are, if you will.

3. The domain names LIV Golf purchased. Also revealed in last week’s document dump, in the Intangible Assets section, were nearly 900 website domain names LIV Golf purchased and squatted on so nobody else could. The collection included TerroristGolfLeague.com, FakeGolfLeague.com, LIVGolfCorrupt.com, GolfMoneyGrab.com, GolfButSaudier.com, and EvilLivGolf.com.

Ok, two of those I made up (the second and the fifth), but didn’t they blend in?

4. The DP World Tour travel schedule. Brendan Porath highlighted this on Monday’s episode of the Shotgun Start: three successive weeks in Madrid, New Delhi, and Cheonan to close out the DP World Tour regular season is madness. The DP World Tour is doing the best it can to stay afloat right now, so I’ll cut it some slack. But finishing a tournament and immediately hopping on flights from Spain to India to South Korea while fighting for your professional livelihood doesn’t seem like optimal scheduling for the body. I empathize with you, Kiradech Aphibarnrat.

5. Dog Culture. Ok, this one doesn’t really have much to do with golf, except to the extent that pro golfers are complicit in the problem by bringing their miniature goldendoodles out on Tour (Collin Morikawa). But since I have you here: dog culture has gotten completely out of control.

They’re spilling over onto your seat on airplanes, their hair is wafting around coffee shops and grocery stores, they’re in the broadcast booth at college football games. Sometimes they’re off leash and walking toward you aggressively, yet somehow you’re the bad guy for raising an eyebrow.

Once the USGA and R&A rein in driving distance, I’d like them to turn their attention to dog culture. Roll. It. Back. Maybe we’d get a solution by 2058.