AUGUSTA, Ga .— This time final yr, Augusta Nationwide and Masters Chairman Fred Ridley took a impartial stance in opposition to the prospect of a Saudi-led golf league, an idea that appeared unsure after Phil Mickelson seemingly torpedoed the endeavor along with his bombastic feedback. “Our mission is to all the time act in the most effective curiosity of the sport in no matter kind which will take,” Ridley stated on the 2022 Masters. “I feel that golf is in a superb place proper now. There’s extra participation, the purses on the skilled excursions are the very best they’ve ever been. We’ve been fairly clear in our imagine that the world excursions have completed an excellent job in selling the sport through the years. Past that, there’s a lot that we don’t learn about what would possibly occur or what might occur, I can’t say rather more past that.”

However a Saudi league is not an idea however one thing very, very concrete that has torn the skilled cloth of males’s golf in two. The game’s civil conflict has touched practically all points of the sport, and that features Augusta Nationwide. To catch you up to the mark, here’s what you have to know in regards to the connection between the Masters and LIV Golf.

Are LIV Golf members allowed to play within the Masters?

Although the PGA Tour considers the Masters an official occasion, the tour has no jurisdiction over the sphere or how the match is run, permitting these banned by the tour to play at Augusta Nationwide.

What number of LIV gamers are within the 2023 Masters area?

A complete of 18: Phil Mickelson, Charl Schwartzel, Bubba Watson, Sergio Garcia, Patrick Reed, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith, Mito Peirera, Joaquin Niemann, Abe Ancer, Thomas Pieters, Harold Varner III, Jason Kokrak, Kevin Na, and Louis Oosthuizen. Solely Smith, the reigning Open champion, is record on the pre-tournament interview schedule.

So Augusta Nationwide is OK with LIV Golf?

Wouldn’t go that far. In a press release final December, Ridley wrote, “Regrettably, latest actions have divided males’s skilled golf by diminishing the virtues of the sport and the significant legacies of those that constructed it.”

Nonetheless, whereas Ridley stated he was “disenchanted” in these developments, “our focus is to honor the custom of bringing collectively a preeminent area of golfers.”

“Due to this fact, as invites are despatched this week, we’ll invite these eligible underneath our present standards to compete within the 2023 Masters Match,” Ridley stated.

Can LIV Golf members compete within the Masters in perpetuity?

Not fairly. Ridley added a caveat to this assertion, writing, “As we have now stated up to now, we take a look at each side of the match every year, and any modifications or modifications to invitation standards for future tournaments will probably be introduced in April.” Potential alterations to the sphere’s exemption classes is predicted to be one of many areas addressed by Ridley throughout his annual pre-Masters press convention on Wednesday.

How would LIV Golf members be excluded from future Masters?

There are a number of routes. The primary could be to stay with the present standards, which—assuming LIV Golf fails to obtain accreditation from the Official World Golf Rating—would get rid of roughly half the LIV Golf opponents from the sphere. Instead of the OWGR exemptions, the Masters might use the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup rankings, the DP World Tour Race to Dubai standings and different cash/level lists for respective excursions all over the world.

The second could possibly be a more in-depth alignment with the PGA Tour. The Masters might announce it is going to mirror the tour’s standards for area eligibility, which means these suspended by the tour could be banned from competing within the Masters. This selection would enable the Masters to ban earlier Masters winners—equivalent to Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed, Sergio Garcia and Bubba Watson— from the match ought to the membership resolve to take action. The third is, effectively, the membership might simply not invite LIV Golf members to compete as a result of the Masters is an invitational, and the membership is beholden solely to itself. Nonetheless, that might be excessive, given the circumstances.

Ridley and Augusta Nationwide had been named within the antitrust lawsuit introduced by Mickelson and different LIV members in opposition to the PGA Tour, with LIV gamers claiming the membership tried to influence golfers to not be a part of the Saudi-backed circuit. “Augusta Nationwide, the promoter of The Masters, has taken a number of actions to point its alignment with the PGA Tour, thus seeding doubt amongst high skilled golfers whether or not they could be banned from future Masters Tournaments,” the lawsuit reads. “As an preliminary matter, the hyperlinks between the PGA Tour and Augusta Nationwide run deep. The actions by Augusta Nationwide point out that the PGA Tour has used these channels to stress Augusta Nationwide to do its bidding. For instance, in February, 2022 Augusta Nationwide representatives threatened to disinvite gamers from The Masters in the event that they joined LIV Golf.”

The grievance says that the PGA Tour urged Augusta Nationwide officers to attend a PGA Tour Advisory Council assembly in Might, shortly after the formal launch of the LIV Golf Invitational Collection. The go well with says they did attend and “they knowledgeable the golfers in attendance that the PGA Tour and Augusta Nationwide had agreed to work collectively to deal with LIV Golf. As described above, the specter of exclusion from the Masters (and the opposite Majors) is a strong weapon within the Tour’s arsenal to discourage gamers from becoming a member of LIV Golf.”

The declare goes additional with this reference to behind-the-scenes actions from Ridley: “As well as, Augusta Nationwide Chairman Fred Ridley personally instructed a variety of contributors within the 2022 Masters to not play within the LIV Golf Invitational Collection. Plainly, these threats to high gamers served no helpful function, as they’d solely serve to weaken the sphere within the Masters.” The go well with says that Ridley declined a request from LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman to fulfill and formally talk about the launch of the sequence and its enterprise mannequin. He additionally, in response to the declare, referred to as Asian Tour CEO Cho Minn Thant together with R&A Chief Govt Martin Slumbers “to threaten penalties regarding the Asian Tour’s place within the present ‘ecosystem’ if the Asian Tour continued to assist LIV Golf and its LIV Golf Invitational Collection.”

Wouldn’t this make Augusta Nationwide need to ban LIV Golf members?

Presumably, besides Augusta Nationwide can be concerned in an antitrust probe by the Division of Justice.

In keeping with a Wall Road Journal report final October, the antitrust investigation—initially spurred by LIV Golf accusations in opposition to the tour—roped in golf’s different governing our bodies and entities into the probe. In July, gamers’ brokers obtained inquiries from the DOJ’s antitrust division relating to legal guidelines about collaborating in non-tour occasions and the tour’s actions associated to LIV. The tour has countersued LIV, asserting that the case will not be about unfair competitors—“if anybody is competing unfairly, it’s LIV, not the tour”—and accuses the LIV-backed lawsuit as a “cynical effort to keep away from competitors and to freeride off of the tour’s funding within the growth {of professional} golf.”

LIV Golf has additionally accused the membership and its members from making an attempt to dissuade the DOJ from its investigation. Nonetheless, the DOJ’s investigation has itself been underneath scrutiny, with members of Congress questioning why the division has inserted itself into the matter. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) has pushed the DOJ to analyze if LIV violated the Overseas Brokers Registration Act for its ties to the Saudi authorities.

So, once more, why is LIV Golf invited?

Given the lawsuit and antitrust probe, disinviting LIV Golf members might put the membership in a tricky spot on each of these fronts.

Given the pictures Fred {Couples} has dished out at Mickelson and different LIV Golf members, the Champions Dinner could possibly be frosty. And although the U.S. Open and Open Championship had been carried out following LIV Golf’s launch, the Masters would be the first main for the reason that inception of the lawsuit, which might result in some awkwardness within the locker room.