At the moment, it seems negotiations between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s PIF and its governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, are enmeshed in anti-trust regulation hell, forcing a harrowing holding pattern in which all of golf’s lawyers and all the kingdom’s men can’t seem to put what’s left of the tour back together again.
The longer that “framework agreement” negotiations take, the more a general apathy sets in among golf fans, who remain the biggest victim in this whole mess. There’s rising apathy among the players, too.
“Some PGA Tour players” reportedly want LIV players to pay back the huge sums given to them by LIV Golf before being granted a return to their former employer.
Rory McIlroy says fans shouldn’t read too much into his upcoming made-for-TV match with Scottie Scheffler and LIV Golfers Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau.
Given that the PGA Tour and the PIF had set a December 31, 2023, deadline to try to finalise a deal, the slow pace of the discussions has not only fans wondering what’s taking so long, but some players, too.
Meeting with members of the media for the first time since the Players Championship in March, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan provided an update overnight (Australian time) on the ongoing negotiations with LIV Golf and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. And, essentially, there isn’t an update.
Monahan did not provide any details on the rendezvous, stating only that the conversation was “constructive and represents an important part of our due diligence process in selecting potential investors for PGA Tour Enterprises”.
McIlroy cautioned that the current state of affairs, with two entities currently holding very different forms of competition and some players secured by LIV through the late 2020s, will require patience to be worked out.
Multiple sources familiar with the matter told Golf Digest that LIV Golf’s team component is one of many highly contested subjects in a potential deal.
Spieth did not go into any detail about who else would be there or if it was taking place three days from now, though he did say he believes this potential meeting could be beneficial for both parties.
Though the incontrovertible takeaway from the past two years in professional golf is that no one knows anything, at least for certain, we’ve spent much of this week at TPC Sawgrass gathering intel on the status of the deal.