While it’s seemed as if there has been momentum all around, including at the White House, there won’t be a deal between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf anytime soon.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan spoke with reporters on Tuesday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, and he didn’t have much of an update. There is no meeting on the books with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and Monahan said he doesn’t expect to announce their partnership deal next week at The Players Championship — where he traditionally gives a state of the Tour address.
“We don’t have a next meeting set, but obviously we’re in a really busy stretch here,” Monahan said, via Golfweek. “We’ve got Arnold Palmer Invitational, Players. They have got two events here in the next two weeks. So it doesn’t mean there won’t be conversations, there’s just not a physical meeting set up.”
The Tour and the PIF have been negotiating the terms of their partnership for nearly two years now. Those talks, which came after years of heated battle between the two leagues, have seemingly heated up in recent months — especially when Monahan and Adam Scott met with President Donald Trump about the negotiations at the White House last month. Monahan said after that meeting that “everything is moving forward with pace.”
Tiger Woods participated in a second meeting, too, and he golfed with the president before Trump flew to New Orleans to attend Super Bowl LIX.
While Monahan said Tuesday that a deal isn’t imminent, he insists that things are still moving on the right track despite both a lack of progress and rumors to the contrary. Meeting with Trump at the White House, he said, was a “huge step.”
“I think anything that I’ve said or we said, the three of us said is consistent with what should be said when you’re in the middle of a complex discussion to try and reunify the game of golf,” Monahan said. “It doesn’t speak to my confidence level, it speaks to the moment. I view that meeting as a huge step and so I look at that very positively.”
What about reunification?
The biggest issue here clearly is how to bring the golf world back together the right way. Some in the sport, like Rory McIlroy, have said that people just need to “get over it” and move forward despite any harsh feelings they may have toward the other side. Scott took a different tone, though, and said he “wouldn’t judge anyone” if they weren’t happy with LIV Golf members rejoining the Tour after their messy exits.
Monahan said Tuesday that the Tour’s fan surveys show that about 70% of fans look positively on reunification, and that the league is doing “everything we can to reunify the game.”
When that happens, though, still remains to be seen.
“I would say that with our player directors, with our board, we’re highly conscious of reunification and focusing on that as a goal,” he said. “And ultimately when we get to that position that’s a question that we’ll all answer. But I’m hopeful that when you look at what we’re trying to accomplish, what that means for the PGA Tour, what that means for the game on a long-term basis, that we will solve for that in the most effective and prudent way we possibly can.”
