The big tease? Deal optimism dissipates

Peculiar statement post-White House meeting doesn't portend imminent reunion

Tour/PIF White House meeting with Donald Trump “didn’t go as well as hoped.” (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

It is probably not wise to try and read too much into any statements as it relates to the on-going — some would say laborious — negotiations going on for more than 18 months to try and get some sort of resolution to the men’s professional golf turf wars.

But it’s also difficult not to notice the change in tone — from the positive vibe in a statement on Feb. 6 following PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan’s and player rep Adam Scott’s meeting with President Trump at the White House to a more measured response last week after another meeting.

At the Genesis Invitational, Monahan spoke as openly as he has in more than a year about the state of affairs. Tiger Woods added a confident take in a broadcast booth appearance a few days later.

Then, after Thursday’s White House meeting that Woods attended this time along with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, the statement reverted to more of the non-info to which we’d become accustomed.

“Thanks to the leadership of President Trump, we have initiated a discussion about the reunification of golf,” said the statement signed by Monahan, Woods and Scott. “We are committed to moving as quickly as possible and will share additional details as appropriate. We share a passion for the game and the importance of reunification.”

How Trump’s leadership has any bearing here is a mystery. What’s more bothersome, however, is the wording.

“Initiated a discussion.”

Huh?

After all this time, “initiated” seems a strange choice of words. Nobody wants to hear that something is just starting, even if that is not really the case. And yet, that is how it was framed.

The “constructive working session” included Al-Rumayyan, whose baby is LIV Golf and who is said to not want to see it scuttled or diminished. That does not seem to be happening anyway, but did Monahan overplay his hand when he talked about “one tour” and the fans wanting to have the best in the world playing together more often when he spoke with the media in San Diego?

Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch reported that “rumblings from informed sources suggest that Thursday’s meeting at the White House didn’t go as well as Tour executives had hoped, which suggests that PIF governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, remains determined to keep shoveling cash into the furnace of his own pridefulness.”

LIV Golf is burning cash with limited return, but the PIF is a nearly unlimited source of money. And it clearly has bigger goals in mind, namely being part of the worldwide golf ecosystem, not a secondary tour that is languishing.

Clearly a deal will help LIV Golf’s credibility. But more importantly to the PIF, it would give it a position within an established sports entity — the PGA Tour.

PIF governor Yasir al-Rumayyan may not want to let go of LIV (Matthew Harris/LIV Golf)

Monahan and Scott met with Trump on Feb. 4 in an effort to speed up the negotiations, the belief being that the federal government could intervene with the U.S. Department of Justice and get approval of a deal with the PIF, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund said to be worth more than $900 billion.

Regulatory approval — whether it be due to restraint of trade issues or a foreign entity investing in a U.S. business or both — has been seen as one of the major challenges in getting a deal done, going back to the June 6, 2023 “framework agreement.”

Much has changed since then. The PGA Tour formed a for-profit arm called PGA Tour Enterprises for which it was to join forces with the DP World Tour and the PIF.

But in January of 2024, the tour entered into an agreement with Strategic Sports Group, a consortium of U.S.-based sports owners and businessmen who provided private equity in the amount of $1.5 billion, with a pledge to match that with another $1.5 billion infusion later.

The tour later announced a player equity program that will see $930 million paid out to more than 180 players with the program vesting over eight years. The money has to be earned via PGA Tour Enterprises through so-far undisclosed means.

That investment put the PIF talks on hold, and at times it appeared to drag on without much movement. It wasn’t until last March that the PGA Tour Policy Board, including it’s player directors, met in person with Al-Rumayyan, who frequently attends LIV Golf events. The meeting took place in the Bahamas. Later in the year, Monahan and Al-Rumayyan played in the pro-am in Scotland at the Dunhill Links Championship.

For the majority of the past year, there were few meaningful updates.

But the Feb. 4 meeting at the White House appeared to give Monahan and Woods —who was scheduled to attend but had to cancel due to the death of his mother, Kultida — confidence.

“It was a very productive visit,” Monahan said in advance of the Genesis Invitational. “I think you all have been around him enough to know how passionate he is about the game of golf.

“For him to respond to our request to sit down and talk about how we achieve what he stated publicly as a goal, which is the game of golf operating under one tour with all the top players playing on that one tour, was a great opportunity. We had a really productive conversation.”

Monahan latter added: “I think the meeting ultimately gets us one step closer to a deal being done, but there’s a lot more work to do. Hopefully you sense my enthusiasm as I talk about it today.”

During the final round of the Genesis Invitational, Woods appeared in the CBS broadcast booth with Jim Nantz and Trevor Immelman.

“We’re in a very positive place right now,” Woods said. “We had a meeting with the president. Unfortunately, I had some other circumstances that came up, but Jay and Adam, they did great during the meeting, and we have another subsequent meeting coming up.

“I think that things are going to heal quickly. We’re going to get this game going in the right direction. It’s been heading in the wrong direction for a number of years and the fans want all of us to play together, all the top players playing together and we’re going to make that happen.”

That positivity was missing from the latest statement. Perhaps that is by design. Or maybe things are not as close as believed just a week earlier.

So here we are again, wondering when a deal will finally be done.