PGA Tour willing to adopt elements of LIV Golf to get a deal with the PIF done
For the first time since the onset of the disruptor league, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan acknowledged that its rival tour has inspired a surge of internal growth. As negotiations drag on with the Saudi Public Investment Fund, Monahan conceded on Tuesday there are aspects of LIV Golf that could be worked into the PGA Tour if a deal were to be agreed upon with LIV's backer to reunite the professional game.
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'As part of our negotiations, we believe there's room to integrate important aspects of LIV Golf into the PGA Tour platform. We're doing everything that we can to bring the two sides together,' Monahan said Tuesday at the Players Championship. 'That said, we will not do so in a way that diminishes the strength of our platform or the very real momentum we have with our fans and our partners. So while we've removed some hurdles, others remain. But like our fans, we still share the same sense of urgency to get to a resolution.'
Monahan's remarks come after two recent meetings in the Oval Office with President Donald Trump, the latest including PGA Tour player directors Tiger Woods and Adam Scott, and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the PIF.
The PGA Tour has publicly requested Trump's assistance in reuniting the game — a Department of Justice antitrust review of the proposed PGA Tour-PIF deal was long considered a deterrent to its completion, but is not expected to be a problem under the Trump administration. 'He wants to see the game reunified, we want to see the game reunified,' Monahan said. 'His involvement has made the prospect of reunification very real.'
For months the tour's top leadership had been tight-lipped about proclaiming their goal was to create 'one tour,' so as not to raise concerns of monopolistic behavior within the Justice Department. With Trump in the Oval Office, that hesitancy has dissipated. Monahan told reporters at the Genesis Invitational that the ultimate goal of the negotiations is 'the game of golf operating under one tour with all the top players playing on that one tour.' But on Tuesday, Monahan did not use the same language, instead stating that the focus is on the 'best players in the world playing together more often.'
Trump added to the 'one tour' narrative, telling White House reporters: 'I just think golf — it's very much an individual sport, and you want to see the best players playing against each other and not playing in two different locations.'
It's difficult to imagine how that vision would unfold, with each party holding different — if not directly opposing — values for what should be prioritized in the structure of a professional golf league. LIV plays a 14-event global schedule, its format structured around team golf and 54 players playing in a shotgun start format. The PGA Tour is largely based in the United States, with even its smaller-field signature events featuring more than 70 pros. Only one event, the Zurich Classic, is a team competition.
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The most powerful individuals in the sport, a group that now includes Trump, are focused on bringing these products together. Rory McIlroy has said that Trump is not personally in favor of LIV's 54-hole team golf format. But Monahan would not go into specifics about which aspects of the disruptor league he could see being integrated into the PGA Tour, nor did he divulge whether LIV Golf's first-year CEO, Scott O'Neill has been part of those discussions. Monahan said that he could see a future in which the PGA Tour board welcomes Al-Rumayyan, giving him a seat at the table, as the 'framework agreement' between the PGA Tour, PIF and DP World Tour stated when it was signed in June 2023. But he also emphasized the the ethos of the PGA Tour rests in its 72-hole, stroke play format.
'These tournaments are 72-hole stroke play tournaments at historic, iconic venues, with moments like we had last Sunday with Russell Henley and his family. That's who we are as an organization, and that's who we'll always be as an organization,' he said. 'So that's at the center of the way that we think about what our fans want and what our players want, and that's obviously a very important consideration in our discussions, which is why I've mentioned that today.'
This type of disconnect, and many others that have percolated over the past three years of this saga, are what resulted in the uncertain outcome of last month's White House meeting. Rumblings of a PGA Tour-PIF 'deal in principle' being announced by Trump following the four-hour long session were prevalent, but the meeting produced nothing of the sort. On Tuesday, Monahan attributed the lack of developments to the ebbs and flows of a high-level negotiation.
'The most important thing is the mutual respect that we've built over the last couple of years,' Monahan said.
McIlroy, who sits on the PGA Tour's transaction subcommittee to communicate with the PIF directly, also stated last week that the tour does not 'need a deal' with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, given the $1.5 billion investment from Strategic Sports Group. Monahan added to that idea in his press conference by stressing that the PGA Tour is in a position of strength and power — TV ratings are up year-over-year, sponsors are committing to long-term partnerships, and TGL is proving to be an additive product, to name a few from his long list of PGA Tour's self-proclaimed brownie points. Media regulations have been relaxed and a new, potentially bracket-style Tour Championship format is in the works, perhaps for 2025.
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Improvements to the tour's pace of play policies are being explored more closely than ever before. Monahan announced that data surrounding speed of play will be released later this year — the use of rangefinders during PGA Tour events will also begin to be tested at the six PGA Tour events between the Masters and PGA Championship.
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