PGA Tour-LIV Golf Merger Will Make Its First Trip to Capitol Hill This Week

A Senate subcommittee has requested to speak about the new PGA Tour-LIV Golf alliance, and two PGA Tour officials will testify on Tuesday.

Two PGA Tour officials – Ron Price, the tour’s chief operating officer and Jimmy Dunne, a policy board member who helped broker the “framework agreement’’ with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia – will testify Tuesday before the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

U.S. Sen Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) is the subcommittee’s chairman who initiated the inquiry and invited some of the lead figures, including PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, LIV Golf commissioner Greg Norman and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.

On June 6, the PGA Tour announced it had reached an agreement to work with the DP World Tour and the PIF, thus putting aside litigation between the sides and, in theory, striving for peace in the game.

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Lawmakers have raised antitrust issues as well as concerns about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.

Nobody is compelled to testify. Monahan declined due to health reasons – he’s been out with an unspecified medical issue since June 13 and is returning to work on July 17 – while Norman and Al-Rumayyan cited conflicts for not being able to attend.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), at first said that Congress “should not get involved’’ but said in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he wants to be sure “the purity of competition’’ is maintained.

“The fact of the matter is the Public Investment Fund … if they want to invest in global sports, they’re going to invest in global sports, and you have to recognize and react to that reality,” Johnson told the newspaper. “I think that’s what the PGA (Tour) in the end was faced with.

“You may not like that reality. I hated to see what happened with the split, with the players at each other’s throats,” he said, referring to LIV Golf and the division in golf. “And I’m hoping to play a constructive role in helping bridge that gap, repair the breach.”

In a letter to Monahan last month soon after the framework deal was announced, Blumenthal said the decision to make a deal with the PIF after a year of opposition raises “serious questions regarding the reasons for and terms behind the announced agreement.’’

That agreement, however, is far from becoming final. Numerous details are still to be worked out and it could take weeks if not months.

Johnson told the Milwaukee newspaper that antitrust concerns are “a legitimate issue’’ but said he believe the courts would ultimately rule “in favor of sports competition.’’

“In general, they’ve looked past those technical violations and say it’s necessary for these sports leagues to cooperate, to collude, in order to maintain the type of competition that the public wants and I would say even demands,’’ Johnson said.