Politics, About-Faces and a Lot of Money: How PGA Tour, LIV Shocked the Sports World

In case you missed it (how could you have missed it?!), we recap one of the wildest weeks in golf history and weigh in on the questions and complications that still remain after the shocking "agreement" between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf.

There is no overstating the shock of seeing Jay Monahan and Yasir Al-Rumayyan sitting side by side, both smiling, conducting a television interview with CNBC. It had to be a dream, a mirage. No way were these two guys in the same room, in the same city, in the same … anywhere.

Monahan, the commissioner of the PGA Tour, had fought with a vengeance for more than a year against the very enterprise Al-Rumayyan had helped formulate and bankroll.

As governor of the Public Investment Fund, Al-Rumayyan launched the LIV Golf league with the banking of Saudi Arabia’s $650 billion sovereign wealth fund and helped lure some of the sport’s top names away from the PGA Tour.

Monahan’s hard-line approach included fining and suspending players who participated in LIV events, keeping non–PGA Tour members who played in LIV events from competing on the PGA Tour and talking about the Tour’s legacy and history as reasons to forego millions in upfront payments to stick with the PGA Tour.

LIV Golf sued the Tour, claiming antitrust violations. The Tour countersued.

And along the way, Monahan criticized the PIF and claimed the Saudi money was dirty. He invoked the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and alleged Saudi involvement. He noted the human rights issues for which Saudi Arabia is notorious.

“I would ask any player who left [for LIV], or any player that would ever consider leaving—have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?’’ Monahan said in a CBS television interview a year ago this week.

Then, on Tuesday morning, he was making nice with Al-Rumayyan, the supposed enemy. They were discussing the shocking news that they had come to the “framework of an agreement’’ that would end contentious litigation between the two sides and see the PGA Tour, PIF and DP World Tour partner together, seemingly with Saudi riches flowing to this side of the Atlantic and the golf world overall.

As part of this new arrangement, LIV Golf will quite possibly be diminished or at least folded into a new for-profit LLC that has yet to be named, with Al-Rumayyan as chairman and Monahan as CEO. The PGA Tour and its nonprofit arm will proceed as it has been since becoming its own entity in 1968, but Al-Rumayyan will also become a member of the PGA Tour’s Policy Board—having a say in what occurs along with the five player directors and four other nonplaying board members.

Wait, what?

In interviews Sports Illustrated conducted with numerous players, agents, officials and executives, it is clear that only a select few knew what was happening. Monahan admitted that it was a tight circle of confidentiality. Not even the top players in the game, such as Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, were briefed. Same for the top people at LIV Golf, including commissioner Greg Norman and all the players.

Monahan and Al-Rumayyan, together, on TV. Partners. Unreal.

It was just the beginning of the wildest week in golf.

McIlroy spent much of the past year being the face of the PGA Tour in terms of its fight against LIV Golf. He had spoken passionately about the PGA Tour, decried those who left and fractured friendships with former European Ryder Cup teammates, such as Sergio Garcia.

On Wednesday, he was trying to explain the unexplainable and put as good of a spin on it as he could. He was looking at the big picture, several years down the road. It might not look good now, he said, but the game would be better off in the long run. And yet, he admitted later that he felt like a “sacrificial lamb’’ in some ways because he had been fighting against the very thing he will now have to embrace.

Despite his stature as a PGA Tour Policy Board player member, McIlroy did not know anything was imminent. He learned of the deal from fellow policy board member Jimmy Dunne, a Monahan confidant, early Tuesday morning, just a few hours before the rest of the world endured its own sense of bewilderment.

“Took me through the news. Took me through the deal, structure of the deal. What it meant for us. What it meant for the DP World Tour,’’ McIlroy said of his conversation with Dunne. “So I learned about it pretty much at the same time everyone else did. And, yeah, it was a surprise. I knew there had been discussions going on in the background. I knew that lines of communication had been opened up. I obviously didn’t expect it to happen as quickly as it did.

“But I really think that from what I gather, the Tour felt they were in a real position of strength coming off of the back of the DP World Tour winning their legal case in London. It sort of weakened the other side’s position.

“And they went in there, and the way Jimmy described it, ‘Rory, sometimes you got 280 over water, you just got to go for it.’ And that’s what they did. I think ultimately, when I try to remove myself from the situation and I look at the bigger picture and I look at 10 years down the line, I think ultimately this is going to be, it’s going to be good for the game of professional golf. I think it unifies and secures its financial future.’’

So far, it’s a tough sell.

Aside from McIlroy, most of the players who attended Tuesday’s meeting were at the very least confused. Some were angry. Grayson Murray, who does not have full Tour membership and has been playing mostly on the Korn Ferry Tour this year, criticized Monahan’s leadership. Others suggested they had lost confidence in the commissioner, who has been in the job since 2017.

“Well, today’s news is not surprising,’’ says PGA Tour player Dylan Frittelli. “It did come a whole earlier than I expected though. The ramifications of the announcement will surely run years into the future of the game. While it remains clear, the vast majority of the PGA Tour players have zero impact on the running of ‘their organization,’ sadly. I think nobody will get all the answers as to why this decision was made, especially at this time. It would be naive to think that it was only a proactive decision to benefit the game of golf.’’

Says Sahith Theegala, who is 22nd in the SIWGR: “Just craziness. I mean, I’m sure there’s a reason for it, but it’s not going to be a good enough reason for the utter lack of communication. I mean, how are top-10 players in the world finding out on Twitter? But I’m biting my tongue until there’s more stuff we hear. No way players are going to be O.K. with this.’’

Monahan said after the players meeting that he was willing to take the heat and understood if players believed he was a “hypocrite,’’ but that circumstances had changed—the emergence of the new designated events and their hefty purses, paired with the legal fight with LIV, put the Tour in a vulnerable financial spot.

“We have significantly invested in our business in 2023. We’re going to do so in ’24,’’ Monahan says. “[But] we’ve had to invest back in our business through our reserves. Between our reserves, the legal fees, our underpin and our commitment to the DP World Tour and their legal fees, it’s been significant.

“But this puts us in a position where we’ve got capital that we can deploy to the benefit of our members and through our tournaments, and it gives us capital to deploy in growth businesses that ultimately will generate a return that we’ll reinvest in our players.”

Monahan suggested some players, such as McIlroy and Woods, could be compensated for turning down the possibility of huge offers. (Woods, who was also a prominent voice in making changes to the Tour structure, was at one point reportedly offered more than $700 million to be part of the rival league with an equity stake.)

Monahan and McIlroy also said that those who left the PGA Tour for LIV would likely face some penalty before being able to come back.

“Those are all the serious conversations that we’re going to have,’’ Monahan says. “Ultimately, what you’re talking about is an equalization over time, and I think that’s a fair and reasonable concept.’’

And he also told the players in the meeting: “Those top 10 guys who are with the PGA Tour are going to make more money over their careers than the guys that left. I promise you that.’’

Interesting words, considering that a handful of players were paid in excess of $100 million just to sign with LIV, and the Tour now needs some of that cash that the PIF poured into LIV for similar riches to be available to PGA Tour players.

In a matter of weeks, the PGA Tour–LIV Golf agreement came together. Amazingly, it was Dunne who put it in motion.

Dunne has long been one of golf’s power brokers. He has been friends with many of the game’s best players. McIlroy’s dad, Gerry, plays golf with Dunne at the famous Seminole Golf Club in Florida, one of numerous Dunne memberships, including Augusta National and Pine Valley. It doesn’t hurt that he has a private jet that can get him there.

He is also the vice chairman and senior managing principal of Piper Sandler, an investment bank and financial services company that once had an office in the World Trade Center. He was not in either of the buildings on Sept. 11, 2001, because he was taking part in a U.S. Mid-Amateur qualifier, but 66 of his colleagues were killed in the terrorist attacks. Dunne had made it clear since the formation of LIV Golf that he was in no way in favor of the rival league.

All of which made for a surreal backdrop this past week.

Dunne, as it turns out, was a huge mover and shaker behind the scenes in what became a partnership between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and the Public Investment Fund—Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Dunne, with Monahan’s direction, was the first person to meet with Al-Rumayyan, after contacting him directly.

“They were able to have a discussion about how we work together to grow the game, how we work together to grow the PGA Tour and to really get an understanding and start building some trust as we pursued that,’’ Monahan said at a Tuesday news conference. “The first conversation, that I was not a part of, was the most important. When they said it was a positive conversation and that I should have a follow-up meeting, that’s when things started to develop.’’

Dunne made a clandestine trip to meet with Al-Rumayyan and later the chairman of the Policy Board, Ed Herlihy. Al-Rumayyan said he hit it off with Dunne, playing golf together and discussing their common goals that eventually led to the agreement.

“The way we’re doing our partnership, it’s going to be really big in many senses,” Al-Rumayyan said during the CNBC interview. “We will have both LIV and PGA Tour in addition to all of our assets, and we will be investing in the growth of the game of golf and we will be doing many things that will have a better engagement from the players, the fans, the broadcasters, the sponsors, everyone else and hopefully to even give a better access to more and more people to the game of golf the way we would love to make the game of golf very much accessible like any other sport, just like football, basketball, any others and that’s what we don’t have right now.’’

Given Saudi Arabia’s alleged involvement in 9/11 and the PGA Tour’s talking points over the past year concerning the country’s human rights issues, this alone was more than surprising. The fact that it turned into several meetings involving Monahan over the past seven weeks and led to a “framework of an agreement’’ that was announced Tuesday was simply shocking.

For the past year, Monahan understandably fought to keep the rival LIV tour from gaining traction and raiding his player roster, although Garcia, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Cam Smith, among others, joined the new league after signing for multimillion-dollar bonuses. He was also reminded Tuesday by furious players of Monahan’s previous critical comments around PIF funding and the Saudis’ human rights issues.

The new reality of the PGA Tour will see Al-Rumayyan, and the PIF’s millions, even more entrenched within its leadership:

• He will serve as chairman of a separate soon-to-be-created for-profit company with Monahan as CEO.

• Al-Rumayyan will have a spot on the PGA Tour Policy Board, and the PIF will be in position to pour millions (if not billions) into the PGA Tour and DP World. The PGA Tour as we know it would remain as a 501(c)(6) nonprofit membership group with Monahan as commissioner and the same schedule outline.

• In theory, the board of the new entity would be controlled by the PGA Tour and would be the arm that runs a separate series of events that may or may not include a form of what we know as LIV today. The possibilities are endless: team events, some incorporation (or none at all) of the LIV 54-hole model or even LIV still operating as a completely separate endeavor altogether. The PGA Tour and LIV have offered up different views on this, but for now, no one knows what exactly will happen in 2024 and beyond.

• The PIF will be the exclusive investor in the for-profit PGA Tour venture and have the right to increase its interest while pumping money into the PGA Tour itself. How that will play out for the players is still to be determined. But there’s no way Monahan and his allies on the Policy Board would have done this without consideration for the players who need to buy into it. They can sell the idea that the players would have been hurt by a continued legal fight with LIV—i.e., a money drain—while struggling to keep sponsors happy and continue to increase purses.

While there has been an abundance of feel-good talk, it didn’t do much to explain how all of this will work going forward. There will possibly be some power struggles, as the makeup of the board of the new for-profit entity doesn’t make clear who is in charge. Is Al-Rumayyan chairman? Monahan CEO? Does the PIF money do all the talking? And what influence will Al-Rumayyan have on the nonprofit PGA Tour side?

Getting all the goals of the various entities to line up will be awkward, especially now that this would be a world-wide endeavor.

A few items to digest:

• Greg Norman, who 30 years ago tried and failed to start a rival golf league and was brought in by the PIF to head up the efforts again, was not part of the negotiations and apparently unaware they were taking place. A source says that Norman has mostly been in the background this year and wasn’t involved in major LIV decisions. There have been rumblings he will no longer be with LIV Golf. 
  
  He briefly emerged Wednesday on a conference call with more than 100 LIV Golf employees. Whether it was a ploy to keep the peace in the short term or an accurate portrayal of the situation, Norman was giving them a first official update. One LIV official said the hope was it would have been anyone but Norman giving that message, but the Great White Shark delivered a strong, positive message, which suggested business as usual.
  
“The spigot is now wide open for commercial sponsorships, blue-chip companies, TV networks,’’ Norman said, according to a person on the call who wished not to be identified. “LIV is and will continue to be a stand-alone enterprise. Our business model will not change. We changed history and we’re not going anywhere.’’

• Both Monahan and McIlroy suggested that LIV Golf would not be back in its current form in 2024, although they would take a look at the team concept. How any of this is incorporated into the to-be-named for-profit entity will be one of the biggest aspects to emerge in the coming weeks and months.

But as another LIV official said: “Yassir loves LIV. It’s his baby. He’s been involved in the many details from the beginning. It’s hard to see him walking away from it.’’

As of Thursday night, LIV players had received no official word from anyone with the Public Investment Fund or LIV Golf executives.