PGA Tour commissioner optimistic about PIF talks

CROMWELL, Conn. — PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan stated Wednesday that the issue in finalizing a take care of the Saudi backers of LIV Golf is not a cause for concern.

“With complexity comes alternative,” he stated earlier than the beginning of the Vacationers Championship on the TPC River Highlands. “There are a variety of various factors at play, however no one who’s having the dialog is unaware of the complexity. And everybody, I feel, is embracing the truth that there are obstacles and issues you have to overcome in a posh state of affairs.

“We’ve got the precise individuals across the desk for us,” Monahan stated, “and so they do as properly.”

It has been greater than a yr because the PGA Tour and the Public Funding Fund of Saudi Arabia — the monetary backer of the rival LIV circuit — introduced plans to kind a partnership that will assist deliver peace to a sport torn aside by the departures of dozens of prime gamers lured away by Saudi riches.

A framework for the deal was introduced June 6, 2023, with plans to finalize it by the tip of the yr.

The deadline handed with no settlement. Monahan stated a June 11 assembly in New York — attended by Tiger Woods and Adam Scott, with Rory McIlroy phoning in from the Memorial — was “very productive.” He declined to provide specifics.

Monahan stated he’s on the cellphone with the PIF a number of instances every week, together with nearly an hour earlier Wednesday morning. “My outlook for these discussions … continues to be very constructive,” he stated.

Talking from the final of the limited-field, no-cut signature occasions on the tour’s calendar this yr, Monahan declined to say what has been agreed to and what stays unsettled. The unique framework has modified vastly, he acknowledged.

“The framework settlement continues to be related. There are elements of it that actually proceed to be in play. However we have all stepped again, and we began anew,” he stated, itemizing new committees and different alternatives for the gamers to take part in and revenue from a future tour. “The overwhelming majority of what we’re speaking about, we’re constructing from the bottom up.”

One of many complexities the deal faces is a attainable objection from the Justice Division on antitrust grounds. The rival excursions would want to point out that the deal enhances competitors — by bringing all the very best golfers to the identical event, for instance — as a substitute of squelching competitors by giving golf followers, sponsors and gamers fewer choices.

The edges already bowed to at least one suggestion from the Justice Division final summer season, eliminating an anti-poaching clause within the framework settlement.

In the meantime, gamers proceed to defect to LIV — together with final yr’s Masters champion, Jon Rahm.

Solely seven gamers have been concerned within the talks. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler stated he did not know sufficient concerning the negotiations to fret about what is going to occur.

“I have not actually heard an excessive amount of, so I do not know if they are going nice or if they are going poorly, so your guess is pretty much as good as mine, I feel, at this level,” he stated. “Undoubtedly no frustration or something like that for me. It is out of my management, so I am not too fearful about it.

“They have a variety of huge enterprise choices to make,” stated Scheffler, who’s a member of the Participant Advisory Council. “However so far as enter within the negotiations, I do not actually have a lot to say in any respect.”