Finally, the LIV-PGA Tour deal seems on the verge of — something

Look, don’t hold your breath. Don’t cancel your plans. But something is happening, finally, between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf.

“Well, it’s hard for me to say that I didn’t underestimate how long it would take given that we’re here in February of 2025,” PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said during a meeting with a group of reporters ahead of the Genesis Invitational on Wednesday. That was an understatement. There are non-perishable foods that have gone bad since the infamous framework agreement was signed by both sides of golf’s great war in June 2023. But on Wednesday, Monahan, who has mostly offered non-updates the last several times we’ve heard from him, made his most confident declaration yet about the future of men’s professional golf. And it centered around one word: Reunification.

The catalyst for Monahan’s comments seemed to be a meeting that he and Adam Scott had with President Trump last week, a meeting brokered by Tiger Woods that Monahan called a “productive visit” in a statement before elaborating on Wednesday.

“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,” Monahan said. “What [that] means is the reunification of the game, which is what we have been and are focused on.”

The president sits at the center of a startling number of concentric circles relating to the LIV-PGA Tour divide. His courses host several LIV events and for years he was the host of a PGA Tour event. He lives in Palm Beach County, golf’s unofficial world capital. LIV stars like Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson attended his Election Night festivities, while he’s played golf with a parade of pros in the weeks before and since, including Rory McIlroy in January and Woods last week. Trump has also had business dealings with Saudi Arabia dating back to well before his first term as president and well before the invention of LIV. Golf is never far from the top of his mind.

How could that positioning help advance a deal?

“Number one, you look at his passion for the game, his knowledge and understanding of the game, he’s very familiar with the PGA Tour, he’s very familiar with the team at the Public Investment Fund. Like us, he has a very clear picture of what should happen and he wants to help,” Monahan said. “I think the meeting ultimately gets us one step closer to a deal being done,” he added, “but there’s a lot more work to do.”

Okay, so there was still a healthy dose of caution.

“I don’t think you’re ever close until you’re finalized,” Monahan said. Still — “when you look at all the parties involved, there’s a general enthusiasm for getting this done.”

Monahan doubled and tripled down on this idea that reunification is what he wants and where golf is headed.

“If you think about what the fans want, the fans want reunification,” Monahan said. “That’s what we’re focused on. We’ve operated in a world where there’s more than one [tour] and the PGA Tour has performed very well, but in the long run is that the best thing for fans? Is that the best thing for the game? We’re trying to solve it so everybody benefits.”

The Tour and its top ambassadors are following the same playbook as leaders from other industries who have cozied up to Trump in the weeks and months since his election. Even in their initial statement, Monahan, Scott and Woods went out of their way to thank the president for his leadership, and Monahan mentioned Wednesday that he could “certainly see a day” when the Tour would return to Trump venues after a half-decade away. And he added that he “suspects” there will be further meetings with the president on the same subject.

Monahan said he does have a clear vision for the future of the game, though he punted on its reveal to a “future date.” But he was keen to point out that the Tour has adopted significant changes in the last several years; more change is clearly part of the plan.

“Listen, we’ve introduced TGL this year. We have gone from a 44-45-week schedule to a 34-week core FedExCup schedule. We are in partnership with the DP World Tour, an alliance that’s very important to us, where we’re investing time, we’re investing capital and continuing to make the DP World Tour stronger,” he said. “There’s some unbelievable events on that schedule. We feel like the Race to Dubai is part of our schedule, part of our ecosystem. So I think everyone should continue to expect us to improve, which means that you’re likely going to be making changes.”

What’s clear is that in Monahan’s version of events, the initial piece of the PIF-PGA Tour deal — an investment from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund in the for-profit PGA Tour Enterprises — would pave the way for a game-changing second piece of the deal, in which LIV and the PGA Tour merge into a single entity. Monahan added that he has spent “a lot of time” with PIF governor (and LIV chairman) Yasir Al-Rumayyan, implying that he was on board with whatever vision Monahan has in mind.

“I think I met with him probably close to a dozen times last year, gotten to know the man very well and I do think we see things the same way,” he said. “But I certainly don’t want to speak for him.”

Finally Monahan was asked about LIV’s new CEO, Scott O’Neil, who has taken a more conciliatory tone early in his tenure and has highlighted his previous relationship with Monahan.

“I’d say a lot of the people that I have a lot of respect for that are in this industry think very highly of Scott,” Monahan said. “I’ve gotten to know him through the years. He reached out to me the first day that he took on his role and I think if you just look at his success in the past, I think he’s nothing but additive and is going to be an important part of this as we go forward.”

Rory McIlroy spoke to the media an hour before Monahan; while he had a pointed question for the commissioner — “what are we going to do with the one and a half billion [raised last year]?” — he painted a clearer picture for the pro game’s future.

“Whatever’s happened has happened and it’s been unfortunate, but reunification, how we all come back together and move forward, that’s the best thing for everyone,” he said. Would that be complex, reintegrating banned players into the PGA Tour? “From my viewpoint, no, I don’t think it’s complicated at all.”

The biggest question with the least clear answer is what would happen to LIV in this reunified world. “Do they take up a smaller part of the schedule, maybe … are there certain markets where we try to cherry-pick the best ones that make sense and try to do something with them? Yeah, I honestly, I don’t know,” McIlroy said. “As I keep saying, that’s above my pay grade these days.”

There are still more questions than answers. Again, for your own safety: don’t hold your breath. But something is happening — even if we don’t know exactly what.

“These things take time,” Monahan said. “Unfortunately, I keep repeating that.”