With this week’s news that Rory McIlroy could potentially rejoin the PGA Tour’s Policy Board — the same one he left just months ago — it’s worth asking the question: What on earth is going on in men’s professional golf?
To be fair, we ask that question every few days, so let’s get more specific: Where do we stand with a potential deal between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund (the source of LIV Golf’s funding), that deal that was promised nearly 11 months ago? And how hard is each side actually trying to get it done?
I won’t pretend to have a simple answer. But I do have other people’s also-not-so-simple answers. Important people. So let’s check in with golf’s power brokers themselves. What have they said recently about golf’s future? What would they like to happen? And how can we connect the dots?
RORY MCILROY: ‘I think I can be helpful’
Relevant because: Rory McIlroy has been front and center in this entire saga. When the PGA Tour-LIV split began he was the face of the PGA Tour. More recently he’s shifted that position and even become a leading voice for unification. There was even a pervasive post-Masters week rumor that he would actually be signing with LIV — a rumor he swiftly shut down. But it’s more than a rumor that he may end up back on the Tour’s Policy Board, where very important people decide very important things. So, yeah. McIlroy’s central to this entire thing.
What he’s been saying: Last week McIlroy declared that he would play the PGA Tour “for the rest of my career.” That was a pretty clear stance. And then on Wednesday McIlroy (and his partner Shane Lowry) met with the media ahead of the Zurich Classic, where he addressed reports about his Policy Board return.
McIlroy said that while Webb Simpson had approached him about taking over his seat, nothing is certain as of yet. He’d have to be voted in by the existing board members.
“It’s not quite up to me to just come back on the board. There’s a process that has to be followed,” he said. “But I’m willing to do it if that’s what people want, I guess.”
He added that his motivation for wanting to come back stems from the two sides’ seeming stalemate. “I think I can be helpful. I don’t think there’s been much progress made in the last eight months, and I was hopeful that there would be. I think I could be helpful to the process,” he said. “I care a lot, and I have some pretty good experience and good connections within the game and sort of around the wider sort of ecosystem and everything that’s going on.”
That last bit — the bit about connections around the ecosystem — is particularly interesting and can be read several different ways. McIlroy is a relatively unique figure in terms of his relationships to corners of the game. He’s a European player and longtime PGA Tour/DP World Tour dual member, connecting him to an international audience. He’s been on the PGA Tour’s Policy Board. He has friends and Ryder Cup teammates who have gone to LIV. He’s friends and business partners with the Fenway Sports Group, who are central to the Strategic Sports Group (SSG) that recently made a massive investment in the PGA Tour. And he has a relationship with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the PIF as well as the chairman of LIV. McIlroy knows the players at the table.
That doesn’t mean he wants complete control. McIlroy said that, as golfers, he and his fellow board members don’t need to be trying to run a $15 billion business. “We need to go out there and play golf and let the business people do the business things,” he said. But he does hope he can convince his peers that unification is the correct path forward.
“Compromise but also try to articulate your points as well as you can and try to help people see the benefits of what unification could do for the game and what it could do for this tour in particular,” he said, when asked for his message to board members with whom he may not see eye-to-eye. “We obviously realize the game is not unified right now for a reason, and there’s still some hard feelings and things that need to be addressed, but I think at this point for the good of the game, we all need to put those feelings aside and all move forward together.”
Just to clarify, again: He’s pro-unification?
“Absolutely, yeah. I think it’s the only way forward for the game of golf.”
THE PGA TOUR POLICY BOARD: ‘There is space between his [vision] and ours’
Relevant because: They’re the board! This is where the magic happens.
What they’ve been saying: Patrick Cantlay has been busy behind the scenes but hasn’t said much publicly; his last substantive comments came at the Players Championship, where he said he was excited about the possibilities of the PGA Tour’s new structure and he was open to talks with the PIF but doesn’t feel it’s essential for the Tour’s continued success.
“If it weren’t to happen, we would go on in a similar paradigm to how we’re going on right now,” Cantlay told Golfweek. “I think there’s pros and cons.”
Jordan Spieth has spoken about the potential deal at various points but one particularly interesting stretch came at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, where he said that the SSG’s investment meant the Tour was stable with or without the PIF.
“I don’t think that it’s needed,” Spieth said at the time, asked about a PIF investment. “I think the positive would be a unification, but I think that, like I mentioned before, I just think it’s something that is almost not even worth talking about right this second given how timely everything would be to try to get it figured out.”
Those comments led to a lengthy phone call between Spieth and McIlroy in which Spieth expressed concern that McIlroy had become withdrawn from Tour discussions while McIlroy expressed worry that Spieth’s comments were overly dismissive of the PIF’s involvement in golf. Their respective viewpoints echoed similar mixed feelings across the Tour.
At the Players Championship in March, Adam Scott expressed a desire in a Sports Illustrated interview to meet with the PIF to review a potential working relationship the same way they’d met with other investors.
“I think it is important that we’ve all met and no matter what anyone’s feelings are, I think when you’re voting on these things, you can’t be completely blind and need to have all the knowledge and input possible to make the best decisions,” Scott said. “So, I think we’re going to follow a similar process to how it went with SSG from this point on, although it hasn’t been like that so far, but from now on, I think that’s kind of how it’s been explained to me.”
That meeting happened days later, and Webb Simpson was the first to spill details from the board’s trip to the Bahamas in March, where the group met with Al-Rumayyan.
“It definitely seems like he envisions a place in the game of golf,” he told SI of Al-Rumayyan. “We didn’t get as far as what he wants and what does LIV want.”
So what did they discuss, if not that?
“I do think it’s a while until we get there,” Simpson said of a deal. “I didn’t walk away with a much clearer understanding of what the future holds. But I definitely walked away thinking I’m glad we did that. Glad we met him.”
So, yeah. Still not a ton of substance.
Rounding out the group is Peter Malnati, who said post-meeting that while Al-Rumayyan is clearly not “a regular guy” it was still reassuring to talk to him on a human level.
“I still certainly think a path forward for professional golf makes more sense with him on our side than him as an antagonist. But there’s a lot of work to do to … seeing the same vision for the future of professional golf. There is space between his and ours,” he said.
And that leaves just one board member…
TIGER WOODS: ‘A very positive meeting’
Relevant because: He’s on the board. And he’s Tiger Woods.
What he’s been saying: Not much, really. But he addressed the meeting in his final Masters media availability:
“I don’t know if we’re closer [to a deal], but certainly we’re headed in the right direction,” he said. “That was a very positive meeting, and I think both sides came away from the meeting feeling positive.”
Lots of positive vibes. Not as many concrete plans.
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: ‘Look at the guys that left’
Relevant because: He’s the World No. 1 by a historic margin. He’s won four of five tournaments. He’s the Masters champ. Etc.
What he’s been saying: Considering how often he’s been interviewed recently Scheffler hasn’t actually talked all that much about LIV. But he was notably forthright and outspoken at the Players Championship; when asked whether pro golf needs to come together he was candid about where he thinks the blame should fall.
“If the fans are upset, then look at the guys that left,” Scheffler said. “We had a tour, we were all together and the people that left are no longer here. At the end of the day, that’s where the splintering comes from.”
I heard from several Tour players afterwards who said how grateful they were that Scheffler had spoken up the way he did. He’s reserved enough that his words carry weight, and LIV’s entire origin story is as a disruptive force. Does it even make sense to be talking about merging the two right now?
“As far as our tour goes, like I said, we’re doing our best to create the best product for the fans, and that’s really where we’re at,” Scheffler added.
GREG NORMAN
Relevant because: He’s LIV’s CEO and commissioner.
What he’s been saying: Norman met with the media ahead of this week’s LIV event in Australia, where he made it clear that he sees his role — and even his tour — as only tangentially related to the talks.
“I would love to give you insight, but I don’t have any. We at LIV are totally separate from that part of the negotiation,” Norman said. “We at LIV are a standalone company being invested in by the same investor [PIF] interested in the game of golf. Our investor wanted to invest in LIV because he loved the opportunity of the franchise model, what he could do with it, and how we could build it out on a global platform.”
LIV, he said, is pressing forward.
“I don’t know what’s going on over there,” Norman added. “I really don’t want to know what’s going on over there because we are so fixated on growing and developing and building out what LIV is today and looking and doing our schedule for 2025 and going into 2026. Our responsibility is to look after our people, our players, and where we want to go.”
That’s not to say Norman rejected the idea of his league changing. He said he’d welcome the opportunity to sit down with McIlroy, for instance. And he said the league would be “open-minded” about changing its format to 72 holes instead of 54. But he made it clear that facilitating a merger is outside his purview.
JON RAHM: ‘We all want to see this resolved’
Relevant because: He’s the most recent and arguably most talented defector to LIV.
What he’s been saying: Rahm’s position here is tough to clearly define. He left the PGA Tour but speaks frequently about specific PGA Tour events he’d still like to play. He’d been critical of LIV’s 54-hole format but now seems okay with it. He’s been open in admitting that his decision to join LIV had plenty to do with the dollar values involved. But does he really want the league he’s joining to just merge with the one he just left?
“We all want to see this resolved,” he said. So, to answer that previous question, yeah. I guess so. “Like I’ve said many times, we have the opportunity to take golf to the next level in the global markets, and I think if done properly we can come up with a better product for anybody, and putting golf as a bigger product in general as a worldwide sport.”
JAY MONAHAN: ‘Not conducting negotiations in public’
Relevant because: He’s the commissioner of the PGA Tour.
What he’s been saying: We haven’t heard much from Monahan since the Players Championship and we didn’t hear a ton from him there, either — only that talks are “accelerating” and the two sides are “engaged” but that it’s “not in the best interest” of all parties involved to conduct negotiations in the public sphere. Fair enough.
Monahan’s latest update to PGA Tour players came after the Bahamas meeting, when he sent a memo confirming that the meeting was “constructive and represents an important part of our due diligence process in selecting potential investors for PGA Tour Enterprises.”
“This mirrors the approach we employed earlier this year as we evaluated an investment offer from the Strategic Sports Group,” Monahan added. “During the session, Yasir had a chance to introduce himself to our player directors and talk through his vision, priorities and motivations for investing in professional golf.
“As we continue these discussions with the PIF, we will keep you updated as much as possible, but please understand that we need to maintain our position of not conducting negotiations in public. To that end, we will provide no further comments to the media at this time.”
And he hasn’t.
YASIR AL-RUMAYYAN: ‘Golf is only beginning to fulfill its potential’
Relevant because: He’s the Chairman of LIV Golf and the governor of the PIF.
What he’s been saying: Not much. In fact, I don’t think we’ve seen or heard Al-Rumayyan quoted since the week of LIV’s first event of 2024, when he penned a memo to players in the wake of PGA Tour Enterprises’ formation. He expressed that he was unbothered by the development in the following letter:
Yesterday’s announcement of the formation of PGA Tour Enterprises is consistent with PIF’s longstanding passion to grow the game. PIF continues to discuss and evaluate the possibility of a future investment that benefits the greater game of golf.
PIF remains committed to investing in and supporting LIV and the team golf format that has brought new energy and so many new fans to the game around the world.
The game of golf is only beginning to fulfill its potential. This is the vision we had when LIV was created, and today that is more alive than ever. LIV has transformed the sport, and we will continue to grow the game globally, expand its fanbase, elevate its platform, and maintain incredible momentum.
LIV has a great season ahead. Good luck at Mayakoba. I will see you all on the range soon.
Yasir
LIV Golf Chairman
STRATEGIC SPORTS GROUP (SSG)
Relevant because: They’ve just made a 10-figure investment in the future of the PGA Tour.
What they’ve been saying: Basically nothing. We haven’t heard much at all from the big names involved in the SSG, and I’m guessing they like it that way. It’s not a bad idea to approach investing the same way you’d approach golf, after all: Speak softly and carry a big stick.
