Trump and Jay Monahan meet at White House as PGA Tour deal with Saudis gets closer
PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said he met with President Donald Trump at the White House this week as the tour moves closer to finalizing a long-sought investment deal with the Saudi Arabian backers of rival LIV Golf.
Monahan said Thursday in a statement he and Adam Scott, one of the player directors on the PGA Tour board, met with Trump and asked him to get involved in the negotiations “for the good of the game, the good of the country, and for all the countries involved.”
“We are grateful that his leadership has brought us closer to a final deal, paving the way for reunification of men’s professional golf,” Monahan said.
The statement was signed by Monahan, Scott and Tiger Woods, who is vice chairman of the commercial PGA Tour Enterprises and the only one of six player directors who has a term without limits. Woods, heavily involved in negotiations, was not at the meeting Tuesday. That was the day his mother, Kultida, died in Florida.
A flight tracker on social media noted Woods' plane arrived in Washington on Monday evening and left for Florida shortly after midnight.
The PGA Tour and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia first agreed to a deal in June 2023, which ended the antitrust lawsuits between them. But that framework agreement drew the attention of the Justice Department, and the year ended without a deal in place.
The tour and PIF have been meeting for nearly a year. Trump, just 10 days after he was elected, invited Monahan to play golf at Trump International in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Nov. 15.
Trump said on the “Let's Go!” podcast on the eve of the election that “it would take me the better part of 15 minutes to get that deal done.”
“I’m really going to work on other things, to be honest with you,” Trump said on the podcast. “I think we have much bigger problems than that. But I do think we should have one tour and they should have the best players in that tour.”
The tour has been keeping the Justice Department informed of its negotiations for the last several months as it makes progress on an investment deal with PIF.
After the deadline for the original framework agreement with PIF expired at the end of 2023, the tour signed with Strategic Sports Group, a consortium of North American sports owners spearheaded by Fenway Sports Group, for a $1.5 billion investment in PGA Tour Enterprises with the potential for that to double.
PGA Tour Enterprises is separate from the tax-exempt PGA Tour that deals with competition.
The latest negotiations are for PIF to become a minority investor in the commercial arm. Still unclear is how that would patch up the fractured golf landscape.
LIV Golf began its fourth year on Thursday in Saudi Arabia, equipped with a network deal (Fox) and a new CEO (Scott O'Neil), and with several of its 12 four-man teams getting additional corporate sponsorship deals.
PIF and its governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, are the financial muscle behind LIV Golf. The breakaway spent some $2 billion to recruit top players, who then were suspended by the PGA Tour. That group included Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm. They have combined to win 17 majors, and three have been No. 1 in the world.
They only time all the world's best compete together now are the four majors. The USGA this week was the first of the majors to publish a qualifying category for a LIV golfer not already eligible for the U.S. Open.
Rory McIlroy, who serves on a transaction subcommittee for tour negotiations, said last week at Pebble Beach he felt a new administration was “going to be a bit more deal friendly.”
“I think from an investment standpoint, that deal should and will be done,” McIlroy said. “But it doesn’t solve the problem of what the landscape of golf looks like going forward. I’d say the biggest impediment is maybe the differing visions of what golf should look like in the future.”
Trump's involvement in golf goes back more than two decades when he began building a portfolio of high-end golf courses, and buying the renowned Turnberry Golf Club in Scotland.
He also bought Doral Resort outside Miami, a venerable PGA Tour stop that had hosted a World Golf Championship until moving it in 2016 to Mexico City when it became difficult to find a title sponsor with Trump and his ubiquitous presence.
Three of Trump's courses have hosted LIV events, including one this year at Doral.
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