Professional golf teetered on a historic reconciliation. PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and Tiger Woods conveyed unmistakable optimism at Torrey Pines in mid-February, generating conviction throughout the golf world that the subsequent week’s summit – bringing together Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and US President Donald Trump at the White House – would deliver the long-awaited formal announcement.
Yet two weeks after that high-stakes meeting, with the sport poised to converge on PGA Tour headquarters for the tour’s flagship event, any semblance of an agreement appears to have evaporated.
“It doesn’t feel any closer,” Rory McIlroy said Wednesday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
What derailed these seemingly promising negotiations, and what machinations continue behind closed doors?
“Ego, misunderstanding, selfishness,” says one tour source familiar with the negotiations. “It’s a stupid game of chicken.”
Pervasive uncertainty has become the defining characteristic of golf’s cold war, now dragging into its fourth gruelling season. Throughout this conflict, only two realities have remained constant – the game’s principal figures prioritising personal interests over the sport’s collective welfare, and the absolute dearth of verifiable information available to anyone.
Yet what renders the current situation particularly bewildering is the dramatic reversal: after all signs pointed to a finalised agreement, both factions have retreated to their respective corners, meticulously crafting their next strategic manoeuvres while simultaneously attempting to decode their adversary’s intentions.
This remains undeniable: negotiations have hit a significant impasse. Monahan’s public silence since the Framework Agreement of June 6, 2023, made his forthright and assured media address last month at Torrey Pines particularly striking – his confidence about reunifying professional golf under a single tour seemed to signal breakthrough developments. Woods – renowned for his strategic reticence – reinforced this narrative during CBS’ Genesis Invitational broadcast, declaring a deal’s imminent conclusion.
The transformation between these pronouncements, the White House meeting, and the present standstill centres on the PGA Tour’s dramatically evolved position regarding LIV Golf’s future role, if any.
President Donald Trump is joined by Tiger Woods in the East Room of the White House on February 20, 2025. [Win McNamee]
Prior to the 2024 presidential election, consensus held that LIV would endure in a post-agreement landscape – albeit reconfigured from its current iteration, with team elements preserved. This structure was deemed necessary to satisfy antitrust regulations, as a legitimate competitor to the PGA Tour needed to exist. However, Trump’s electoral victory over Kamala Harris fundamentally altered this thinking, with tour leadership now operating under the presumption that Trump’s Department of Justice would expedite approval for any arrangement – effectively questioning LIV’s very necessity. Meanwhile, PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan views LIV Golf not merely as a business venture but as his brainchild and enduring legacy. What others dismiss as straightforward commercial negotiations represents, for him, a deeply personal endeavour.
Which precipitates an extraordinary paradox. Trump has emerged as golf’s powerbroker, wielding influence over the sport’s fractured landscape. Yet herein lies the irony that has paralysed negotiations – each faction convinced that Trump is manoeuvring exclusively to advance their agenda, creating a diplomatic stalemate where mutual misinterpretation of presidential allegiance has become an obstacle to resolution.
Prior to LIV Golf’s emergence, Trump had cultivated extensive Saudi connections. During his first administration as president, Trump fostered an intimate relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – a partnership whose resilience transcended his presidency, most notably evidenced when Trump’s son-in-law and former senior advisor, Jared Kushner, secured a $US2 billion investment from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund for his fledgling equity firm. When LIV launched in 2022, it materialised against a backdrop of golf’s establishment systematically excommunicating Trump: the PGA Tour had abandoned its Miami tournament at Trump Doral, the PGA of America dramatically withdrew its PGA Championship from Trump Bedminster following the January 6 insurrection, and the R&A had repeatedly, emphatically declared it would never restore Trump Turnberry to the Open Championship rotation while attention remained fixated on its proprietor.
By strategically aligning with Trump, the Saudis delivered a dual victory – orchestrating lucrative tournaments at his properties and bestowing him the professional golf legitimacy he coveted. Given this calculated investment in both Trump’s business empire and personal prestige, it’s entirely logical that the Saudis anticipate reciprocity.
PGA Tour insiders, conversely, remain convinced Trump harbours genuine disdain for LIV Golf – a sentiment McIlroy vocalised last month. As a lifelong golf fan, Trump recognises the PGA Tour as the sport’s standard-bearer and covets continued association with the league. Unsurprisingly, whispers have intensified suggesting that, upon consummation of any agreement, Trump would campaign for Doral’s reinstatement to the tour’s rotation.
Sources familiar with the tour’s calculus further reveal that Trump’s ambitions extend beyond regular tour events – he remains fixated on securing a major championship at one of his properties, a dream whose feasibility hinges entirely on garnering support from America’s golf establishment. This reality gives the PGA Tour significant leverage in the ongoing power struggle, as they hold the keys to Trump’s golf aspirations.
[Warren Little]
As two high-level sources with direct knowledge of the negotiations disclosed to Golf Digest, the tour delegation arrived in Washington DC last month confident – convinced that Trump’s tacit endorsement had tilted the balance of power in their favour. However, the White House meeting’s aftermath left Al-Rumayyan bewildered and incensed, reportedly characterising the tour’s proposals as not merely inadequate but disrespectful. This misalignment has crystallised into hardened perceptions, with each faction now harbouring the following assessments of their counterparts:
– PIF is aware that the Strategic Sports Group forged its landmark partnership with the PGA Tour predicated on Saudi PIF’s eventual integration. SSG’s consortium of billionaire investors covets the opportunity to redirect Saudi PIF’s vast financial resources toward their own expansive portfolio of ventures – a complex financial choreography dramatically simplified once an American institution of the tour’s stature establishes a legitimate conduit into the kingdom’s seemingly bottomless treasury. While tour leadership might entertain the prospect of abandoning negotiations, their new financial overseers categorically reject this possibility. PIF, meanwhile, operates from a position of global leverage, functioning less as a conventional investment entity and more as a sovereign financial juggernaut accustomed to dictating rather than compromising.
– The PGA Tour figures LIV has already fulfilled its fundamental purpose as Saudi Arabia’s sportwashing and soft-power exercise: It delivered the kingdom unprecedented direct access to the White House’s inner sanctum. From this perspective, the alleged $5 billion squandered on a golf league commanding negligible viewership represents not a financial misstep but a masterful geopolitical investment yielding incalculable diplomatic dividends. With this direct channel now established, what compelling incentive exists for PIF – currently operating under stringent new cost-cutting mandates – to continue haemorrhaging capital on an entertainment venture demonstrably failing by every conventional metric – at least in the eyes of rusted-on PGA Tour fans?
The tour, meanwhile, exudes unmistakable swagger. Television ratings have surged while LIV’s domestic viewership continues to struggle. Jon Rahm stands as the solitary elite talent to defect since LIV’s inaugural season. In fact, beyond Rahm (coveted for competitive integrity), Bryson DeChambeau (valued for commercial magnetism) and Brooks Koepka (desired from the perspective that “having this major championship juggernaut competing elsewhere constitutes a liability”), virtually no substantive appetite exists to reintegrate other LIV members. Although, should the tour pivot towards a more globally-oriented schedule, Cam Smith and Joaquín Niemann would ascend that priority list to some degree, according to multiple high-level sources. The question now confronting tour leadership: If they could successfully extract just one marquee name from the Rahm/DeChambeau/Koepka triumvirate … might the moment have arrived to call LIV’s existential bluff?
One certainty emerges from this impasse: Trump’s bombastic proclamation that he could orchestrate reconciliation within 15 minutes has proven spectacularly disconnected from the complex reality of professional golf’s deeply entrenched power struggle.
[This article was originally published on golfdigest.com]
