LIV Golf, minus Greg Norman, the big winner in merger with PGA Tour | D'Angelo

The news that the PGA Tour and LIV Golf suddenly found common ground, put aside their vast differences and now will be breaking bread at the same dinner table was sudden and shocking.

Jay Monahan and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of Saudi’s Public Investment Fund, sitting side-by-side Tuesday on a CNBC set all smiles while announcing a unification between two entities that spent the last year hurling insults and taking each other to court, was stunning.But in the end, this is a win for the game of golf (not to mention all those lawyers who made a lot of money off both groups) and especially LIV Golf, which first forced the PGA Tour to pump millions into its purses and now forced something they have sought all along.

Validation.This is the AFL having the last laugh over the NFL.

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But the Tour is not coming out of this without a windfall. Al-Rumayyan and Monahan said the PIF was committing billions to the new venture.

The cloud hanging over golf for the last year was not sustainable. The bickering, name calling and litigation was dragging the Gentleman's Game through the mud. And it was coming from both sides - executives Monahan and LIV commissioner and CEO Greg Norman (more on him later), and iconic players such as Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy, among others.

No insult was out of bounds.

"We've recognized that together we can have a greater impact on this game than we can working apart," Monahan said.

"The game of golf is better for what we've done here today."

This is the last place Monahan wanted, or expected, to be a year ago. LIV Golf was not taken seriously by the PGA Tour. Everything about it was mocked; its 54-hole, no-cut format; its music; its over-the-top celebrations; its players wearing shorts. Heck, even its players, many of whom insisted they were joining the league financed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund to grow the game, or to spend more time with their loved ones.

But this was nothing more than a money grab for everyone, from Mickelson and Dustin Johnson to Sergio Garcia and Ian Poulter.

Still, it would not go away, especially not when being funded by a bottomless money pit like the Kingdom's sovereign wealth fund.

For the PGA Tour, it was like trying to kill a gnat with a 9-iron.

So now we have this:

"We've recognized that together we can have a greater impact on this game than we can working apart," Monahan said on CNBC.

"The game of golf is better for what we've done here today."

What does the future of professional golf look like?

He is right. But what will it look like moving forward?

So many questions that certainly will be answered sooner than later considering Monahan and Al-Rumayyan have been bonding over this for about seven weeks (including a round of golf in London). Plus, the Tour is facing a deadline to reveal its 2024 schedule.

Now we all wonder:

Will LIV continue with its events with its players under contract playing in a handful of PGA Tour events? Would there then be some crossover events? Speaking of those players, how will they be received by their peers on the Tour? Will the Tour implement some kind of penalty for those who defected? Will the PGA Tour incorporate more team golf into its schedule?

Oh, and what will happen to Norman? The face of LIV Golf was left in the dark during the entire process, as irrelevant to the conversations as a hickory shaft driver is to today's game.

Norman was told about the deal by Al-Rumayyan just minutes before he and Monahan went before the CNBC cameras.

It's one thing when the Masters doesn't want you. But when your own tour shuns you, that's not a good look.

Tuesday, we received the one big answer about the future of LIV Golf and the PGA Tour.

Now, we await the answers to many more questions.