Professional golf unity: PGA Tour merging with Saudi-backed LIV Golf

The PGA Tour and Saudi-backed LIV Golf, who have been embroiled in a year-long bitter rivalry, have agreed to merge, they each announced Tuesday morning.

The tours, including the DP World Tour, signed an agreement that would combine their commercial businesses and rights into a new company and end any litigation between the parties.

The merger is a big win for the sport. The creation of LIV caused a divide and disruption unlike any golf has seen for decades.

"After two years of disruption and distraction, this is a historic day for the game we all know and love," PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in a statement. "This transformational partnership recognizes the immeasurable strength of the PGA Tour's history, legacy and pro-competitive model and combines with it the DP World Tour and LIV - including the team golf concept - to create an organization that will benefit golf's players, commercial and charitable partners and fans.

“Going forward, fans can be confident that we will, collectively, deliver on the promise we’ve always made — to promote competition of the best in professional golf and that we are committed to securing and driving the game’s future."

Monahan added the Saudis were bringing golf “an opportunity we’ve never had before.” 

Quite an about face from the man who a year ago labeled LIV “a foreign monarchy that is spending billions of dollars in an attempt to buy the game of golf."

The new commercial entity will be chaired by Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of Saudi’s Public Investment Fund, who will join the board of the PGA Tour and said the PIF was committing billions to the new venture. Monahan will serve as CEO. The two tours will complete their 2023 schedules as planned before the results of the merger take place in 2024. 

“To have this capital, at this point in time, with the strength of this game, there’s just, there’s so much opportunity,” Monahan said

Still unclear is how this will take shape. How will players such as Jupiter's Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson, along with other big names like Cameron Smith who defected to LIV last year, rejoin the PGA Tour after this year and how will the PGA Tour integrate team golf into its schedule?

Monahan told PGA Tour players in memo that the sides will work "cooperatively to establish a fair and objective process for any players who desire to reapply for membership with the PGA Tour” after this season, and the Tour will determine how best to integrate team golf into the game.

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What is clear that by LIV commissioner and CEO Greg Norman was left out of the merger talks, which Monahan told the Associated Press were ongoing for seven weeks. Al-Rumayyan broke the news from LIV's side while appearing with Monahan on CNBC and confirmed he did not tell Norman, who lives in Palm Beach Gardens and has been operating LIV out of its West Palm Beach offices, about the merger until before going on air to discuss the deal.

According to CBS, when Al-Rumayyan was asked when he informed Norman about the deal, he said: "I made the call just before this (interview on CNBC)."

The two tours have been embroiled in a year-long bitter rivalry that has included insults being hurled back and forth by Norman, Monahan and players from both tours, along with several law suits.

LIV, which is financed by the Kingdom's sovereign wealth fund, has come under fire for what detractors say is a form of "sportswashing," Saudi Arabia attempting to use sports to distract from its atrocious human rights violations.

From the start, Norman was seeking collaboration from the PGA Tour and told The Palm Beach Post last summer he believed a LIV-PGA Tour merger was in the future.

"100 percent I do," Norman said when asked if he believed the two tours could come together. "Jay Monahan, if he had the decency to take our meetings right from the get-go, none of this stuff would be in place today. The game of golf would be in a much better place. The Tour would be in a much better place. European golf would be in a much better place.

"In the world of business, if you got a competitor coming to challenge you, understand what your competitor's got by sitting down and signing an NDA, having a conversation and see (what) works for us."

However, Norman reportedly was left out of the merger talks, which Monahan told the Associated Press were ongoing for seven weeks. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, broke the news from LIV's side and confirmed he did not tell Norman about the merger until before going on air with CNBC to discuss the deal.

Al-Rumayyan will join the board of the PGA Tour, according to the AP. He will be chairman of the new commercial group, with Monahan as the CEO and the PGA Tour having a majority stake in the new venture.

According to CBS, when asked when he informed Norman about the deal, Al-Rumayyan said: "I made the call just before this (interview on CNBC)."

LIV upended the golf world in 2022 by offering contracts worth nine figures to popular stars such as Phil Mickelson, Koepka, Johnson, Smith and Bryson DeChambeau, along with $25 million purses that including a $4 million pay out to the winner of each event.

The law suits started piling up after LIV and several players sued the PGA Tour in federal court. The upstart league said the PGA was a monopoly that attempted to suppress competition and threatened vendors who were thinking of teaming up with LIV.

The PGA Tour countersued.

Mickelson, who has been the most outspoken of LIV's golfers and pushed back against critics like Monahan and Jupiter's Rory McIlroy, reportedly received $200 million to join the league.

Mickelson offered a three-word response on social media when the news broke:

"Awesome day today," he posted.

LIV filled out its roster - including 48 primary players divided into 12 teams of four - with other well-known golfers, including Sergio Garcia, Bubba Watson, Patrick Reed and Lee Westwood. The format, 54 holes with no cut, became a target for golf purists.

Immediately, the golf world took sides with players, fans and anyone connected to the game offering an opinion. LIV trudged on and expanded to 14 events in 2023, up from eight in its inaugural season.

"They were going down their path, we were going down ours," Monahan said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. "After a lot of introspection you realize all this tension in the game is not a good thing."

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One of LIV's biggest supporters has been former president and Palm Beach resident Donald Trump, who jumped on board the new league partly because of his disdain for the PGA Tour. LIV will hold three of its events on Trump properties this season.

"It's big time and it's big time money. It's unlimited money," Trump said in November after playing in the pro-am before LIV's event at his course in Doral.

"And it's different. You hear the music?"

LIV's brand is not only based on the team aspect, but its party atmosphere that includes music blared around the course during warmups and champagne celebrations on the 18th green at the end of each event.

“Every single player in men’s professional golf is going to have more opportunity and growth," Monahan said on CNBC. "As we look to contribute to the women’s game I would expect the same, and as an industry, we’re going to grow our industry. I think this is all a positive on that front.”