PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan spent nearly 20 minutes Wednesday discussing the momentum generated by a $1.5 billion private investment in the tour earlier this year. But when asked about the deal with Saudi investors backing the LIV Tour, he said patience is needed.
Monahan said a deal with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) remains the priority, although he declined to provide a timeline for achieving that.
“I don’t think it’s best to put such restrictions in place,” Mohanan said on the sidelines of the Tour Championship. “We want to get the best deal possible, at the right time.”
Those statements contrast with those made a year ago at East Lake. Monahan unexpectedly accepted the PIF’s offer on June 6, 2023, to launch a new entity, PGA Tour Enterprises. The deadline to close the deal was Dec. 31 of that year.
Monahan said last year: “I stand before you here today and I am confident that we will find common ground that will satisfy the PGA Tour and our fans — that’s what I see, and that’s what I believe.”
A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then.
The U.S. Justice Department requested that a non-compete clause be removed from the proposed deal in July. Jon Rahm then joined the LIV Tour in December. And the PGA Tour reached a $3 billion deal with Strategic Sports Group in January that gave golfers more than $1.5 billion as shareholders in PGA Tour Enterprises.
“When you look at where we are today … what we’re hearing from our fans and our players, ultimately, is that we’re in a position to bring back the best golfers in the world. I think that’s a healthy goal, and I think that’s a motivating goal,” Monahan said. “As I’ve said before, we’re continuing to negotiate. We’re at the table. It’s complex, and it’s going to take time.”
Meanwhile, the PGA Tour will wrap up its inaugural season with eight signature events worth $20 million each, which had little impact on who made it to the Tour playoffs. The PGA unveiled a similar schedule for 2025, and Monahan suggested it could be very similar in future years.
And LIV Tour players are still excluded. Some of them could find themselves excluded from the 54-player field as their LIV Tour deals expire.
So there is still a long way to go, a very long way.
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