Tiger Woods is meeting with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), which funds the LIV Golf League, on Monday in the Bahamas to discuss the future of the PGA Tour. The bigwigs will meet over a round of golf in Albany, according to reports.
Representatives from PIF, the Strategic Sports Group (SSG), and the PGA Tour policy board — including Tiger, Jordan Spieth, and Patrick Cantlay — are expected to be in attendance for a Five Families-style meeting. (SSG — a consortium of sports owners, with high-profile partners such as LeBron James and Drake — recently invested up to $3 billion to formulate PGA Tour Enterprises, a commercial branch committed to marketing the game. Tiger is vice president.)
Amid a buzzy, star-driven Players Championship — won by World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler — Cantlay and Spieth (and Rory McIlroy) confirmed the Monday meeting.
“Well, I’ve gotta hear out what they have to say, and I will always do my best to represent the entire membership whenever I am in a meeting in that capacity,” Cantlay said Sunday at TPC Sawgrass. “I think more information is always better.”
“I’m not sure that I can say much more other than we’re being encouraged to potentially meet with them, but at the same time we probably feel like our membership should know timing and what could happen and just, in general, maybe it’s just a meet,” Spieth said Friday. “We are being encouraged, obviously, which I think is probably a good thing that the entire board should if there’s going to be any potential for a negotiation.”
Pressure has ramped up on the powers that operate global golf to get in a room together. Since Al-Rumayyan and PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan shockingly announced a framework agreement last June, the sides failed to hash out the details before a Dec. 31 deadline, and talks have since stalled. Prior to the Players, Monahan said negotiations with PIF were “accelerating” but a deal would “take time.”
At Riviera in February, Tiger — who has only completed one round on the PGA Tour in 2024, at the Genesis Invitational — said that while the PGA Tour remains open to a partnership with PIF/LIV, they are no longer in need of financial assistance, thanks to the SSG infusion.
LIV Golf just wrapped its fourth event of its third season, in Hong Kong. Beginning on April 11 at The Masters, we'll be able to watch LIV's stars — Jon Rahm, Joaquin Niemann, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau — compete against the PGA Tour's best, once again.
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