Opinion: In selfish age, Trump and golf will get on like a White House on fire

It doesn’t matter how we get what we want, as long as we get it.

My dearly departed colleague and mentor, Jock MacVicar, was a tremendous creature of habit.

Most Sundays, for instance, he would toddle off to his local driving range to hit 50 balls. “It’s just a bit of exercise,” he reasoned, but the true motivation behind his routine was the fact that the café at said facility produced terrific scones.

Jock loved his grub. The rampant devouring of a quite delightful lemon meringue pie at the Sleive Donard Hotel in County Down during an Amateur Championship one year could’ve been accompanied by the triumphant finale of the William Tell Overture.

While a bucket of 50 balls would always be more than enough for Jock – the scone was probably calling after 22 dimpled orbs had been gently swept off the mat to be honest – I prefer to arm myself with a haul of 100.

The reason? Well, it’s purely down to simple mathematics. It adds up to the same number of separate, negative thoughts that course through my feeble mind during the swing.

I don’t know why I actually keep going back to the range. But, for whatever reason, I still do. As Churchill once observed, “success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” Perhaps he too was driven on by the prospect of a scone?

In this game, there’s always food for thought. With the wider world girding its various bits and pieces for the onset of another Donald Trump presidency, the world of golf was left mulling over the impact another Trump term will have on merger talks involving the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund that fuels the LIV gravy train.

Lynch: Rory McIlroy should have answered the Donald Trump question with a shrug. But he didn’t

Forget the trivialities of global conflict and issues surrounding national security, immigration, the climate or the cost of living. Just how will men’s professional golf benefit from Trump’s return? Who said the game in its upper echelons was out of touch with the real world, eh?

Rory McIlroy, as honest as ever, gave his opinions last week in Abu Dhabi as he mulled over the prospect of Trump accelerating the wearisome discussions of the 2023 Framework Agreement.

And don’t worry, I find that phrase boring too. In fact, I just let out a gaping yawn right there, halfway through typing the word ‘Framework.’

Anyway, the influence golf-loving Trump can exert over the U.S. Department of Justice – it has threatened to block any merger on the basis that it would violate competition law – is being viewed as something of a breakthrough in the current impasse.

“Given the news with what’s happened in America, I think that (Trump’s win) clears the way a little bit,” suggested McIlroy about the route towards this tripartite coalition. He also flung in – with a smile we must add – the prospect of madcap MAGA flag-waver Elon Musk getting involved too. Crikey.

Trump trumpeted last week that he would take about “15 minutes” to get the golf deal done. Whether he does it before or after the 24 hours he said it would take him to sort out the war in Ukraine remains to be seen.

Donald Trump, Eric Trump and Larry Glick of Trump Resort greet golfers on the practice green before the final round of 2024 LIV Golf Miami at Trump National Doral. (Photo: Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports)

When that aforementioned Framework thingamajig was unveiled some 18 months ago, Trump roared that it was a “big, beautiful and glamourous deal for the wonderful world of golf.”

Meanwhile, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan hailed a potential union with the Saudis as a “momentous day.”

Up until that June 2023 announcement, which was so out of the blue even the blue itself was caught on the hop, Monahan was very much against the Saudi golf revolution and even used the victims of the 9/11 atrocity to effectively shame those American players who had defected to the breakaway series.

Monahan’s subsequent volte-face was quite something as he backed out of his robust anti-LIV stance with about as much elegance as a man reversing his car into the entire peloton of the Tour de France.

It was just one of the many flabbergasting developments in an ongoing saga that has been defined by eye-popping sentiments, greed, entitlement and players demonstrating an over-inflated sense of their own worth.

McIlroy has hardly rolled out the welcome mat for Trump, and the Northern Irishman has been a great statesman-like figure in the game’s civil war over the last couple of turbulent years.

In many quarters, though, his statements last week were viewed as just another example of the blinkered, privileged and selfish bubble that golfers at the highest level exist in these days.

It doesn’t matter how we get what we want, as long as we get it.

It seems Trump and golf will continue to get on like a White House on fire.

Nick Rodger is the golf contributor and columnist for the Scotland Herald, which is owned by Gannett/Newsquest.

Lynch: Rory McIlroy should have answered the Donald Trump question with a shrug. But he didn’t

What has made McIlroy likable is the sense that he has a sense of the world outside of his privileged bubble.

The first Wednesday of November during leap years is a perilous time for public commentary as U.S. Presidential election results are debated in a manner just as partisan as the campaign that preceded it. This one is no different. Depending on whom you ask, one political party peddled faux populism and racism while displaying an astonishing appetite for conspiracy theories, while the other is woefully incapacitated by its indulgence of identity ideologues, Hamas groupies and gender jihadists. Which is to say there was already plenty to pick over without wondering if the election of Donald Trump would help professional golfers get paid more.

During a Wednesday press conference at a tournament in Abu Dhabi, Rory McIlroy was asked about progress in talks between the PGA Tour and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. “Given today’s news with what has happened in America, I think that clears the way a little bit. So we’ll see,” he offered, before adding that it would be “a huge moment” if the Department of Justice under Trump was more amenable to green-lighting a deal than Biden’s DOJ might have been.

In our hyper-polarized moment, even comments that are both bland and obvious can be construed as endorsing the election outcome, something McIlroy didn’t actually do. But those three words — “clears the way” — earned a pointedly sour reception. McIlroy gave the impression of welcoming the prospect of Trump interfering with a regulatory process to benefit a coddled group of golfers who’ve already alienated legions of fans weary of their entitlement and greed.

A few days ago, Trump claimed he could solve the PGA Tour-PIF dispute “in 15 minutes,” which at least acknowledges that it’s a more mundane matter than the Ukraine war, which he said he’d need 24 hours to end. “He might be able to,” McIlroy said in response. “He’s got Elon Musk, who I think is the smartest man in the world, beside him. We might be able to do something if we can get Musk involved, too.”

Even leaving aside the generous encomium for Musk, who has spent months amplifying racists and antisemites in his social media sewer, McIlroy knows better — a fact he quickly admitted. “I think from the outside looking in, it’s probably a little less complicated than it actually is. But obviously, Trump has a great relationship with Saudi Arabia. He’s got a great relationship with golf. He’s a lover of golf. So, maybe. Who knows? But I think as the president of the United States again, he’s probably got bigger things to focus on than golf.”

“A great relationship” is one way to describe a $2 billion Saudi donation to a hedge fund run by Trump’s son-in-law, but at least McIlroy’s last observation is beyond debate. Executives on both sides of this negotiation will know what impact, if any, the election will have. And if either has slow-played things to see if the review process is less aggressive under a Trump administration, they now have a date on which they’ll find out. But those are questions Jay Monahan gets paid handsomely to answer, not McIlroy.

Instead, what McIlroy inadvertently did was reinforce a widespread perception of myopic entitlement among Tour players. Millions of people awoke this morning with leaden uncertainty about things that actually matter — economic stability, support in times of war, global alliances, civil rights, basic healthcare, immigration status. That environment is sufficiently fraught without a golfer idly speculating on whether the election might be a treat for those impatient to get their hands on some Saudi riyal.

Anyone who has paid attention to the narrative in golf these past few years is probably immune to surprise at hearing such sentiments expressed, but this example will be jarring because of where the comments originated.

What has always made McIlroy likable is the sense that he has peripheral vision, a sense of the world and its issues outside of his privileged bubble. But that image took a hit Wednesday, overshadowed by the feeling that everyone now just has ‘PIF vision,’ that even he sounds like just another voice in a chorus asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’

That’s an unfair characterization of a man who has proven more thoughtful than most of his peers, but McIlroy has been around this thorny issue for a long time, and around divisive politics since childhood. He knows there are some questions that are best answered with a shrug and a ‘your guess is as good as mine’ deflection. This was obviously one of those.

Yet he chose to do what he always does in press conferences (not always wisely): answer the question he was asked. In this instance, on this day, he ought to have taken a lead from his late compatriot, Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney: “Whatever you say, you say nothing.”

Report: PGA Tour’s Jay Monahan and PIF’s Yasir Al-Rumayyan meet again in Saudi Arabia

Monahan has been in Saudi Arabia this week attending the Future Investment Initiative.

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and PIF’s Yasir Al-Rumayyan, which bankrolls the LIV Golf League, are meeting again this week in person.

Monahan has been in Saudi Arabia this week attending the Future Investment Initiative, an annual conference run by the PIF in Riyadh. Bunkered.co.uk first reported the story, noting his attendance along with other PGA “team members.”

Monahan and Al-Rumayyan played in a foursome at the DP World Tour’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, a pro-am event in Scotland, recently, their first public meeting since the televised handshake back announcing a framework agreement in June 2023. Monahan declined to comment on the state of negotiations, which have dragged on since June 2023, which ended the legal battle between the Tour and LIV Golf.

Bunkered also noted that the two leaders will be together at a pro-am outing Thursday night in conjunction with the Ladies European Tour’s Aramco Ladies Team Series Event, and are expected to play together again under floodlights at Riyadh Golf Club. LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman reportedly will be in attendance, too, as the venue is scheduled to host LIV Golf’s Promotions event in December.

Report: LIV Golf looking for new CEO, will move Greg Norman out of role, perhaps to senior leadership

According to a new report, the Saudi-based league is working behind the scenes to find a replacement.

Greg Norman’s tenure as the CEO of LIV Golf has been a tumultuous one as the 20-time PGA Tour winner and former world No. 1 has butted heads with numerous organizations, made outlandish claims about the league’s ascension and even had him showing up at major events with tickets from a secondary market.

But according to a new report from Sports Business Journal, the Saudi-based league is working behind the scenes to find a replacement for Norman as CEO, even though the two-time British Open champ could be retained in senior leadership.

Here’s more from the story:

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which backs LIV financially, has contracted out London-based Odgers Berndtson for the search, which would take over for Greg Norman in the CEO role.

Though handled quietly, the search firm has looked to well-regarded executives in sports business for the position, with names including Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark among those targeted early on, according to sources. Talks with Yormark did not progress, but it shows the level of executive PIF has been targeting.

This is not the first sports job PIF has contracted Odgers Berndtson for. PIF also used the firm when it hired Paul Mitchell as the new sporting director for Newcastle United in July.

While Odgers Berndtson has been handling the search for PIF, LIV itself has been using CAA Sports and Egon Zehnder on other leadership searches.

According to SBJ, Norman has remained in decent favor with the ownership group, so he could still be used in a multitude of roles in the future.

This comes just two weeks ago after the league hired Ilana Finley of Nike as its new chief communications officer. Finley had most recently worked with Converse (part of the Nike brand), but also had led strategic communications for Nike’s Olympics initiatives.

LIV Golf CEO, Greg Norman talks to Captain Bryson DeChambeau of Crushers GC on the range during Day One of the LIV Golf Invitational – Miami at Trump National Doral Miami on October 20, 2023, in Doral, Florida. (Photo by Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images)

At the recent Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, LIV Golf’s Yasir Al-Rumayyan, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and DP World Tour Chief Executive Officer Guy Kinnings all took part in the DP World Tour event contested over three of the most famous venues in golf: St. Andrews, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns.

More: ‘Greg (Norman) has to go’: Tiger Woods unloads on LIV Golf leadership, explains what must happen for LIV to co-exist with PGA Tour

Lynch: The PGA Tour’s best fix for the Presidents Cup? Sell the International team and get out of the way

It would at least end the charade that the Presidents Cup is a global vehicle by actually making it so.

Some storylines recycle through golf’s ecosystem with the dreary predictability of a Patrick Reed lawsuit filing. The now annual Tiger Woods comeback is one, with attendant speculation about whether a man more compromised than, well, a Patrick Reed lawsuit, can actually win again. Rory McIlroy’s yearly tilt at the Masters is too, invariably followed with commentary about pressure and perspective (neither of which is induced by a Patrick Reed lawsuit). Another tried-and-true narrative has been making the rounds again this week: What can be done to salvage the Presidents Cup?

The biennial contest pitting the United States against an International team (drawn from everywhere bar Europe) is often entertaining but seldom competitive. The Internationals’ only win was in 1998. They have now suffered 10 consecutive defeats — culminating in last weekend’s 18 ½ to 11 ½ loss at Royal Montreal. It was a whupping, no matter how many soft-pedalers say things were closer than the scoreline implies.

Debates over how to address the imbalance can be as animated as the actual matches. Suggestions include reducing the number of points contested to accommodate the lack of depth on the International bench (that has already been tried, going from 34 points to 30 in ’15); shortening the duration (from four days to three); changing the format (by making it a co-ed event with top women golfers); and binning it entirely.

One potential change that hasn’t gotten due consideration is this: ownership.

The Presidents Cup belongs to the PGA Tour. It was created in the waning hours of Deane Beman’s tenure as commissioner and first staged under his successor, Tim Finchem, who was eager to mooch whatever revenue he could from the enthusiasm around team golf generated by the Ryder Cup. The Tour decides who captains both teams, who is eligible to play on both teams, and where the competition will take place. Golfers who defected to LIV — like Cameron Smith, Joaquin Niemann and Abraham Ancer — are ineligible, making what was a tough task nigh on impossible for the International team, though to be fair they were waxed with even more impressive line-ups before LIV.

Last year, the ex-player and now board member of PGA Tour Enterprises, Joe Ogilvie, sent his fellow Tour members a letter outlining the impact of accepting private investment, which happened months later. He listed a number of assets the Tour owned and mused on their worth and growth potential. He included the Presidents Cup and mentioned it again in a subsequent appearance on Golf Today. The event, Ogilvie seemed to be suggesting, had unrealized value. Which raises a delicate question: In whose hands?

If the Tour sold half of the Presidents Cup — and accepted having no influence over the International side — then new owners could establish fresh eligibility criteria, select captains, install dedicated management, assign resources, create a P&L and assume decision-making authority, including for overseas media rights and negotiations with venues outside the U.S. In short, do exactly what Europe does with the Ryder Cup.

Would that make things more competitive? It couldn’t hurt. And it would at least end the charade that the Presidents Cup is a global vehicle by actually making it so. Of the last five international venues, two were 30 miles from the U.S. border in Montreal and two more were in Melbourne, Australia — a marvelous city, but not exactly groundbreaking for those trying to evangelize golf around the world.

Perhaps the Strategic Sports Group chaps have run the numbers to arrive at a valuation of the Presidents Cup’s International component, but it’s surely nine figures and with better potential for long-term returns than any nine-figure LIV contract that expires after a few years. So who could buy it?

The most obvious candidate — and least appealing for those concerned with mundanities like human rights — is the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. But there are plenty of alternatives who are invested in golf and who preach a gospel of global growth.

One such man, South African billionaire Johann Rupert, is hosting the Dunhill Links Championship in St. Andrews this week. There’s Pawan Munjal, CEO of Hero MotoCorp and a familiar figure to fans through his relationship with Woods. Or Mexican tycoon Ricardo Salinas, who brought a WGC tournament to his homeland. Perhaps Abdullah Al Naboodah, an Emerati investor deeply involved with the DP World Tour, or Korean industrialist Jin Roy Ryu, who underwrote the ’15 Cup in Seoul. Heck, even Chinese-Thai businessman Chanchai Ruayrungruag, a colorful eccentric who purchased Wentworth Golf Club a decade ago and proceeded to oust many of its members. (I once attended an evening at which he elbowed China’s premier opera soprano aside on a Beijing stage so he could sing himself, the sound of which surely had every cat owner within earshot wondering if their pet was being garroted.)

That’s all to say there’s no shortage of astute businessmen who are confessed fanatics about golf and who might see value in an established platform with 30 years of history and a solvent partner in the PGA Tour. Unshackling the International side may be the best move to positively impact the Presidents Cup both as a competition and a commercial property, while simultaneously paying more than lip service to the goal of globalizing the sport in a meaningful manner.

One of those aforementioned golf-crazed billionaires ought to send Jay Monahan a copy of Richard Bach’s bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull and highlight his oft-quoted line: “If you love something, set it free.”

Lynch: A PGA Tour-Saudi deal is closer, but opportunists will have time to take advantage while real fans wait

Even if deal terms emerge in the coming weeks, a long and bumpy road lies ahead.

“There are four types of men in the world: lovers, opportunists, lookers-on and imbeciles,” wrote the 19th-century French philosopher Hippolyte Taine. “The happiest are the imbeciles.” All are well represented in the chaos prevailing in men’s professional golf.

The imbeciles — usually more irate than happy — can be found in the drool-speckled ranks of LIV Golf’s social media trolls, but not exclusively. How else to explain a decision to hold the most recent meeting between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund in New York City on September 11? PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan wasn’t present, and so didn’t face the fraught question of whether to attend the 9/11 memorial ceremony that his government contributed so much to bringing about.

What of the lovers, opportunists and lookers-on?

The latter is the largest group, the PGA Tour’s journeymen, veterans and staff who aren’t deemed important enough to be updated on matters that will greatly impact their working lives. (There’s arguably a subcategory of lookers-away, former fans who are disengaging from golf, due at least in part to the division and diluted product.) Opportunists, meanwhile, are laboring to exhaustion.

Strategic Sports Group has been opportunistic — not in the pejorative sense — by investing $1.5 billion in a sport that is under-leveraged. The Saudis too, by identifying what makes golf penetrable for sportswashing: players who don’t have contracts but do have a delusional notion of their market worth. The DP World Tour can also be included. It benefitted from a lucrative alliance when the PGA Tour needed to scope the rising Saudi tide, and now does little to quash speculation that it might be an alternative for the PIF if a deal isn’t reached with the Americans. And of course, Greg Norman, who finally roped a dope willing to finance his grievances, and whose insistence that LIV is thriving has as much credibility as tales of canine suppers in Springfield, Ohio.

But none have been more opportunistic than PGA Tour golfers. They’ve secured previously unimaginable pay for working in an underperforming product, grabbed control in a governance shakeup amid the aftershocks of the Framework Agreement, and are playing power games by creating their own marketing events, safe in the knowledge that the Tour lacks the leverage over members that it enjoyed during the imperial commissariat of Tim Finchem.

The game is ripe with the stench of every man for himself.

So what of the lovers? That’s you, golf fans. And right now, the thing you love is making it awfully tough to maintain your affection, even for those who aren’t overly troubled by the prospect of Saudi investment being mainstreamed. How long before a new normal is established and the political and economic narratives diminish in this sport?

Talk to enough people familiar with the state of negotiations between the PGA Tour and the PIF and it’s clear progress is happening, but uncertainty remains. Not least the timeframe governing a Department of Justice review of any agreement. Assuming that the presidential election doesn’t lead to a stubby Cheeto thumb being placed on the scale, that process could take more than a year. In hopes of hastening it, the Tour has constantly updated Justice officials on what they’re considering and addressed any concerns raised. But it’s unclear if the parties could seek some manner of preliminary green light from the DOJ in advance of an announcement, nor even how detailed deal terms must be to pass muster. Two things can be assured: players will not go backward on what they’re earning and LIV will be repackaged rather than retired, since regulators would likely see the alternatives as anticompetitive.

Despite Rory McIlroy’s public suggestion that the onus is on PGA Tour officials to get moving, it’s the PIF that will most impact whether a deal is realized. A Justice Department review will almost certainly involve requests for discovery materials similar to those the Saudis refused to submit during antitrust litigation, and which they’ve declined to hand over to a U.S. Senate committee for a year. Sources close to the negotiations say there’s clear intent by the PIF to avoid establishing a transparency precedent that might shine a light on its other investments in the U.S., known and stealth. So what level of compliance will prove sufficient for the U.S. government? It won’t get 100 percent, but how far shy of that will it settle for?

Which is to say that even if deal terms emerge in the coming weeks — not implausible, based on people I’ve talked to — a long and bumpy road lies ahead. Which promises to leave lovers waiting, imbeciles slabbering and lookers-on idling, all while giving opportunists more time to better angle themselves to the trough.

PGA Tour on meeting with LIV Golf’s Yasir Al-Rumayyan: ‘We want to get this right’

The Tour released a statement on Saturday morning that the meeting went off as planned.

After Rory McIlroy confirmed earlier this week that a number of PGA Tour representatives, including Commissioner Jay Monahan and Tiger Woods, would be meeting in person with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the Tour released a statement on Saturday morning that the meeting went off as planned.

Here’s what was released by the Tour:

As previously stated, our negotiations with the Public Investment Fund (PIF) have accelerated in recent months. Representatives from the PGA TOUR Enterprises Transaction Subcommittee and the PIF have been meeting multiple times weekly to work through potential deal terms and come to a shared vision on the future of professional golf. On Friday evening, an in-person session in New York City included the entire Transaction Subcommittee and PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan and his team, where more progress was made. We remain committed to these negotiations, which require working through complex considerations to best position golf for global growth. We want to get this right, and we are approaching discussions with careful consideration for our players, our fans, our partners and the game’s future.

McIlroy said in pressers prior to this week’s Memorial that members of the Tour’s Transaction Subcommittee have talked three times a week with the Saudis. The New York meeting represented their first in-person gathering since March. The other members of the committee are Adam Scott, board liaison Joe Ogilvie, Enterprises chairman Joe Gorder and Fenway Sports Group principal John Henry.

The PGA Tour has entered into an agreement for Strategic Sports Group to invest at least $1.5 billion and as much as $3 billion into the Tour’s new for-profit entity. The Tour and PIF met in March in the Bahamas after the Players Championship for the first time. Jimmy Dunne, whose secret meeting with Al-Rumayyan in early 2023 led to the Framework Agreement, resigned from the Tour board in mid-May citing “no meaningful progress” toward a deal with PIF. Woods and Jordan Spieth, both fellow Tour player directors, disagreed with Dunne and called that a false narrative.

In an exclusive interview with Golfweek, Ogilvie characterized the first meeting between player-directors and Al-Rumayyan as “perfect.”

“It was a perfect first meeting. When we were going into the room, one of the big things was how do we address him? If we’re gonna address him as His Excellency, that’s just kind of weird,” Ogilvie said. “He comes in the room, shakes everyone’s hand, and looks you right in the eye and says, ‘My name is Yasir. Please call me Yasir.’ I had heard that he’s a nice man and that he loves the game of golf, and nothing told me otherwise after meeting him. It would be naive to think that we’re going to come out of that meeting with a handshake deal and say, ‘We’re done here.’

“It was a very good meeting and you could see that there was a mutual respect between he and Jay, which is also good.”

See more from that extensive Q&A with Ogilvie here.

Confirmed: PGA Tour and PIF to meet in person in New York on Friday afternoon — and why John Henry’s role is critical

Jay Monahan and Tiger Woods lead a group meeting in person with PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan.

One day after the one-year anniversary of the PGA-Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund announcing the Framework Agreement, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and Tiger Woods are leading a group that is meeting in person with the PIF’s governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan on Friday afternoon in New York.

Speaking to a handful of reporters, including Sports Illustrated’s Bob Harig on Thursday, Rory McIlroy, who was named to the Tour’s Transaction Subcommittee a few weeks ago, confirmed he would be part of the meeting, joining remotely via video conference following his second round of the Memorial in Dublin, Ohio.

McIlroy said the group has talked three times a week with the Saudis. The New York meeting represents their first in-person gathering since March. The other members of the committee are Adam Scott, board liaison Joe Ogilvie, Enterprises chairman Joe Gorder and Fenway Sports Group principal John Henry.

“There’s going to be people in that room on the PGA Tour side who are going to take the lead,” McIlroy told a handful of reporters after his round. “And it’s not going to be Adam, Tiger or I. It’s going to be the business guys. We’re there to maybe give a perspective from a player’s point of view.

“This is a negotiation about an investment in the PGA Tour Enterprises, this is big-boy stuff. And I’ll certainly be doing more listening than I will be doing talking.”

Henry, whose Fenway Sports Group owns the Boston Red Sox, Liverpool Football Club and Pittsburgh Penguins, is one of the leaders of the ‘big-boy stuff.’ In an engaging profile of Henry, the Financial Times includes the story of how Strategic Sports Group, which already has invested $1.5 billion in PGA Tour Enterprises and potentially as much as $3 billion, came to be.

A year ago in June, a week after the blockbuster news of the PGA Tour-Saudi PIF’s framework agreement and intention to create a new for-profit company, Henry was in New York to attend a routine meeting of baseball owners.

Boston Red Sox owner John Henry, left., at Fenway Park before a game against the Minnesota Twins. Mandatory Credit: Paul Rutherford-USA TODAY Sports

“Henry couldn’t understand how it had come to this. Why was golf, the most well-heeled of elite sports, so desperate for financial salvation that it would merge with its ideological and marketplace opposite?” Sara Germano writes on FT.com. “Seated in a midtown skyscraper with a half-dozen of his fellow billionaires — all men, all American — at the Major League Baseball meeting, he saw a group of like-minded titans. Couldn’t they come up with an alternative plan for the PGA Tour, he wondered. Henry started asking around the room: would you put up some funds to invest in golf? How about you? To others present for the meeting, golf was the last thing they thought Henry would be interested in. “He has a lot of hobbies, but that’s not one of them,” recalled Sam Kennedy, chief executive of FSG and one of Henry’s closest associates for more than two decades. But Henry wasn’t making a passion play. He had seen a problem and was in a roomful of people with the means to fix it.”

According to the Financial Times, the baseball owner’s meeting became the launch pad of SSG, a consortium of American businessmen whose portfolios include all manner of global sports. As Arthur Blank, owner of the Atlanta Falcons and PGA Tour Superstore, told FT.com, Henry’s pitch went like this: “the world of golf was in “turmoil,” and would he have any interest in joining an optional financial lifeline to the PGA Tour, either instead of or in addition to the PIF merger?

Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank walks of the field against the Tennessee Titans during the second half at Nissan Stadium. (Photo: Steve Roberts-USA TODAY Sports)

Blank was among those owners, which also include New York Mets owner, Steve Cohen, who signed up. “We saw it as doing the right thing, as leading American businessmen,” Blank told Germano.

On the morning of Nov. 9, she reported that Woods invited the prospective investors to his oceanside offices in Jupiter, Florida.

“According to people who were present, Woods was joined by fellow players Rory McIlroy and Patrick Cantlay, as well as the Raine Group’s Colin Neville, along with various staff. Several other players tuned in via Zoom. The SSG delegation consisted of Henry, his wife Linda, FSG executives Tom Werner and Sam Kennedy, Blank and Andy Cohen of Steve Cohen’s Private Ventures, among others.”

This paragraph from the Henry profile may give a clue to his role in Friday’s meeting: “Despite his reputation, Henry was anything but reticent that morning. ‘John probably repeated 10 times, ‘We want to be aligned with the players’,” one person who was present told Germano. “It left a good impression with the golfers, and SSG went back to their offices to polish the finer points of their proposal.”

Less than a week ago, Scott told Golfweek that negotiations were about to heat up and that appears to be true.

Major champion says LIV Golf, PGA Tour arrangement is still ‘chaos’ and will be difficult to repair

“If I take 62 out of the top 70 out of a field, do I have a better shot of winning? You’re damn, right I do.”

AUSTIN, Texas — As the unveiling of a framework agreement between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund approaches its first anniversary without any major subsequent announcements, one major champion said it’s going to be nearly impossible to get the Tour and PIF-sponsored LIV Golf back on the same page.

Mark Brooks, who won the 1996 PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club among his seven PGA Tour victories, called the current golf landscape “chaos” during a recent interview, adding that repairing any rifts between the two sides will be difficult, especially as both sides have become accustomed to their current arrangements.

Brooks was part of a movement to pull players together back in the 1990s called The Tour Players Association, of which he was the treasurer. Although it wasn’t a full-blown union, the idea was to bring players together to collectively bargain.

Mark Brooks kisses the Wanamaker trophy as photographers capture the moment after he beat Kenny Perry in a one-hole playoff to win the PGA Championship Sunday, Aug. 11, 1996, at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky.

He thinks such a group could have helped avoid the current issues.

“I’m surprised it took this long for some kind of splintering to happen,” Brooks said, in advance of this year’s PGA Championship.

But while he understands how the signature events and LIV Golf events, both of which do not have a cut, came to be, he’s concerned with how weak it’s left some PGA Tour events on the current calendar.

“Some of these events are, let’s just call it, top 70 shallow,” Brooks said. “Below that they’re heavy. They’re not going into, you know, past champions like me. I’m not showing up on the eligibility list, they’re not going that kind of deep. But probably 15 events this year will be very light in terms of the top 70 and you go, well, does that mean anything? Absolutely it means something. Are you kidding me?

“If I take 62 out of the top 70 out of a field, do I have a better shot of winning? You’re damn, right I do.”

Although some have insisted progress is being made behind the scenes in ongoing conversations between PIF and the PGA Tour, those arrangements are strictly financial.

Brooks said he doesn’t see an avenue for players to fully reintegrate into the PGA Tour, and he added that he thinks most aren’t interested in such a move.

Also, now that the new league has changed the game, he doesn’t see how it ever becomes one again.

“I do think it’s absolutely chaos. I think putting pieces back together, putting humpty dumpty back on the wall, it’s going to be pretty tough,” he said. “Guys don’t want to come back. They don’t have a desire to come back.”

Jimmy Dunne resigns from role on PGA Tour Policy Board: ‘I’m superfluous. It’s time to move on’

In a call with Golfweek, Dunne explained his decision.

Jimmy Dunne, the Wall Street deal maker who helped architect the PGA Tour’s controversial deal with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund last summer resigned from the Tour’s Policy Board on Monday. Dunne informed his fellow board members in a letter sent at 5 p.m.

In a call with Golfweek, Dunne explained his decision. “There’s a group that decides things and I’m not in it and I’m not consulted,” he said, referring to the board of the new for-profit entity, PGA Tour Enterprises. “I’m superfluous. It’s time to move on.”

Dunne joined the Policy Board in January 2023 at the request of Commissioner Jay Monahan. Six months later, on June 6, the Tour announced a shocking Framework Agreement with the Saudis, who have been funding the LIV Golf circuit. The deal was forged in a series of top-secret meetings involving Dunne, Monahan and board chairman Ed Herlihy.

Letter from Jimmy Dunne, who resigned from the PGA Tour Policy Board, said his role had become "utterly superfluous." pic.twitter.com/lTznAjTRbT

— Golfweek (@golfweek) May 13, 2024

Dunne later testified before a Senate subcommittee about the deal when Monahan was on a leave of absence from the Tour.

“During my testimony at the Senate hearing, I said it was my intention to cast my vote alongside the Player Directors if a final agreement was reached with the PIF. Since the players now outnumber the Independent Directors on the Board, and no meaningful progress has been made towards a transaction with the PIF, I feel like my vote and my role is utterly superfluous,” Dunne wrote in his letter. “I believe that history will look favorably on this outcome and the very real opportunities now afforded the Tour.”

2022 Alfred Dunhill Links — Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland embraces Jimmy Dunne on the 18th green during a practice round prior to the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship on the Old Course St. Andrews on September 28, 2022, in St Andrews, Scotland. (Photo by Oisin Keniry/Getty Images)

The backlash to the deal and the secrecy surrounding it has been intense among some players for almost a year, including several who sit on the Policy Board.

Dunne said his resignation is effective immediately. “I wish everyone the best,” he said.