PIF Saudi International – Syndication Server

Lynch: The PGA Tour is facing the toughest decision with LIV Golf. Should players be making that call?

Despite the pablum about unifying the game, many Tour members are disincentivized to see that happen.

Only in politics and professional golf can one hear an arsonist share his impassioned vision for the rebuild he rendered necessary. So it was Monday when player-directors on the PGA Tour’s board met Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who as head of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has single-handedly financed the ravaging of the sport. A day later, two golfers on either side of the schism he created indicated how they’re reconciled (or not) to the consequences of their decisions.

Jon Rahm, one of Al-Rumayyan’s more expensive firestarters, offered a positive pitch for the Tour he left. “It was fun to watch, and what a finish. Jesus Christ, that was one that was fun to watch,” he said of the Players Championship, before admitting he has watched other tournaments that he’s no longer eligible to play, three of which he won last season. “It’s gut-wrenching to watch, but it made for great TV, and it was really fun.”

Picture the reigning Masters champion watching the action from home, then juxtapose that with the widely-circulated image of him playing a LIV event in Jeddah with not a spectator in sight. Asked about a subsequent LIV stop in Hong Kong, Rahm praised the people and the food. He is a competitor reduced to a concierge. His brave face notwithstanding, there was a poignant note in his comments about moving to LIV Golf. “It’s done. It’s past. It’s a decision I made, and I’m comfortable with it,” he said. “But I’m hoping I can come back.”

Rahm gives the impression of someone convinced he was going to be a one-man catalyst, that his departure would be a shock so seismic that every faction in golf would hasten toward reunification. By now, he must realize that a path back to the PGA Tour is not yet paved and that, bar four weeks a year, he will be competing before sparse galleries for the foreseeable.

His words struck a dissonant chord against those of Xander Schauffele, a leading man in the Players drama Rahm enjoyed from his couch. ”I’m very content with where I sit right now,” Schauffele said. “I don’t have any regrets of what I’ve done or what I’m doing, so I’m sleeping just fine at night knowing where I stand.”

Their respective comments illustrate the only constant in recent years: golfers making decisions based wholly on self-interest and where they are in their careers, not for any more noble motive, and certainly not for the well-being of the tours from which they earned a stout living. As competitors, golfers ought to be selfish and focus on themselves. But that trait is also why they shouldn’t be positioned to heavily influence decisions that have enormous ramifications for the PGA Tour’s broader business.

Just such a decision is nearing.

I asked someone who was in the room for the Al-Rumayyan meeting in the Bahamas to characterize it. “Weather today was partly sunny with scattered but significant clouds,” came the response. No cloud looms more ominously than the issue of how (or if) LIV golfers return to the PGA Tour in any peace deal. It’s a divisive topic, even among Tour loyalists.

Rory McIlroy’s suggestion that they come back without sanction was quickly poo-pooed by Justin Thomas and Rickie Fowler, while Scottie Scheffler — not a man prone to pettiness — said that a welcome might never be extended to guys who litigated against the Tour. Tempting as it may be to exclude Phredo Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau, lines can’t be drawn around individuals based on their popularity in the locker room.

This dilemma isn’t just procedural (What status would LIV guys have? Must they re-earn eligibility? Are they to be excluded from bonus pools for a period?) it’s also personal. Not in the sense of animosity, but in advantage. No Tour member has to best Rahm or Cameron Smith to win a tournament these days. No one is seeing a FedEx Cup bonus that might otherwise be theirs go to Brooks Koepka or Dustin Johnson. None of the rank-and-file struggling for starts are missing out because Graeme McDowell or Sergio Garcia got the call instead.

If you ask John Henry — the leader of Strategic Sports Group, which just invested $1.5 billion in the Tour — he might argue that his product would be measurably improved if the aforementioned defectors were in the fold again. But despite the pablum about unifying the game and seeing the best compete together again, many Tour members are disincentivized to see that happen. Which is why active players should not be on this jury. What’s best for individual members — even a large constituency of them — isn’t necessarily best for the Tour’s commercial prospects. But convincing members of a “member-led” organization that their interests are not the same as the Tour’s interests is akin to persuading Irish republicans that their best future lies in allegiance to the British monarchy.

The equity being distributed to players is an opportunity to reset the parameters of their role in Tour governance. They are shareholders, not owners. Activist shareholders, sure, but not the ultimate decision-makers. That distinction was lost when players used discord over the secretive Framework Agreement to demand a built-in majority on the board, which they also hold at the new for-profit entity, PGA Tour Enterprises. Ask folks if they’d rather see Jay Monahan or Patrick Cantlay make decisions about the direction of a multi-billion dollar enterprise, you’d likely hear a chorus of ‘Neither!’ Players will be compromised in many future decisions, executives were compromised by past calls. But at least executives don’t have their own competitive skin in the game.

“I don’t think anyone has sort of the right answer to keep everyone happy,” Schauffele said a few days ago. He’s right. But that’s an argument for avoiding a scenario in which players prioritize their happiness over what’s best for the Tour and the greater game. We’ve seen more than enough of how that usually works out.

Exclusive: PGA Tour players nearing secret meeting with Saudi fund boss

Six sources told Golfweek that player-directors are being strongly encouraged to meet Yasir Al-Rumayyan.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – A group of PGA Tour players are nearing a meeting with the head of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund as efforts continue to broker a deal between the Tour and the controversial sovereign wealth fund that has been disrupting men’s professional golf.

Six sources told Golfweek that the Tour’s player-directors are being strongly encouraged to meet Yasir Al-Rumayyan and that it could happen within days. Two sources said a meeting is tentatively scheduled for Monday at a private residence in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. The Players Championship concludes on Sunday at nearby TPC Sawgrass. Details of the meeting are being closely guarded and several insiders caution that it’s still unclear if the powerful Saudi investment chief will commit to attending or cancel at the last minute.

Five of the six player-directors on the Tour’s Policy Board — all of whom now also serve on the board of the new for-profit entity, PGA Tour Enterprises — are in the field at the Players: Patrick Cantlay, Jordan Spieth, Adam Scott, Peter Malnati and Webb Simpson. Only Tiger Woods is not competing. Joe Ogilvie, a retired veteran who was added to both boards last week as a liaison to player-directors, plans to arrive in Ponte Vedra Beach Sunday in advance of an Enterprises board meeting scheduled for Tuesday at Tour headquarters.

A meeting between Al-Rumayyan and the players would be intended as an informal ice-breaker in a bid to advance negotiations between the Tour and the PIF, talks which have been largely stalled since the June 6 announcement of a Framework Agreement between the parties. A faction of player-directors remains angered about the secretive process leading to that agreement and are known to be skeptical of a deal with the Saudis, who have poured billions of dollars into LIV Golf.

On Tuesday, Tour commissioner Jay Monahan confirmed that he met recently with Al-Rumayyan in Saudi Arabia and was accompanied by representatives of Strategic Sports Group. In January, SSG invested $1.5 billion into PGA Tour Enterprises, the vehicle through which the future of the sport will be shaped. “Our negotiations are accelerating as we spend time together,” Monahan said.

Under the terms of the Framework Agreement, the PIF could also become a minority investor in PGA Tour Enterprises, but last month one player-director was noticeably lukewarm when asked if a deal with the PIF was necessary after the SSG infusion.

“I just think it’s something that is almost not even worth talking about right this second given how timely everything would be to try to get it figured out,” Spieth said. “But the idea is that we have a strategic partner that allows the PGA Tour to go forward the way that it’s operating right now without anything else with the option of other investors.”

Those comments led to a public response from Rory McIlroy, who Spieth replaced on the Policy Board in December. McIlroy said reaching a deal with the PIF is in the Tour’s best interests and warned that Spieth’s implicit stiff-arming of the Saudis could complicate negotiations. McIlroy has also suggested that LIV golfers be allowed to return to the PGA Tour without sanction as part of a unity agreement. That’s one of the thorniest issues negotiators will face, and several prominent Tour loyalists immediately rejected McIlroy’s view, including Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler and world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler.

When Monahan addressed the media on Tuesday at TPC Sawgrass, he repeatedly declined to offer specifics on the state of negotiations or on any areas of contention, but reiterated his belief that a deal with the PIF is the best outcome for his organization. Asked what the game will look like if a deal with the Saudis is not concluded, Monahan said, “I guess I’ll answer that question if a deal isn’t concluded.”

“However we end up, I think that we’re not going to be able to satisfy everyone, and that goes for both sides,” he added. “But what we’re trying to do is to get to the best possible outcome again for the Tour and for the game, and I do think that that’s achievable.”

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Lynch: PGA Tour board changes prove players can’t run a billion-dollar business as a side gig

Ogilvie’s appointment is a tacit admission that the prevailing wisdom on Tour — players should be in charge — is twaddle.

Press releases issued from the PGA Tour’s Global Home are usually more noteworthy for what is omitted than what’s included, but are often so artlessly composed that a kernel of truth inadvertently reveals itself. So it is with the announcement of the slate of board members at PGA Tour. Enterprises, the new for-profit entity that will set the future shape of the men’s professional game.

The boardroom has seats for the six player-directors from the Tour’s Policy Board, none of whom have an MBA and most of whom lack a college degree. Four chairs go to Strategic Sports Group, which just invested $1.5 billion into the new company, but nothing was offered on whether those seats will be split if the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund kicks in a similar contribution. The Commissioner and an independent director from the Policy Board swell the ranks of the double-jobbers serving both panels, while Keith Pelley apparently didn’t hear the tune end in this game of musical chairs; his DP World Tour went unmentioned.

It’s the 13th man on the roster who warrants attention. Joe Ogilvie competed on the PGA Tour for 15 years before quitting in 2014 to become a money manager. He’s smart and personable, a man who studies the minutiae of the golf business with a fervor that most of his peers can only muster for yardage guides and conspiracy theories. Few people are more invested in or animated about the jacketed side of the PGA Tour.

Ogilvie was named to both the Tour’s governing Policy Board and to the board of PGA Tour Enterprises as a “director liaison” — a position described by HQ as an aide-de-camp for players facing the significant time commitment of serving on two boards. He will be additive and influential, and not only because he gives players a symbolic 7-6 majority in the room. But his appointment is a tacit admission that the prevailing wisdom on Tour — players should be in charge — is twaddle.

A small group of stars has largely assumed directional control of the Tour, but how well that works will depend on how those stars exercise the power they’ve accumulated. In their eagerness to show that they’re the captains now, newly empowered players risk confusing governance with management.

A board ought to focus on the former — strategic goals, organizational health and structure — while leaving operational decisions and execution to an executive team. But this is a member organization and every member has a granular list of grievances around which he thinks the Tour ought to be arranged. The board includes players whose faith in its executives is sorely lacking, and who are themselves overly concerned with score-settling over the secretive Framework Agreement announced on June 6.

It’s fanciful to imagine that a multi-billion dollar business can be run as a side hustle by golfers who are trying to win tournaments or just keep their cards. Even Ogilvie has a day job.

That matters because PGA Tour Enterprises faces numerous issues that are existential. A rudimentary accounting of those:

The lack of progress in reaching a deal with the Public Investment Fund, and what must be a gnawing fear that the Saudis are deliberately delaying things to bleed out the Tour’s product strength.
The looming expectations of a return on investment — or at least material changes in business operations — by the Strategic Sports Group, a daunting reckoning for a complacent, legacy organization.
Broadcast ratings that are sluggish at best, and worrisome at worst, and which suggest eroding consumer interest just as the Tour tries to persuade constituents that they need to invest more capital.
Sponsors fed up with being asked to pay more for the same, or less.
Tournament directors angry at having to pay higher fees to headquarters, which for many means robbing the charitable poor box to give more to millionaires.
Leadership that is still struggling to regain the trust of the membership nine months and one day after the Framework Agreement was announced.
Players who are single-mindedly bent on retribution against those who engineered that Agreement, as though the guys who did nothing but hold their own Tour hostage can claim moral superiority over those who tried to do something, imperfect as it was.
Rank-and-file members who see opportunities they earned be diminished because of the relentless focus on rewarding those at the top of the pyramid.
Stars who insist the Tour’s business be organized around them — and that they be compensated not as the assets they are, but as the owners they imagine themselves to be — while underperforming for the product in 2024.
Around all of that, internal and external messaging that only departs from the banal so that it might veer into the blundering.

The PGA Tour has never been in a more precarious position. It’s hardly on the brink of ruin, but there are major systemic issues that aren’t being addressed quickly enough. Some of those are concerns for the board, some for management, but there’s a palpable sense that no one is really happy. The field at Bay Hill has been almost halved to just 69 competitors, and so few were working on Wednesday afternoon that the occupants of the practice putting green barely outnumbered LIV’s spectators in Jeddah last weekend. “Arnold Palmer would be so f****** pissed to see what has gone on here,” one tournament veteran said. “It feels like a member-guest.”

That from a Tour loyalist.

The coming months will expose how Balkanized things have become on the Tour’s Policy Board, which can only bleed into the newly-constituted board of PGA Tour Enterprises given the overlap. There exists no unity of vision for the future of the Tour among the 13 men on this board, at least not yet. Eventually, one faction will win the squabble over who gets to pilot the ship. Maybe then they’ll actually notice that their paying passengers have been quietly disembarking for a while.

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Lynch: The PGA Tour’s new billions will further enrich players, so when will fans see a return?

This deal likely portends a radical (and long overdue) reassessment of the Tour’s product and operations.

The 239 days that have elapsed since June 6 proved the Framework Agreement between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund was more armistice than peace accord, so it’s tempting to interpret the announcement that a group of sports industry titans have invested $3 billion in the newly-formed PGA Tour Enterprises as rearmament for more conflict ahead. It’s more accurate to read it as evidence that parties to the game’s civil war are closer than ever to their desired outcomes.

Except you, dear golf fan. You can pound sand, at least for now.

The unveiling of the Strategic Sports Group investment wasn’t intended to answer fundamental questions about the future of golf but rather to assure the only constituency that really matters that their interests are being tended. That constituency is star players, and their only interest is personal enrichment, which they’ll see in equity grants and purse guarantees, even if it’s unclear how the market works for them to realize the value of their equity by selling it. For most, it’s not LIV Golf money, but it’s enough to hold off the wolves that are apparently gathering at every door in Jupiter, Florida.

But Wednesday also offered a measure of clarity on what other parties are getting.

The deal restores to the PGA Tour a little of the leverage that had seemed lost, especially when LIV poached Jon Rahm last month. It now has the resources to go it alone without the Saudis, but then that’s always been true. The Tour is just no less dependent on the loyalty of its members, many of whom have shown themselves to be Benedict Arnolds in soft spikes.

SSG’s investors get a minority stake in the only major league in the U.S. that didn’t have conventional owners, one that is ripe for private equity’s most cherished combination: expansion and cost-cutting. They also gain proximity to Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of PIF and the idealized Ken doll of investment partners.

Ostensibly, PIF is not part of this deal — its negotiations with the PGA Tour are far from the finish line — but there’s a clear victory here too for Al-Rumayyan. SSG’s backers include owners from every American league (NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA) and PIF, like many wealth funds in Gulf States, is eager for access to those opportunities. Golf is merely the Saudi pathway to greater prizes.

All of the aforementioned parties are incentivized to see the Saudi component finalized. As for regular fans, the only thing they’ve gotten so far is turned off and pissed off. The SSG announcement provided broad strokes on the financial and governance structures of PGA Tour Enterprises, but nothing on the actual product that will be served to its audience. That will come with the finer brushwork, which remains a ways off.

Today was all about the carrot, but the stick surely cometh as pressure for a return on investment creates a drive for efficiency that runs counter to the culture in Ponte Vedra.

“I’m a tough manager. I question almost every assumption in what are hopefully pragmatic ways. The more you question, the more you learn and the more the person you are questioning learns,” John W. Henry once said. He’s the principal owner of Fenway Sports Group and the manager of the SSG partners.

This approach portends a radical (and long overdue) reassessment of the Tour’s product and operations. That will go well beyond culling the swollen ranks of VPs, SVPs and EVPs, precious few of whom are MVPs. It means ceasing the dilution of its own product, a result of executives being bonused on creating playing opportunities, mostly for players who aren’t essential to the business. That trains the crosshairs on opposite-field events, the fall schedule in which the lower orders jockey for status, and even the number of players exempt on Tour — anything thought to detract from the core, star-driven product. It’s increasingly obvious that Q4 is the area of opportunity on the professional golf calendar, and where involvement by PIF might be seen most, whether in team tournaments, the elevation of DP World Tour stops, or the leveraging of the Presidents Cup as an international road show.

The addition of domestic investors will help defuse political concerns about a foreign wealth fund taking over a U.S. institution, but perils remain. A Congressional investigation into PIF investments in America (outside of golf) is growing more fractious as Saudi targets of subpoenas refuse to bow to U.S. law, while the current conflagration in the Middle East could shred the best-laid plans. Antitrust regulators will also be watchful for a competitor being “taken off the board,” to quote the commish. That leaves the fate of LIV uncertain. Why would PGA Tour Enterprises want it? Other than PIF, who can afford to sustain an execrable product with no traction that loses hundreds of millions of dollars annually, and with laughably overpaid talent who need to be re-signed in the coming years? LIV is an ongoing liability for PIF, not a potential asset for PGA Tour Enterprises, but it will likely trundle on for at least another season or two until Al-Rumayyan settles its fate.

The SSG investment won’t prevent the Saudis from owning a stake in golf’s more respectable precincts — that dreary outcome seems inevitable since commerce has trumped conscience throughout this episode. What it does ensure is that an authoritarian regime won’t outright own the elite level of the sport, which seemed possible for a time. That’s not nothing, and it’s about all we can point to, at least until the players back away from the trough and offer something to the fans.

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Lynch: Ugly allegations about its Saudi partner are a worrying omen for the PGA Tour

On paper, Al-Rumayyan’s latest entanglement could be viewed as a squabble between stooges for a despotic government.

During whatever passes for his quiet moments these days, Jay Monahan must yearn for the time when his news consumption was principally focused on the sports and business pages, those being the areas most consequential to his remit as commissioner of the PGA Tour. Nowadays, he must also turn to international affairs, one assumes with a knot in his gut at what might await.

This week, one dispatch was downright ulcerative.

A lawsuit accused the Tour’s soon-to-be partner, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, of taking part in a malicious campaign to punish a dissident defector whose children have been imprisoned for four years without due process. Allegations leveled in lawsuits are often hyperbolic, of course. Many colorful claims evaporate when oaths are administered or are dismissed with something approximating derision by a court, at least in the case of one chap who seems to think that both jurisprudence and the rules of golf are matters of personal interpretation.

On paper, Al-Rumayyan’s latest entanglement could be viewed as a squabble between stooges for a despotic government. His accuser is Dr Saad Aljabri, the former chief of Saudi intelligence. Aljabri claims that companies under Al-Rumayyan’s control have been used to apply pressure on his family, and it’s not the first time an asset in the PIF portfolio has been implicated in nefarious activity. A charter jet company seized by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and transferred to Al-Rumayyan’s fund was later alleged to have been used in the murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi. There has been no suggestion that Al-Rumayyan was involved in that gruesome act, but there’s still reason for his business associates to be apprehensive.

Al-Rumayyan enjoys a reputation as a sophisticated, savvy dealmaker (his bankrolling of Greg Norman’s ego notwithstanding) but he’s like everyone else in Saudi Arabia’s state apparatus: a factotum for MBS. These are not people likely to demur if called upon to act on a matter close to the Crown Prince’s heart. There’s evidence of what MBS has been known to ask of loyalists — particularly those who have demonstrated proficiency with a bonesaw — so anyone who is in business with the Saudi fund can’t delay scanning the international news section until after they’re done with the funnies.

Whatever troublesome relationships the Tour has encountered in the past — say, a sponsoring bank that defrauds customers (Wells Fargo) or an occasional Ponzi schemer (Allen Stanford) — the wrongdoing wasn’t known in advance of contracts being signed. No blissful ignorance defense exists when it comes to the sovereign wealth fund of a government with a lousy human rights record. Nor does this situation mirror Saudi involvement in other sports, like F1 or cricket. There’s an enormous difference between sponsorship and ownership, and if agreement is reached with PIF, the U.S. and European tours — and the private investors of Strategic Sports Group — risk having to ‘own’ more than mere equity. Harvard Business School can’t teach one how to predict the perils of a direct relationship with an autocratic regime headed by a capricious prince who doesn’t take well to criticism. But then, it shouldn’t have to.

A blueprint exists in how to handle proximity to abuses, though. It has been furnished by the LIV golfers who slavishly refer to Al-Rumayyan as His Excellency, often shortened to “H.E.” in a hollow attempt to suggest familiarity that elevates them above serf status. The strategy is to brazen it out, prevaricate if questioned, insist the association is strictly commercial, and repeatedly point to other entities that also take Saudi investment. It works. The past few years have proven that revenue is exculpatory in the minds of many, based on the wretched assumption that everyone would overlook cruelties for cash if presented the option.

If a day arrives when Monahan is forced to explain his organization’s adjacency to another Saudi outrage, it shouldn’t be overlooked that this partnership wasn’t brought about by the imperial ambitions of executives in Ponte Vedra or Wentworth. It’s happening because the best players in the world feel entitled to compensation beyond their worth in any rational market. By presenting a ransom demand that only the Saudis will pay, golfers on the PGA Tour are forcing a deal that absolves them of individual decision-making responsibility. And if there’s a reputational price to be paid for that later, well, it’s like bad yardages or swing slumps. Someone else will take the fall.

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Lynch: What unites LIV Golf supporters and PGA Tour players? An eagerness to ignore inconvenient facts

LIV’s foot soldiers are trying to legitimize their folly. But PGA Tour facts are being glossed over, too.

The behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman has argued that people who are committed to a theory tend to dismiss inconvenient facts, preferring to believe that the facts are wrong rather than the theory. The Nobel laureate doesn’t want for supporting data in an era when alternative realities are constructed and vigorously defended in every sphere of daily life, and golf is providing its own book of evidence.

A comparatively inconsequential example came this week when Scottie Scheffler was voted the PGA Tour’s Player of the Year. Tin foil hatters like to hint at ballot tampering in Tour headquarters, but if there was a tipping of the scale here it probably came in the locker room. Scheffler had an outstanding season, but with twice as many victories and a major championship, Jon Rahm’s was clearly superior. Then Rahm quenched a sudden thirst to grow the game and jumped to LIV halfway through the two-week voting period in December, leaving his peers sufficient time to will into existence a more palatable reality, honoring the amiable Texan rather than giving the Spaniard a going-away gift.

Across town, LIV’s social media foot soldiers remain alert for opportunities to legitimize their folly. Rory McIlroy’s conciliatory comments about players who went to the Saudi-funded league were seized upon by knuckle-draggers as tantamount to an endorsement after years of scorn. McIlroy is conflict-averse and disarming by nature (traits not shared by all of his countrymen) and this wasn’t the first time he has lamented friendships that fractured in the past couple of years. His praise for Rahm’s “smart business move” was brandished as his blessing LIV when it was more an inadvertent illustration of how elite stars see this issue — as a straightforward, yay-or-nay commercial opportunity — compared to the existentially threatened rank-and-file on the tours they’re undermining for personal enrichment. Nor was McIlroy’s suggestion that he might one day play team golf any revelation. He’s spearheading just such a concept with Tiger Woods, theirs being more likely than LIV to seed whatever team component takes shape in the future.

Untroubled by this context, Greg Norman promptly thanked McIlroy for “falling on his sword,” albeit not in the manner that Jamal Khashoggi fell on the sword of the flaxen-haired finger puppet’s employer. To Norman, McIlroy’s placatory words represented proof that he has seen through the propaganda, that LIV’s ‘future of the game’ narrative is credible, that Norman isn’t helming a flailing exercise in sportswashing.

Facts be damned on that too. Regardless of what Norman and his band of bootlickers tell themselves, their Saudi overlords didn’t earn a spot at the negotiating table by dint of popular opinion or product quality, but by threats and profligacy. Several billion dollars later, the Public Investment Fund still can’t boast a league that engages fans or sponsors, as evidenced by viewership too paltry to report and revenue barely sufficient to cover Patrick Reed’s legal bills. All PIF has demonstrated is the ability to sabotage rivals by using LIV as a mechanism for taking willing, well-compensated hostages until the other tours are ready to negotiate terms.

Reliance on theories over facts isn’t limited to the LIV ecosystem but rather is increasingly apparent on the PGA Tour too. There appears to be a growing sentiment among members that the Tour landed in its current predicament because its leadership was short-sighted and flat-footed, too arrogant to engage the Saudis at the outset and too complacent to meet the challenge posed. There’s more than a kernel of truth in those charges, but the notion that the Tour ought to have quickly embraced the Saudis is specious. The DP World Tour did that by adding a Saudi stop to their schedule in 2019, by which time their new “partners” were already secretly plotting to supplant the European circuit with the Premier Golf League concept and use that as a beachhead to move against their U.S. counterparts. Jay Monahan had reason to stiff-arm the Saudis, having seen the intent was not to work within golf but to own it outright.

There’s ample blame to go around for the current debacle in professional golf, but it’s not being evenly assigned. The Tour’s capitulation on June 6 provides convenient cover for those committed to the theory that matters could have been settled sensibly long ago if only leaders had actually led. Monahan and his team deserve criticism but it’s a useful fiction to pretend that responsibility ends there. The most inconvenient fact remains this: the PGA Tour is humbling itself before an abhorrent regime because of the disloyalty and greed of its own players. No amount of self-serving theories will change that.

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Exclusive: PGA Tour narrows list of potential investors to five, including powerful ‘friends of golf’

From more than a dozen initial suitors, this list of five groups remain in the mix to be the primary investment partner.

The PGA Tour has winnowed the list of companies being considered as private equity partners in its new for-profit entity, and it includes some of the most prominent figures in American finance, Golfweek has learned. From more than a dozen initial suitors, five groups remain in the mix to be the primary investment partner in PGA Tour Enterprises, which was created with the June 6 announcement of a Framework Agreement with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, which is also expected to invest in the entity that could reshape the elite level of men’s professional golf.

The five companies still under consideration are: Fenway Sports Group (FSG), which is partnered with investors Steven Cohen and Arthur Blank; Liberty Strategic Capital; Acorn Growth Companies; Eldridge Industries; and a group of influential individuals being referred to as Friends of Golf. Beyond the five groups bidding to be the Tour’s main private equity partner, several other companies remain in the conversation as potential investors of additional capital.

Eight sources who spoke with Golfweek on the matter requested anonymity because they are not authorized to comment publicly on it. The sports and entertainment behemoth Endeavor was the only company to make public its interest in investing with the Tour, but the agency’s president, Mark Shapiro, told Sportico last week that its bid had been rejected.

Preferred options from the group of five will be presented to the PGA Tour’s board of directors for discussion, perhaps as early as next week.

“Generally that is the plan, give or take a bit of time,” said one person familiar with the process. The board is scheduled to meet next on Nov. 12 in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.

Of the remaining bidders, the most established track record in sports belongs to FSG, which owns the Boston Red Sox, Liverpool Football Club in the Premier League, and the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins. The company also recently invested in Boston Common, the team captained by Rory McIlroy in the soon-to-launch TGL indoor golf league. FSG’s bid to the Tour is supported by New York Mets owner Steven Cohen and Arthur Blank, whose assets include the Atlanta Falcons NFL team. Cohen and Blank also bought TGL teams earlier this summer.

Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank walks off the field against the Tennessee Titans during the second half at Nissan Stadium on Oct. 29, 2023. Mandatory Credit: Steve Roberts-USA TODAY Sports

Acorn Growth Company’s portfolio was built largely in the defense, intelligence and aerospace industries. Its U.S.-centric investment focus might appeal to the Tour as it attempts to counter claims by Sen. Richard Blumenthal that the Saudi deal amounts to a hostile takeover of an American institution by a foreign wealth fund. Among those attached to Acorn’s bid is Randall Stephenson, the former CEO of AT&T, who resigned from the board of the PGA Tour in July citing concerns about working with the Saudis.

Based in Washington, D.C., Liberty Strategic Capital is led by Steven Mnuchin, who served as Secretary of the Treasury during the Trump administration. Eldridge Industries, headed by Todd Boehly, owns the Los Angeles Dodgers and in May was part of a consortium that acquired the Premier League’s Chelsea Football Club. According to sources, the Friends of Golf group features a number of financial titans with a shared love of the game, including Wall Street legends George Roberts and Henry Kravis, along with several other individuals.

A source familiar with the intensely guarded process said all of the groups being considered are focused on a long-term relationship rather than on short-term returns. It is unclear what the specifics might be regarding ownership structures or potential value to players. A spokesperson for the PGA Tour declined to confirm any details on the remaining private equity parties or to comment on the ongoing process.

While the private equity component to a future deal is accelerating, multiple sources say negotiations with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund have been sluggish.

“Less than zero progress,” said one source with insight on the current status. Two other sources attribute the slow pace to the Saudis waiting to see how the private equity element takes shape, having calculated that a deal involving only the Tour and the PIF would be vulnerable to opposition by the Department of Justice on antitrust grounds.

The Framework Agreement has a Dec. 31 deadline to reach a definitive deal between the Tour and the PIF, but that date is widely expected to be pushed deep into 2024.

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Exclusive: PGA Tour taking over management of former Honda Classic, new title sponsorship on the verge of signing

A source says that by 2025, the Tour would like to have as many as 15 tournaments under its new for-profit management side.

The PGA Tour’s Championship Management division is on the verge of assuming control of one of its tournaments and it might not be the last as it shifts into an era of additional for-profit business ventures.

Golfweek has learned that the Tour told employees at the tournament formerly known as the Honda Classic, which has been tentatively re-named The Classic in The Palm Beaches, that it is taking ownership of the event and that employees would be kept on through at least this year’s tournament but will become Tour employees. The event is scheduled for Feb. 29 to March 3, 2024. Once the ink is dry on the contract, the Tour is expected to name Cognizant as the new title sponsor to replace the Japanese automaker.

The Tour has played at PGA National Golf Club since 2007 – and that will continue into the future – when IGP Sports & Entertainment Group assumed management of the event, bringing Barbara and Jack Nicklaus into the fold and with Children’s Healthcare Charity Inc., a 501-C3, as the host organization. In 2013, IMG Worldwide acquired IGP, and has run the event ever since. The Honda Classic was founded in 1972 as the Inverrary Classic with Jackie Gleason as its host.

Honda became the title sponsor in 1982 but, as first reported by Golfweek, said the 2023 edition would be its final year in that role. At the time, it was the longest-running sponsor on the Tour. According to a tournament director who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Honda was willing to pay $13 million per year to renew as title sponsor but balked when the Tour played hardball and demanded $15 million.

“The Tour thought it had a replacement waiting in the wings that was willing to pay the 15 (million) they were asking but they backed out,” the same source said.

Eric Cole tees off at the 17th hole during the third round of the 2023 Honda Classic at PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. (Photo: Andres Leiva/Palm Beach Post)

Staffers were told that the Tour’s decision to assume management of the event had to do with the failure to find a new title sponsor willing to pay the bills. But sources tell Golfweek that T-Mobile was set to sign a deal late last year to become the title sponsor as early as 2023 but that deal was squashed by AT&T, which is the Tour’s Official Marketing Partner in the telecommunications space and the longtime title sponsor of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. (At the time, AT&T was also the title sponsor of the AT&T Byron Nelson.)

A PGA Tour spokesperson confirmed that the event is close to securing a new sponsor.

“For fans and the community, the long-term future of The Classic in The Palm Beaches – one of the premier sports and entertainment events in the region – is secure. The PGA Tour is in the final stages of securing a title sponsor and transitioning operators, where the longstanding commitment to charitable giving – working closely with Children’s Healthcare Charity, Inc., will remain a pillar of the event. We look forward to presenting the best version of the PGA Tour’s South Florida event in 2024,” a Tour spokesperson told Golfweek in a text message.

There have been other recent suitors. While Carrier Co., a local company best known as a maker of air conditioning units, conducted talks about sponsoring the South Florida Tour stop, those conversations broke down when it wasn’t able to secure a “signature event” designation. There were also rumors after the framework agreement between the Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund was announced in June that Aramco could step in as the title sponsor. The Tour routinely conducts conversations with potential sponsors.

The Honda Classic attracted one of the best fields less than a decade ago but in recent years it has struggled to attract a world-class field. The 2021 tournament had just five top 50 players and two in the top 20. (This year’s edition improved to 12 of the top 50, but four of the top eight who live in northern Palm Beach County chose not to play.)

“You can’t keep selling a steak if you’re giving them a corn dog,” said a longtime contractor at the Honda Classic, who was familiar with the latest dealings.

Without a title sponsor in place, the Tour announced plans to underwrite the tournament in 2024. Tournament organizers are being asked to contribute $3 million from its reserves with the Tour paying the difference.

The Honda Classic distributed $7.2 million to more than 100 South Florida philanthropic organizations this year and more than $60 million in its history. Meanwhile, the Tour reached an agreement with Jack and Barbara Nicklaus that promises the Nicklaus Children’s Health Care Foundation, the primary charitable beneficiary of the tournament, will receive a grant of $2.5 million per year for the next five years.

“If it is accurate that the Tour is flying into a more for-profit world that goes against the original genesis of the Tour,” said one former tournament director with knowledge of the changes to be implemented. “That’s troubling.”

A source familiar with the situation said the 2023 total charitable sum was a result of net proceeds from the event combined with the tournament’s successful Birdies for Children program. It is possible the new arrangement could net a similar impact in the market for charity, although not guaranteed.

Less troubling is encouraging news for a new title sponsor. The Tour has renewed interest from Cognizant, an information technology services and consulting company. Cognizant already is a global partner of the Presidents Cup, a relationship that began in 2022 and extends through 2026, and a title partner of the LPGA’s Founders Cup.

“This event has been a staple in South Florida for 50 years, including the last 20 years in Palm Beach County, where it has made an incredible impact on local charities,” Jack and Barbara Nicklaus said in a statement to The Palm Beach Post.

“We are happy to hear that there will be a continued commitment to helping countless important causes, including our Nicklaus Children’s Health Care Foundation.”

According to multiple sources, the Tour is closing in on signing the company as the new title to a multi-year contract with a “discounted deal” for the first year but the Tour is waiting for the ink to dry on the contract to assume management of the event “so it can look like the tournament savior when it announces the new title.”

The kickoff to the Florida Swing may not be the only event the Tour takes over, according to a tournament director. Some of the other weaker events may be rolled into the for-profit side of the Tour’s business going forward. The host organization’s contract typically runs hand in hand with the title sponsor contract. As other contracts expire, the Tour will have the option to assume management. A source says the Tour told former Honda staffers that by the end of 2025, the Tour would like to have as many as 15 tournaments in the championship management division.

But will in the neighborhood of 2,000 tournament volunteers still fork over hundreds of dollars for uniforms and give of their time to fill the coffers of a for-profit entity, especially if the Tour goes through with its partnership with the Saudi-backed PIF?

“It’s hard enough getting the necessary volunteers as it is in a post-Covid world. How many do you think are going to sign up if there’s not millions of dollars staying in the community,” a tournament director said.

Change is coming and the Tour’s annual stop in South Florida may be the first of many tournaments to experience this brave new world.

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Lynch: No one in golf is certain about anything. Except LIV Golf’s Greg Norman and Phil Mickelson, of course

The cocksure bluster of Norman and Mickelson is less a credible promise than mere posturing.

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one,” wrote the eighteenth-century French philosopher Voltaire, who apparently lacked the foresight enjoyed by twenty-first-century propagandists Greg Norman and Phil Mickelson.

Uncertainty is the sole currency circulating in the golf world right now. About whether the PGA Tour’s Framework Agreement with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund will be consummated. About how radical the realignment of the game’s ecosystem will be. About the timeframe for obtaining clarity. About how private investment fits into the schematic. About the degree of dilution the Saudis will accept before losing face. About what the players on the Tour’s board will support. Ask any informed person about these issues and the one response you won’t get is confident assurances. They simply don’t know. The only precinct where bombastic certitude is the coin of the realm is LIV, as evidenced by comments from Norman and Mickelson this week at Trump Doral.

Since the announcement of the Framework Agreement almost five months ago, Norman has been so uncharacteristically muted that his ultimate employer may have enjoined him to silence, though not as permanently as he did Jamal Khashoggi. Clearly, the flaxen-haired finger puppet hasn’t spent those months in quiet contemplation of troubling facts. “All indications show you that the position of LIV has never been stronger and the position and success of our players and our brand has never been in a better place,” he said in Miami.

What those indicators are, he didn’t share. In reality, his product still has no audience of scale, has attracted no announced buyers for team franchises, despite Bubba Watson insisting he’s besieged by interested parties, and presents a risible broadcast that makes North Korean state television seem comparatively nonpartisan, and for which it no longer publishes viewership figures. The only thing LIV can boast, in abundance, is something that seldom galvanizes genuine fans in any sport: cash.

“The business model works,” Norman added, displaying the kind of bulletproof confidence he could have used on many a second Sunday in April. Perhaps LIV has “never been stronger,” but that owes less to Norman’s management or product quality than to the fact that its sole benefactor views it as a useful (for now) vehicle to legitimacy in the sport.

Mickelson, for his part, deserves a Rosie the Riveter-style poster in his likeness, so dependable is he in shilling for the cause. “I’m excited about who’s coming for next year,” he said last week. “Over time, we’ll just keep getting better and better, and getting better players.”

That’s as proximate to a truthful statement as Mickelson has been for some time. There will be new players because LIV announced that at least four members of the current roster will be relegated. It’s also accurate to claim that the quality of players will improve since any new recruits presumably won’t stink as much as those being benched. Asked on Wednesday if he thinks there will be a new movement of players to LIV, Mickelson replied: “Do I think that? No, I know that’s going to happen. When players look at LIV, they want to be a part of it.”

The issue is, of course, the caliber of any new recruits. Is there a single needle-mover willing to make the leap?

2023 LIV Golf Adelaide — Greg Norman, commissioner of LIV Golf ahead at The Grange Golf Club on April 20, 2023 in Adelaide, Australia. (Photo by Sarah Reed/Getty Images)

Norman said he’s targeting seven top stars. “The players on the PGA Tour that we are speaking to today want to be liberated. Those conversations are ongoing,” he said.

My bad.

Norman didn’t say that last week.

He said it a year ago, at the same tournament.

Last week’s version of the script went like this: “Personally myself, I’m speaking to numerous players who want to come on with LIV … So we’re getting a lot of expressions of interest from individuals.”

His recitation has become golf’s Waiting for Godot, in which he anticipates the arrival of a central character who never shows.

It’s feasible that an elite star is out there and ready to sign with LIV. The Framework Agreement had a clause halting LIV’s poaching of players, but that stipulation was dropped after Department of Justice scrutiny. Yet what are the odds a top player will jump now amid such ambiguity on the future relationship between the tours? And how likely are the Saudis to imperil negotiations by making such a play? Whoever joins LIV over the winter probably won’t be anyone who sells tickets or draws eyes. The only league signing stars is TGL, the tech-centric outfit backed by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy and partnered with the PGA Tour. Almost every player on Norman’s wish list has committed, which suggests that any team component in a future ecosystem will be seeded from TGL, not LIV. The cocksure bluster of Norman and Mickelson on LIV’s prospects is less a credible promise than mere posturing to comfort the players they have stranded in competitive irrelevance.

The future of professional golf has never been more uncertain or more volatile, a reality that impacts every tour and its members. And just about the only thing all of those players can be sure about is that anyone who “knows,” who claims to see many chess moves ahead, is simply manufacturing a self-serving fantasy.

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Golf gone wild? Ryder Cup, PGA Tour stories show golf might be missing a little civility

The new adage might be that golf is a five-letter word. And that word is chaos.

An old line in sports is that golf is a four-letter word. That saying is no doubt from all the words you might hear on a golf course from all the golfers in the world hitting bad shots.

But the new adage might be that golf is a five-letter word. And that word is chaos. Nowhere has the chaos that is engulfing the golf world been more obvious than in the last month.

What once was a sport with a reputation for sportsmanship, civility and good fellowship is showing cracks at the professional level. Sniping, name-calling and greed seem to have taken over.