Yasir al-Rumayyan – Page 3 – Syndication Server

Playing with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, LIV Golf’s Peter Uihlein firmly in hunt at DP World Tour event

Were there any juicy discussions between Al-Rumayyan and Slumbers about Saudi involvement in the future of the game?

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — Not since the bold Maurice Flitcroft tried to hoax his way into Open qualifying back in the day by using fake names and false mustaches has there been such intrigue whipped up by a golfing nom de plume.

Here at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, the pseudonym “Andrew Waterman” had appeared on the drawsheet for the $5 million Pro-Am contest only to be altered at the last minute to reveal the true identity of the amateur player in question.

It was Yasir Al-Rumayyan. Not quite a humble crane operator from Barrow like Flitcroft then, but the man in charge of the colossal purse strings of the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) which bankrolls the LIV Golf Series.

It was fitting, therefore, that Peter Uihlein, one of four LIV rebels competing this week, ended up in a share of the lead after the first day of the event. He added a 72 on Friday and now sits five shots behind leader Matt Fitzpatrick.

Uihlein, invited to the event by Dunhill Links supremo Johann Rupert, had Al-Rumayyan as his amateur partner in a group that also included the R&A’s chief executive, Martin Slumbers.

So, were there any juicy discussions between Al-Rumayyan and Slumbers about Saudi involvement in the future of the game as they ambled up towards their respective balls in the mounds of Miss Grainger’s Bosoms on the Old Course’s 15th?

We will never know because a stern-faced private security guard swiftly intervened when the small gathering of golf writers approached Al-Rumayyan for a quick blether at the conclusion of the opening round.

Peter Uihlein surges with 3 birdies in his last 4 holes @carnoustiegolf to also join the lead on -10. pic.twitter.com/NVM5JuHoU5

— Alfred Dunhill Links Championship (@dunhilllinks) October 6, 2023

Al-Rumayyan did manage to say, “It’s a great thing,” before being carted off. Presumably, that was about the opportunity to play the Dunhill Links. Or perhaps he was just expressing delight at escaping from the pesky golf scribblers?

As for Uihlein? Well, he let his clubs do the talking. A rebel with a cause and all that. It was on the Old Course 10 years ago that Uihlein came within a whisker of a magical 59 on his way to a second-place finish in the Dunhill Links Championship. A lot has happened since then.

Along with a host of global big guns, Uihlein sacrificed his PGA Tour membership to defect to the breakaway LIV Series last year as the golfing landscape at the top of the professional game was rocked by the kind of earth-shattering event that was akin to the impact of the mega-meteor that obliterated the dinosaurs.

In the turbulent months that followed, the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and the PIF, which is governed by Al-Rumayyan, announced an armistice and unveiled plans to work together. On the eve of the Dunhill Links, the aforementioned Rupert was reported to say that, “sport is supposed to unite people, not divide, we need to get peace.”

Uihlein, a former DP World Tour rookie of the year when he was cutting his teeth in Europe, agreed with those sentiments. Asked if the professional game could leave the rancor and division behind, he said: “I hope so. I think Mr. Rupert nailed it in his quotes. Golf brings people together. Time will tell.

“I’m not privy to what goes on behind closed doors. It’s nice that Johann extended an olive branch and he (Al-Rumayyan) is here.”

Uihlein’s cracking opening round on the Old Course included four birdies in his first five holes as well as a raking birdie putt of almost 50 feet on the 14th.

“I’m just trying to make the most of a good opportunity,” added Uihlein, who was 10th here a year ago.

As for partnering with his Saudi paymaster?

“All the other LIV boys were on the other courses so it was nice to have a bit of comfort out there,” he smiled. “I didn’t feel like the only one.”

[lawrence-auto-related count=1 tag=451198440]

5 things we learned from ‘LIV and Let Die: The inside story of the war between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf’ excerpt

Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and more were discussed in the 3,000-word excerpt.

The two-and-a-half-year battle for professional golf supremacy between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf has been the game’s biggest story since Tiger Woods stormed onto the scene nearly 30 years ago.

Backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the circuit threw its money around and disrupted the sport, forming a chasm that divided players and fans alike.

The turbulent time has been featured in a new book from Alan Shipnuck, titled “LIV and Let Die: The Inside Story of the War Between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf.” A 3,000-word excerpt from the book, set to be released on Oct. 17, 2023, was posted on the Fire Pit Collective on Wednesday and details everything from the first letter sent by then-Golf Saudi CEO Majed Al-Sorour to the framework agreement that’s still yet to be passed.

Here’s what we learned from the excerpt (you can pre-order the book here).

LIV Golf chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan reportedly playing Alfred Dunhill Links Championship under false name

Al-Rumayyan will play under a pseudonym and in the same group as the DP World Tour’s chief executive.

LIV Golf chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan will play in this week’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship on the DP World Tour under a false name, according to a report on Wednesday in the Scotsman.

Al-Rumayyan, the 53-year-old governor of Saudi Arabia’s lucrative Public Investment Fund (PIF), was invited by Johann Rupert, the South African billionaire and man behind the pro-am event held annually at Carnoustie, Kingsbarns and St. Andrews. Listed under the pseudonym Andrew Waterman, Al-Rumayyan will play alongside LIV Golf’s Peter Uihlein and in the same group as R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers. Fellow LIV players Laurie Canter, Talor Gooch and Louis Oosthuizen are also in the field as non-members playing on sponsor invites.

“Sport is supposed to unite people, not divide,” Rupert, the chairman of Dunhill’s parent company Richemont and also chairman of the event’s championship committee, told The Scotsman. “We need to get peace.”

Al-Rumayyan, also the chairman of Saudi Aramco as well as Premier League team Newcastle United, played in the Alfred Dunhill event last year, as well. If the framework agreement between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and PIF is accepted and pushed through, Al-Rumayyan will be the chairman of the board of the new for-profit company created by the agreement.

“It was suggested to me a while ago that I should extend an invitation to (Al-Rumayyan), but I only got confirmation last week to say he would be playing,” said Rupert.

[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=451198867]

Congressional probe digging deeper on LIV Golf fund poses questions about American investments

Disclosures show that PIF’s public U.S. holdings have increased from $2.3 billion in March 2019 to $35.5 billion in March 2023.

As a congressional probe continues to dig into the financial inner workings of the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, some interesting facts have surfaced on the size of the sovereign fund and its growth under Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan.

On Wednesday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the chair of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, issued a subpoena to PIF’s wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary in search of documents that would pertain to the fund’s deal with the PGA Tour.

According to a memorandum from Blumenthal, D-Conn., after Al-Rumayyan took control of the fund back in 2015, it grew from 40 employees to nearly 1,500 employees (as of 2021). Also, the fund now has $776 billion in assets under management, up more than five times from the $152 billion it had under its directive in 2015.

According to Blumenthal, this growth, some through holdings in American-based companies, should make the governor eligible for questioning by the subcommittee.

“The Saudi’s Public Investment Fund cannot have it both ways: if it wants to engage with the United States commercially, it must be subject to United States law and oversight,” Blumenthal said. “That oversight includes this Subcommittee’s inquiry.”

Yasir Al-Rumayyan, head of the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, at the 2023 LIV Golf Invitational – DC at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia. (Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images)

According to the memo, a move for PIF to obtain a large stake in the PGA Tour is just the latest of a series of shielded investments that should be raising eyebrows.

From the memo:

Visibility into PIF’s U.S.-based investments is greatly limited. The only information that PIF must report to the public about its U.S. investments is through required disclosures of investments in publicly-traded companies to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). These disclosures show that PIF’s public U.S. holdings have increased from $2.3 billion in March 2019 to $35.5 billion in March 2023. This $35.5 billion-dollar figure does not include the disclosure of private transactions. …

This lack of visibility is troubling for a number of reasons. First, there is potential to use investment to suppress unfavorable narratives about Saudi Arabia. For example, just this week reports emerged stating that Vice Media removed an unfavorable documentary regarding Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after it merged with a Saudi Arabian government-owned media company. Determining whether there are connections between investment and the suppression of speech and guarding against their intended effects is impossible without knowing where and how Saudi Arabia is invested in the United States, and much of its investment is through PIF. Beyond outright suppression of potentially negative press, investment can also be used as a tool of influence to promote positive stories and thereby suppress or distract from negative ones.

PIF’s PGA Tour investment fits in this bucket because it appears to be a classic attempt at a practice known as “sportswashing,” a “phenomenon whereby political leaders use sports to appear important or legitimate on the world stage while stoking nationalism and deflecting attention from chronic social problems and human-rights woes on the home front.” More visibility about PIF’s U.S. investments is also needed to guard against efforts like this and to allow Americans to know the true source of favorable reporting.

Earlier this month, PIF retained a high-powered Washington D.C. lobbying firm to help shield Yasir Al-Rumayyan from having to speak publicly. The firm marked the sovereign fund’s pushback against the probe, insisting that some of the inquiry is subject to immunity.

In June, the PGA Tour announced groundbreaking news that it was forming a new commercial entity with the goal of unifying golf with the help of PIF.

From the PGA Tour’s release: “The parties have signed an agreement that combines PIF’s golf-related commercial businesses and rights (including LIV Golf) with the commercial businesses and rights of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour into a new, collectively owned, for-profit entity to ensure that all stakeholders benefit from a model that delivers maximum excitement and competition among the game’s best players.”

PIF was expected to make an investment into the new entity “to facilitate its growth and success” and will initially be the exclusive investor alongside the PGA Tour, LIV Golf and the DP World Tour. PIF will also have the exclusive right to further invest in the new entity, including a right of first refusal on any new capital that may be invested in the entity.

[lawrence-auto-related count=1 tag=451201730]

Senate to examine pending PGA Tour deal, Saudi Arabian PIF’s investments in U.S.

PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan once again denied a request to testify before the subcommittee.

The Senate investigations subcommittee has scheduled a hearing for Sept. 13 to further address the pending deal between the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund and the PGA Tour.

Titled “The PGA Tour LIV Deal: Examining the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund’s Investments in the United States,” the meeting is set to begin at 10 a.m. ET at Dirksen Senate Office Building.

According to Front Office Sports, no one from the PGA Tour has been requested to appear again thus far. But PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan once again denied a request to testify before the subcommittee.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the subcommittee chairman, asked Al-Rumayyan to testify before the committee since June, when the two entities shocked the golf world by announcing an agreement to form a new commercial entity in conjunction with the DP World Tour.

In a letter dated Aug. 16, Blumenthal once again asked the PIF governor to testify before the committee on Sept. 13 or propose an alternate date. Akin Gump Strauss & Feld, the firm legally representing PIF, declined on behalf of its client on Aug. 23 in a letter first reported by Politico.

“The PIF is proud of its investments, and believes that its support for forward-thinking companies will facilitate growth, economic opportunity, and job creation in the United States, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and around the world,” wrote Akin Gump partner Raphael Prober in the letter.

“As the governor of an instrumentality of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and a minister bound by the Kingdom’s laws regarding the confidentiality of certain information, however, [Al-Rumayyan] cannot participate in any public hearing that is part of an unbounded inquiry into the PIF’s past, present, and future interests and investments.”

The PGA Tour and the PIF-back LIV Golf had been in litigation until it released a framework for its deal in June. The parties have until Dec. 31 to finalize a deal.

Lobbyists on behalf of the Tour had denounced the rising Saudi influence in the game of golf, but now the Tour is spending record sums on The Hill to win approval of the deal.

The Tour spent $460,000 on federal lobbying in the first six months of 2023, more than the $450,000 it spent on lobbying in all of 2022, according to federal lobbying disclosures analyzed by the money-in-politics tracking nonprofit OpenSecrets.

[lawrence-auto-related count=3 tag=451197622]

LIV Golf signs on high-powered D.C. lobbying firm amid congressional probe

A representative of Akin Gump said Al-Rumayyan should not be forced to take part in any future hearings.

As a congressional probe into LIV Golf and the Saudi Arabia-backed Public Investment Fund (PIF) continues to press for testimony from the fund’s governor, a high-powered Washington D.C. lobbying firm has been retained to help shield Yasir Al-Rumayyan from having to speak publicly.

According to Politico, Akin Gump Strauss & Feld has been retained by PIF as the sovereign fund pushes back against the probe, insisting that some of the inquiry is subject to immunity.

In June, PGA Tour Chief Operating Officer Ron Price and board member Jimmy Dunne were sworn in at a Senate subcommittee hearing in Washington D.C. to discuss the proposed deal between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and PIF.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., is the chairman of the committee and has been publicly critical of the deal, which is expected to unite the two once-warring factions in golf under the same commercial umbrella.

According to Politico, a representative of Akin Gump said Al-Rumayyan should not be forced to take part in any future hearings.

Raphael Prober, a lawyer at the firm, wrote to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) on behalf of the Saudi’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), arguing that the governor of the fund “cannot participate in any public hearing that is part of an unbounded inquiry into the PIF’s past, present, and future interests and investments.”

Blumenthal, who chairs the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, has requested testimony from PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan since June.

“An unprecedented effort by the Subcommittee to compel [Al-Rumayyan’s] appearance and testimony would not only disrupt the delicate balance of foreign relations and international diplomacy, but would also compromise the prerogatives of the Executive Branch,” Prober wrote in the letter.

Prober, a partner at Akin Gump, co-heads the firm’s congressional investigations division.

His letter, dated Aug. 23 but filed with the Justice Department on Aug. 30, is the latest volley in PIF’s back-and-forth with Blumenthal’s subcommittee over Al-Rumayyan’s potential testimony, as part of an inquiry into the wealth fund’s U.S. investments. The subcommittee launched a probe after the announcement in June that the PIF-financed LIV Golf league and PGA Tour planned to join forces after months of bitter infighting between the two ventures.

LIV Golf Chicago — LIV Golf Series CEO Greg Norman stands with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Governor of Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, at the LIV Golf Series Invitational event in Chicago on Sept. 18, 2022, Rich Harvest Farms in Illinois. (Photo: Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press)

According to previous reporting, the Tour sent a six-page document to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, previous to the hearing that outlined the potential framework of the deal. here are some of the main points of the deal:

LIV Golf’s future will be decided by the new entity’s board that will be controlled by a Tour majority.
A “Communications Committee” will be created that will “help facilitate a smooth business transition” and “coordinate and manage communications” between PIF, LIV and the PGA Tour.
The PIF will be “a premier corporate sponsor” of the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and other international tours, and will be a title sponsor for at least one event.
More from the agreement to create a new global golf entity, which they reference as “NewCo:”

[lawrence-auto-related count=1 tag=451197622]

Yasir Al-Rumayyan, R&A’s Martin Slumbers secretly met during 2023 British Open

R&A officials confirmed the meeting but would not provide comment on a private discussion.

[anyclip pubname=”2122″ widgetname=”0016M00002U0B1kQAF_M8171″]

Brian Harman’s stellar performance to lift the Claret Jug and claim the 2023 Open Championship last week provided a break from the ongoing news surrounding the pending deal between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

However, during Sunday’s final round, PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan and associate Amanda Staveley met with R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers at Royal Liverpool in Hoylake, England. The news was first reported by the Telegraph and confirmed by Golfweek, though R&A officials would not provide comment on a private discussion.

Al-Rumayyan and Staveley were secretly brought to the property with the help of an R&A sponsor, but reports state the meeting was more “symbolic than substantive.”

Slumbers spoke about Saudi money and its place in golf last week ahead of the opening round of the final men’s major championship of the year, saying he was “very open” to talk to “various potential sponsors.”

“We have a number of large corporate partners that help us make this thing happen. I think the world has changed in the last year. It’s not just golf. You’re seeing it in (soccer). You’re seeing it in F1. You’re seeing it in cricket. I’m sure tennis won’t be that far behind,” said Slumbers. “The world of sport has changed dramatically in the last 12 months, and it is not feasible for the R&A or golf to just ignore what is a societal change on a global basis. We will be considering within all the parameters that we look at all the options that we have.’’

Newcastle United’s chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan (L) and minority owner Amanda Staveley (C) and Manchester United co-chairman Avram Glazer (R) before a match at Wembley Stadium on February 26, 2023. (Photo by Glyn Kirk/AFP)

Due to the PIF being its primary and longtime sole investor, LIV Golf was criticized as just another way for Saudi Arabia to “sportswash” its controversial human rights record, same with the PIF’s purchase of Premier League team Newcastle United, of which Al-Rumayyan is the chairman and Staveley is a co-investor.

PGA Tour executive admits ‘regret’ after mishandled announcement of Saudi Arabia deal

PGA Tour Chief Operating Officer Ron Price will face a U.S. Senate hearing on the framework agreement on Tuesday.

[anyclip pubname=”2122″ widgetname=”0016M00002U0B1kQAF_M8171″]

A day before the United States Senate hearing on the proposed deal involving the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, PGA Tour Chief Operating Officer – and interim leader in Commissioner Jay Monahan’s absence – Ron Price wrote an op-ed in the Athletic that previews the Tuesday hearing on Capitol Hill and argues the framework agreement is the best option for the Tour going forward.

Price began by propping up the Tour’s mission and platform while noting its charitable impact before he dug into the tumultuous two years since LIV Golf joined the fray with the financial support of the PIF. Players and fans alike were shocked by the groundbreaking news of the deal, and the reaction was loud.

“Given the well-chronicled legal disputes that have existed between the PGA Tour and PIF, we understand the fair and valid questions raised by PGA Tour members, Tour partners, media, fans and now Congress,” wrote Price. “As we have moved beyond costly and destructive litigation (which the framework agreement resolved) and are now exploring whether we can reach a definitive agreement, we are committed to answering those questions and showing how this deal will benefit professional golf – particularly our players, fans, and partners.”

However, the Tour didn’t have an answer for those questions after PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan joined Monahan on CNBC on June 6 to announce the news despite the fact the framework agreement was signed an entire week earlier. A month later, details are still few and far between surrounding the agreement. Price blamed the negative reaction on “misinformation or misunderstanding” and said the Tour took ownership of the botched announcement. He also hedged the completion of the deal multiple times.

Framework agreement leaks for PGA Tour partnership with DP World Tour, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund

While some questions have been answered with regard to the partnership, plenty more still remain.

[connatix div_id=”3f8b015acdd24c648befc5d5dac47469″ player_id=”b5b22055-8c69-4186-8375-d8426b37ec56″ cid=”7cbcea0d-4ce2-4c75-9a8d-fbe02a192c24″]

The agreement between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund sent shockwaves through the golf world earlier this month.

Since the groundbreaking news, it’s been reported the U.S. Department of Justice is reviewing the proposed deal, same with the U.S. Senate. The leaders of the Tour, PIF and LIV Golf have even been invited to a senate hearing July 11, 2023.

Information has been slow to release over the last month, leaving players and fans with countless unanswered questions. On Monday night, the framework agreement leaked on Twitter and was first reported by The Athletic.

The document is just six pages long and was signed on May 30 – a week before the news broke on CNBC – after six weeks of negotiations by PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, DP World Tour CEO Keith Pelley and PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan. According to the report, the Tour sent the document to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and the Tour plans to participate in the hearing while the PIF’s actions are unknown.

Here’s what we learned from the framework of the deal:

LIV Golf’s future will be decided by the new entity’s board that will be controlled by a Tour majority.
A “Communications Committee” will be created that will “help facilitate a smooth business transition” and “coordinate and manage communications” between PIF, LIV and the PGA Tour.
The PIF will be “a premier corporate sponsor” of the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and other international tours, and will be a title sponsor for at least one event.

More from the agreement to create a new global golf entity, which they reference as “NewCo:”

PIF will contribute their golf-related investments and assets, including LIV, to NewCo along with a cash investment, in exchange for the issuance to PIF of an equity ownership interest in NewCo at a fair value mutually agreed by the parties. Following the contribution of assets into NewCo, NewCo shall assume all of the liabilities and obligations of the contributed assets, provided that each Party’s contributed businesses will be valued in their totality, taking into account all liabilities, commitments, contributions and obligations made or incurred by the respective prior owners, including in respect of player contracts and other working capital and operating expenses. In addition, the PIF will make a cash investment in NewCo for an incremental ownership in order to fund the growth of NewCo which will include a right of first refusal on capital raised by NewCo, provided that, for the avoidance of doubt, the PGA Tour will at all times maintain a controlling voting interest in NewCo and PIF will continue to hold a non-controlling voting interest, notwithstanding any incremental investment by PIF or exercise of its right of first refusal.

The framework agreement between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour, and PIF. pic.twitter.com/utQK0JefYV

— No Laying Up (@NoLayingUp) June 27, 2023

The new information is in addition to what was already known: Monahan will be the CEO of the new venture, Al-Rumayyan will be the chair of the board, and PGA Tour board members Jimmy Dunne and Ed Herlihy – who helped construct the agreement – will complete the executive board. The PIF will be the sole investor and have right of first refusal to new money coming in. Players will be returning to the various Tours, but it’s still unclear what must happen before they are once again eligible.

While some questions have been answered with regard to the partnership, plenty more still remain.

[pickup_prop id=”33882″]

[lawrence-auto-related count=4 category=1375]

Lynch: The PGA Tour’s deal with the Saudis will be measured in what is lost, starting with reputations

Once a safe place for corporations to park their marketing dollars, pro golf is now a tainted space.

[connatix div_id=”3f8b015acdd24c648befc5d5dac47469″ player_id=”b5b22055-8c69-4186-8375-d8426b37ec56″ cid=”7cbcea0d-4ce2-4c75-9a8d-fbe02a192c24″]

It’s scarcely an exaggeration to wonder if more people have seen details of America’s classified national security plans than of the armistice between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, though perhaps some day we’ll learn that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is alone in being familiar with the particulars of both.

The conflict roiling golf was never destined to end in a clear-cut, binary manner with both parties raising hands, one in victory, the other in surrender. Even the broad strokes relayed about the agreement make it difficult to discern who wins and who saves face. Which is, one supposes, the point. Specifics are scarce because this deal is less about shaping a future vision than drawing a line under a current problem.

According to Jimmy Dunne, the Wall Street veteran and Tour board member who helped architect the arrangement, the Saudis have been granted only the right of first refusal on future investments and the chair of a new, for-profit joint venture, with no iron-clad promises beyond that. He said that Jay Monahan will oversee LIV and can disband it, despite Greg Norman, the CEO of the Saudi-funded circuit, telling his team that nothing changes. If so, Tuesday’s victory lap by LIV golfers was akin to frogs being tossed in boiling water and gloating about the warmth it provided.

On just one aspect were Monahan and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Saudi fund, explicitly clear: litigation between their organizations will end. And that’s really the reason for this chiffon settlement. Al-Rumayyan is no fool, his paying for Pat Perez notwithstanding. He can withdraw LIV’s antitrust claim against the Tour before the Ninth Circuit court of appeals affirms that his Fund is subject to the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. For his part, Monahan can end the legal costs – currently in the region of $50 million – that he told staff were unsustainable.

Whether the deal is actually consummated remains to be seen. It will need to clear more hurdles than Edwin Moses, both internally at the Tour and also with regulators. Department of Justice concerns about whether the Tour operates as a monopoly won’t be eased by this alliance, or by Monahan telling CNBC that it allowed the Tour to “take a competitor off the board.” Jodi Balsam, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, adds that regulatory review could require the same sensitive disclosures the Saudis have sought to avoid in the antitrust suit, and that refusal to comply would tank the deal. But by then, litigation will be withdrawn with prejudice and LIV will be dismantled.

Current problem > future vision, for both sides.

Regardless of what twists in the road lie ahead, the perception now exists that Saudi Arabia owns professional golf. Dunne has dismissed that notion, but he who signs billion-dollar checks – Al-Rumayyan, in this case – usually doesn’t concern himself with counting votes on the board. Once a safe place for corporations to park their marketing dollars, the sport is now a tainted space in which those who do business will face uncomfortable and unanswerable questions from their own stakeholders about human rights abuses, mass executions and sundry other atrocities.

Monahan can point to savings in the deal – chiefly the billable hours at white-shoe law firms – but in so many other ways the costs are immeasurable. The association with an abhorrent regime will surface in every partner meeting, in mocking commentary every time the Tour positions itself as inclusive or forward-thinking. This moral aspect matters less to Tour members and executives. Monahan torched their trust, but anger dissipates. If the settlement promises money, then he can survive as commissioner. But his faintly anguished look while sitting next to Al-Rumayyan revealed a man fully aware that his reputation won’t endure the abject about-face he performed.

If nothing else, at least Monahan looked pained at what has become of the PGA Tour. Which is more than can be said of the players whose naked greed and comically bloated idea of their worth in a niche sport created this mess.

[pickup_prop id=”33881″]