HAMILTON, Ontario – Could progress be in the offing for the ongoing negotiations between the PGA Tour and Saudi Public Investment Fund?
Adam Scott, a PGA Tour player director, has had a seat at the table this year, and as recently as two weeks ago even he said he is perplexed at how the negotiations have stretched into June. When asked at his pre-tournament press conference at the Charles Schwab Challenge about the future of professional golf, he struggled to give a complete answer.
The problem? He said he was still waiting to hear PIF’s end game.
“I think the PGA Tour has a vision of what it wants to look like 12, 18 (months) and then going forward, five, 10 and 20, you know, or at least 10 years down the line, let’s say, and what it should evolve into,” he said. “But at the moment there’s another party that they’re negotiating with that has to believe in that vision as well, and I don’t know exactly what their vision is.”
Speaking to Golfweek at the RBC Canadian Open, Scott said he was confident he will learn that vision soon.
“I think we are getting there, for sure,” Scott said. “Eventually someone is going to have to put it out exactly what it is, and I think that will happen very soon. I think so. You have to break the ice, kind of, and someone has to show a hand. It’s got to happen soon. It’s moving along as quickly as it can.”
When Scott was pushed on if he really believed that the negotiations – which technically began nearly a year ago with the signing of the Framework Agreement on June 6 – were moving fast enough, he said, “It’s not all up to us on our schedule. The head of the PIF sits on 125 boards or something. He’s busy, too. Some would say the buck stops with him and he has to make some decisions on what he’s investing in.”
The PGA Tour already 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 PIF’s Yasir 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 to unify men’s professional golf. Tiger Woods and Jordan Spieth, both fellow Tour player directors, disagreed with Dunne and called that a false narrative.
“It’s ongoing, it’s fluid, it changes day-to-day,” Woods said ahead of the PGA Championship last month. “Has there been progress? Yes. But it’s an ongoing negotiation, so a lot of work ahead for all of us with this process, and so we’re making steps, and it may not be giant steps, but we’re making steps.”
Added Spieth: “I just continue to kind of chuckle, because I only feel positive momentum when we’re having these internal conversations, and then every time anything comes from the outside world it’s the opposite, and it just kind of makes me chuckle a bit because it’s a bit frustrating.”
A source for Golfweek said that “very soon” could be as early as next week. The Memorial, the next stop on the PGA Tour and hosted by Jack Nicklaus at Muirfield Village in Dublin, Ohio, is typically a gathering spot of leaders of the golf world, and talks could accelerate at Jack’s Place.
A source told Golfweek that the question is how much will the players on the board be willing to compromise? And how much money is PIF prepared to lose?
“It’s who blinks first,” a source said. “It’s not rosy in either camp, so empower Jay (Monahan), put him in a room with Yasir and do a deal.”