Jimmy Dunne helped facilitate the PGA Tour-LIV Golf deal

Rory McIlroy said Wednesday that he first learned about the PGA Tour’s bombshell merger with Saudi-funded LIV Golf on a phone call at 6:30 a.m. the previous day.

The man on the other end of the line wasn’t McIlroy’s agent or a fellow player like Tiger Woods or even PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan. It was Jimmy Dunne.

Dunne, 66, might be more familiar on Wall Street than he is to the average sports fan. He primarily works as the vice chairman and senior managing principal at a well-regarded investment banking firm, Piper Sandler. Yet in the world of golf, he quietly looms large.

Dunne is a member of Augusta National and the president of the exclusive Seminole Golf Club. He’s played rounds with everyone from Phil Mickelson and Jordan Spieth to retired NFL quarterback Tom Brady. In a headline last year, after he was appointed to the PGA Tour’s policy board, Golf Digest dubbed him the sport’s “ultimate power broker.”

“The way Jimmy described (the PGA Tour-PIF deal) was, ‘Rory, sometimes you’ve got 280 (yards) over water and you’ve just got to go for it,’ ” McIlroy recalled of their 6:30 a.m. conversation. “And, you know, that’s what they did.”

Brokering the PIF-PGA Tour deal

As the proverbial shockwaves from Tuesday’s news continue to reverberate around golf, Monahan has largely been the one fielding questions from players and drawing the lion’s share of backlash over the deal, which centers on the outsized financial investment of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. But he noted in a news conference Tuesday that it was actually Dunne and PGA Tour board chairman Ed Herlihy who effectively served as the first point of contact for PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan.

“Because of the position I’ve been in and what we’ve been trying to do with our tour, I wanted to rely heavily on those two fine gentlemen to have that first conversation,” Monahan said. “But when they came back and said it was a positive conversation and that I should have a follow-up meeting, I think that’s when things started to develop.”

Neither Dunne nor Herlihy immediately responded to separate interview requests made Wednesday morning through a PGA Tour spokesperson and sent to their corporate email accounts.

Dunne’s role in brokering the deal was not entirely surprising, given that he carries significant sway in golf circles.

But it was surprising given his well-known past, and his previous comments about LIV Golf.