What golf’s future with PGA Tour, PIF and LIV Golf looks like?

LOS ANGELES — What is it about the U.S. Open being a magnet for controversy emerging all around the championship, some on them, most of it out of their control?

Like a year ago, when LIV Golf played its first event prior to the U.S. Open, and all the pre-tournament chatter at the Open was about suspensions and blood money. And this year, the announcement that rocked the golf world came nine days before the first tee shot was launched at the Los Angeles Country Club.

And of course, there was the course itself, drawing criticism from heavy hitters like Brooks Koepka, Victor Hovland and Matthew Fitzpatrick. But then again, the last thing anyone wants to hear is the greatest golfers in the world whining about course conditions.

“There’s just too many holes for me where you’ve got blind tee shots and then you’ve got fairways that don’t hold the ball,” Fitzpatrick, the Jupiter resident, said. “There’s too much slope.”

Fitzpatrick, I’m guessing, is a much bigger fan of The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, where he won last year’s U.S. Open. He was 1 under after three rounds this year, but, apparently, that’s not easy enough.

Complaints about the course are a minor distraction for any tournament. But playing a major championship with uncertainty surrounding the future of golf popping up a week prior takes that distraction to another level.

The main focus at the start of last week was the fallout from the announcement the Tour and Saudi’s Public Investment Fund, which bankrolls LIV Golf, signed an agreement to form a new entity that combines their commercial interests.

At stake now (as the PGA Tour starts to wind down its season and focuses on the final major of the year, the British Open, and playoffs) is how golf will look in 2024 and beyond.

Will some PGA Tour events incorporate LIV’s team concept? Will LIV exist as it has the last year and continue to hold its 54-hole, no-cut events with the blessing of the PGA Tour? Will it be forced to scale back the schedule? What penalties will those golfers who chose the money grab over the PGA Tour suffer as they return to the Tour?

Or will LIV go away completely, the money man behind the league, PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan, content with paying billions just to hold a seat on the PGA Tour board of directors and shape some policy?

And will PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan purchase a one-way ticket back to Australia for his LIV Golf nemesis, Greg Norman?