The excerpt claims that former Golf Saudi CEO Majed Al-Sorour twice tried to extend an olive branch to the PGA Tour. First, in March 2021, Al-Sorour had a meeting with Jack Nicklaus at the Bear’s Club, where he asked the 18-time major champion to reach out to PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan to discuss how “they might work together going forward,” according to a lawsuit.
“Mr. Nicklaus reached out to Mr. Monahan later that week,” the excerpt read, “and was told that the PGA Tour had no interest in collaborating with Golf Saudi.”
A month later Al-Sorour wrote a letter to Monahan, which read in part:
“I am writing in my capacity as lead advisor of a new golf enterprise. I want to introduce you to our proposition and outline its value as a prospective partner of the PGA Tour. We are proposing an innovative league featuring twelve “teams” of top talent competing head-to-head over 14 weeks, creating a new dimension for sports and stakeholders.”
Al-Sorour claimed to have “a very interested individual and group” and the new venture would “launch in 2022,” with or without the PGA Tour. More from the letter:
“I have respect for the PGA Tour and we view this as an opportunity for a collaboration that would grow the game. We’d like to arrange a sit-down with you to discuss our approach in more detail and highlight how this could represent value for you, your members, partners and community.”
Monahan, who never responded to the letter and never showed it to the Tour’s board of directors, called the letter “strange” given it had come on a blank sheet of paper and was postmarked from Oregon (the Tour later discovered Al-Sorour had what Shipnuck called “a paramour” in the Pacific Northwest). The excerpt makes the point that the letter was just unofficial enough that it gave Monahan the ability to “blow it off” and that, as commissioner, “he was not duty-bound to chase after a shadowy would-be competitor offering a nebulous deal.”
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