PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan delivered his annual State of the Tour address Wednesday before the first round of the Tour Championship, the season-ending event in Atlanta.
Monahan talked about innovations the Tour is making in production of Tour events, talked about players being more engaged as equity in the Tour and how strong the Tour’s schedule is with a balance of signature events and full-field events.
But the question that many golf fans wanted answered remained unanswered: When is men’s professional golf going to be united again after two years of the split between the PGA Tour and the LIV Tour?
It’s not that reporters didn’t ask plenty of questions about how negotiations are going with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund. It’s not like reporters didn’t ask about what negotiations are taking place 15 months after the initial announcement of a framework agreement with the PIF, if there is a deadline for negotiations or if the Tour has decided on a path for players to return from the LIV Tour if their contracts with the PIF come to an end. It’s just that tour officials provided no answers to those questions.
Monahan and those around him simply skirted the issue, mostly falling back on the idea of not wanting to negotiate in public and saying that the negotiations are complex and will proceed at their own pace. Those answers might be fine for a boardroom, but it is not great when you are trying to convince fans to continue to watch a product that is not as strong as it was a year ago.
The Tour might dispute that statement, but then again the Tour a year ago had Jon Rahm as a member before he moved to LIV. Bryson DeChambeau isn’t on the PGA Tour anymore, either, and he happens to have won the U.S. Open in June. The PGA Tour has elite players who are having terrific years, like Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele and Rory McIlroy. But the Tour would be stronger with Rahm and DeChambeau and maybe one or two other LIV players.
Fans need more information
I still run into people who say they are far less interested in the PGA Tour since the split with LIV that started in 2023. Too many people are still saying they watch less golf than they have in the past. They are not watching LIV golf, either, if you believe the minuscule television ratings for that tour. One or two people I talk to say they just don’t watch PGA Tour golf at all anymore, limiting their viewing to the major championships. Ratings for PGA Tour events seemed…
..
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Golfweek…