Seven weeks ago a deal between the PGA Tour and the Public Investment Fund seemed not even close to being on the table. Then PGA Tour Policy Board members Ed Herlihy and Jimmy Dunne met with the PIF and there would be four in-person meetings and a number of video calls and phone conversations. The Tour’s commissioner Jay Monahan explained that the first conversation was the most important one and, encouraged to join a follow-up meeting, that’s when it began to materialise.
In the space of those seven weeks the PGA Tour have now reached a framework agreement with the PIF and DP World Tour.
Unlikely as it seemed this was always on the cards but, in most people’s eyes, it would come about years down the line. So why have the PGA Tour ‘merged’ now with the PIF?
The Court Case
An anti-trust lawsuit first surfaced in August 2022 when 11 players – Bryson DeChambeau, Matt Jones, Peter Uihlein, Phil Mickelson, Talor Gooch, Hudson Swafford, Carlos Ortiz, Abraham Ancer, Pat Perez, Jason Kokrak and Ian Poulter – all filed. Soon after LIV Golf joined the lawsuit and not long after the PGA Tour followed up with a countersuit. LIV sued the PGA Tour for bad faith and ‘egregious interference with LIV Golf’s contractual and prospective business relationships’.
In the original ground-breaking joint statement it read: ‘Today’s announcement will be followed by a mutually agreed end to all pending litigation between the participating parties’.
‘Better together’
One of the very simple facts about the past 18 months is the huge amount of disruption between tours at odds with one another. It’s been the main talking point in Major weeks and, according to the PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, the element of moving forward was a key one. And a very fruitful one financially.
“We just realised that we were better off together than we were fighting or apart, and by thinking about the game at large and eliminating a lot of the friction that’s been out there and doing this in a way where we can move forward, we can move forward and grow the PGA Tour, and I’m excited about the changes that we’re going to make coming into 2024,” Monahan explained in his Tuesday press conference.
“It put us in a position where, again, we’re in control, we have an investor, and ultimately for the game, we’re moving forward constructively. If you look at the values of the game, I think that’s what the situation warranted.”
How the PGA Tour will move the game forward remains to be seen but, with all the…
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