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PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan met with golfers Tuesday at TPC Southwind in Memphis, though it was rather uneventful and poorly attended.
Monahan, according to The Associated Press’ Doug Ferguson, offered very few details about the PGA Tour’s proposed partnership with LIV Golf and Saudi Arabia to the only 25 golfers that attended the meeting.
In fact, Tom Hoge left that meeting thinking that there was a “very real possibility” that such a deal doesn’t ever get done.
“There’s a lot of moving parts that have to come together for it,” Hoge said, via The Associated Press.
Monahan shocked the golf world in June when he announced plans that the Tour was going to form a partnership with the DP World Tour and LIV Golf. Since then, very few details have been provided about what that partnership will look like. Many players erupted after the news broke, too, and Monahan has received an incredible amount of backlash from inside the Tour and out.
A six-page framework agreement was later released, which gave a rough outline of the structure that the new golf entity would take. Under that plan, which is not finalized, Monahan will lead the entity and Yasir al-Rumayyan, governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, will be chairman of the board. The deal ends what has been a tumultuous battle in the sport, one that Monahan and other big names were deeply involved in.
Tiger Woods joined the Tour’s Policy Board as a player director last week, making him the sixth player on the board. There are five executives on the board, which in theory gives players the advantage. Rory McIlroy, Patrick Cantlay, Charley Hoffman, Peter Malnati and Webb Simpson are also on the board.
That deal isn’t finalized by any means, and both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Justice Department are investigating. Rickie Fowler said the question about what would happen if the deal never gets finalized was asked directly during Tuesday’s meeting.
“There are a lot of parts that have to come together,” Fowler said, via The Associated Press. “You obviously have to get a majority, if not unanimous, as far as board and player support. Yes, there are a lot of things that have to come together for this to happen, and I would say that you’d have to sell everyone on that this is the best option for the tour, for the players, for everyone moving forward. I’m not saying that’s not possible.”
Though it’s not clear when specifics about the partnership will come to light, if ever, Tuesday’s meeting was Monahan’s first in-person event with golfers since he returned to work last month following a medical emergency. He stepped away from the Tour one week after announcing the LIV Golf partnership.
Still, very few attended the meeting ahead of the FedEx St. Jude Championship — which officially kicks off the PGA Tour’s postseason. McIlroy walked in only a few minutes before the meeting ended, drenched in sweat after working out, and Cantlay didn’t go at all. They are the only two on the board who qualified for the FedEx St. Jude Championship.
“There’s still a whole lot that no one really knows, and we don’t know,” Fowler said, via The Associated Press. “It’s just continuing to trust that leadership and everyone is doing what’s best for all of us and the tour moving forward. Some of that was talked about in calls before this.
“There really wasn’t that many guys in the meeting, or less than I thought there would have been.”