Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has failed in an attempt to persuade the PGA Tour to deliver serious concessions in exchange for a $1.5bn (£1.14bn) investment, leaving elite golf no closer to reconciliation just days from the season’s first major.
The PGA Tour’s stance will give credence to the rising sense that the organisation has increasing confidence in its position after a turbulent period caused by the formation of the Saudi-backed LIV Tour.
Sources indicate that in correspondence sent to the PGA Tour last week, PIF sought assurances the LIV circuit could continue to operate and that its governor, Yasir al-Rumayyan, could take a place as co-chairman of PGA Tour Enterprises. In exchange, PIF would invest $1.5bn in PGA Tour Enterprises, the commercial entity created after peace appeared to have broken out in summer 2023. The $1.5bn has been planned to match identical investment from the US-based Strategic Sports Group.
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The PGA Tour replied to PIF’s demands on Monday, with neither deemed acceptable. Those with detailed knowledge of the situation stress reunification of golf is the PGA Tour’s core aim, a matter that is hardly assisted by LIV continuing in its present form. There would also be understandable unease within the PGA Tour should Rumayyan, whose organisation has bankrolled LIV, be afforded such a prominent position as the breakaway tour continues on its own path.
