Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods set for giant PGA Tour payday by Saudi LIV traders

Golf stars like Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods who turned down a fortune to hitch the LIV Golf tour look set to be compensated after the breakaway outfit agreed to merge with the PGA Tour. The sport was hit by a bombshell final week when a joint assertion introduced that the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and LIV Golf had agreed to merge into one single entity.

The males’s sport has been locked in a civil battle for the reason that Saudi-funded LIV tour efficiently lured a bunch of big-name gamers away from the PGA Tour with enormous sign-on bonuses. But a number of the video games most recognisable stars together with McIlroy and Woods stayed loyal to the PGA circuit lacking out on a assured becoming a member of price of no less than £79m ($100m).

Those similar gamers have been left aghast by the prospect of the LIV tour rebels quickly rejoining their tour however solely after pocketing eight-figure sums elsewhere. However, it appears as if the likes of McIlroy, Woods, Jon Rahm and World No. 1 Scottie Sheffler are set to be compensated by LIV Golf as a part of the framework merger settlement.

According to The Times, a ‘compensation fund’ is being created by the Private Investment Fund (PIF), which bankrolls the breakaway tour, that shall be used handy out cash to gamers who missed out by resisting the temptation to hitch LIV Golf.

The transfer will enable rebels comparable to Phil Mickelson, Brooks Kopeka and Ian Poulter, who all ditched the PGA Tour for LIV’s thousands and thousands, to maintain maintain of the cash they had been paid to make the change whereas offering a ‘levelling up’ mechanism for the gamers that did not.

But how a lot the PGA loyalists may anticipate to obtain at present stays a thriller as particular figures are but to be disclosed.

Uncertainty round how top-level golf will look sooner or later will unquestionably type the backdrop to this week’s US Open, which will get underway at Los Angeles Country Club on Thursday.

Sources near The Times have claimed that the way forward for LIV Golf is doubtful and can ‘be phased out earlier than the top of the yr’ to accommodate one total world tour with all gamers underneath the identical umbrella.

PGA poster boy McIlroy confronted the press final week and was requested whether or not he felt the gamers who had stayed loyal to the American Tour needs to be compensated on account of the merger with LIV.

McIlroy mentioned: “The simple answer is yes. The complex answer is, how does that happen? That’s all a grey area and up in the air at the minute. It’s hard for me to not feel somewhat like a sacrificial lamb.”

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monaghan, who final week confronted stress from his personal gamers to resign, is ready to be named because the merged tour’s chief government, with PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan turning into the brand new enterprise’s chairman.