US senate summons key figures in PGA Tour’s Saudi deal as golf saga continues

Golf’s three main tour bosses have been summoned to a United States Senate listening to subsequent month, because the controversial merger settlement between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and LIV Golf is put underneath scrutiny.

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman and Saudi Arabia’s Private Investment Fund (PIF) governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan have all been invited to look at a Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations assembly on July 11, that can analyse the element and reasoning behind the surprising unification of the three excursions.

The {golfing} world was left shocked two weeks in the past when the PGA Tour launched a press release saying that it had reached a ‘framework settlement’ to create a brand new industrial entity with the DP World Tour and LIV Golf’s funder PIF.

The shock growth has brought about uproar in some quarters of the USA, resulting in the Senate saying that it might open an investigation into the matter.

In a press release posted on his Twitter account, committee chair, Senator Richard Blumenthal mentioned: “Our goal is to uncover the facts about what went into the PGA Tour’s deal with the Saudi Public Investment Fund and what the Saudi takeover means for the future of this cherished American institution and our national interest.

“Americans need to know what the construction and governance of this new entity can be. Major actors within the deal are finest positioned to supply this data and so they owe Congress – and the American individuals – solutions in a public setting.”

Senator Richard Johnson, another member of the committee, added: “Fans, the gamers, and anxious residents have many questions on the deliberate settlement between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf.”

The PIF-funded LIV Golf tour upset the status quo in elite men’s golf two years ago when it successfully lured a number of the world’s top players away from the PGA Tour with huge signing-on fees.

Big-name stars such as Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith, Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter all joined the breakaway tour, causing a rift between the LIV rebels and PGA Tour loyalists.

Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods and world No 2 Jon Rahm have been key gamers who refused to affix the Saudi-funded tour, turning down assured thousands and thousands within the course of. But the announcement a fortnight in the past means that their loyalty to the PGA Tour might have been in useless in any case, with a brand new singular tour placing the 2 warring teams of gamers again collectively on the identical schedules.

Groups related to the victims of the 9/11 assaults have already acknowledged their sturdy disapproval of the American-based PGA Tour going into partnership with the Saudi-run PIF.