The most disruptive 12 months in golf ended Tuesday when the PGA Tour and European tour agreed to a merger with Saudi Arabia’s golf pursuits, making a industrial operation designed to unify skilled golf all over the world.
As a part of the deal, the edges are dropping all lawsuits involving LIV Golf in opposition to one another efficient instantly.
Still to be decided is how gamers like Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson, who defected to Saudi-funded LIV Golf for nine-figure bonuses, can rejoin the PGA Tour after this 12 months.
Also unclear was what type the LIV Golf League would soak up 2024. Commissioner Jay Monahan mentioned in a memo to gamers {that a} thorough analysis would decide combine workforce golf into the sport.
The settlement combines the Public Investment Fund’s golf-related industrial companies and rights — together with LIV Golf — with these of the PGA and European excursions. The new entity has not been named.
“They were going down their path, we were going down ours, and after a lot of introspection you realize all this tension in the game is not a good thing,” Monahan mentioned in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.
“We have a responsibility to our tour and to the game, and we felt like the time was right to have that conversation.”
Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, will be part of the board of the PGA Tour, which continues to operates its tournaments. Al-Rumayyan might be chairman of the brand new industrial group, with Monahan because the CEO and the PGA Tour having a majority stake within the new enterprise.
The PIF will put money into the industrial enterprise.
Monahan mentioned the choice got here collectively over the past seven weeks.