A year later, no PGA Tour-PIF deal. Was it ever close? Is it coming soon?

Never has a year felt so long and yet so short than the last 12 months in pro golf. 

In the spring of 2022, LIV Golf launched. By the spring of ’23, the PGA Tour was convinced it needed to reach a deal with the Saudi PIF. That all happened pretty quickly! But since then? Stagnancy. A grindingly slow churn of modest updates and a musical chairs of board seats. Golf fans are right to wonder what the future looks like, and free to be disgruntled by the lack of progress.

Who is to blame?

The blanket answer is … everyone. The first wave of players who left for LIV Golf, and the others who trickled behind, chasing money over anything else. The Tour executives who used unilateral power to reach an initial agreement without, say, Tiger Woods having the slightest idea. But also Woods himself, among other players, for plodding along, wresting control of decision-making on the policy board, and showing a general distaste for team golf not played in a Palm Beach Gardens dome. 

golf in much the same way they do with other sports. But when Adam Scott, a member of the Policy Board, suggested last week that he doesn’t know the PIF’s vision, it tells you something important: It hasn’t fully been explained to him. 

So, it’s a good thing that Scott will learn about it this week. He’s a board member of PGA Tour Enterprises — the new for-profit company which would presumably receive any investment from the PIF — and a member of the new transaction sub-committee within the board. That sub-committee is set to meet with PIF representatives in New York this week, according to the Times. That’s Tiger Woods and John Henry (and a few other non-players), with Rory McIlroy calling in from the Memorial Tournament. The heaviest of hitters gathering around the table. It may have taken us 12 months to arrive here, but it’s starting to feel like progress.