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Mark Schlabach
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Eight-time main championship winner Tom Watson would not consider the PGA Tour and LIV Golf will have the ability to reunify males’s skilled golf anytime quickly.
Watson, who received the Masters in 1977 and 1981, mentioned there are too many obstacles for the PGA Tour to succeed in a take care of Saudi Arabia’s Public Funding Fund, which has financed the rival LIV Golf League since its inception in 2022.
The PGA Tour, DP World Tour and the PIF signed a framework settlement to kind an alliance in June 2023, however the sides have been unable to hammer out a deal — even after a current four-hour assembly on the White Home.
Final week, sources confirmed to ESPN that the PGA Tour has rejected the PIF’s most up-to-date supply to speculate $1.5 billion into PGA Tour Enterprises, the tour’s for-profit entity, which got here with the caveat that the LIV Golf League would stay intact.
“They made their option to play their very own tour, and that is the place they’re proper now,” Watson mentioned Thursday throughout a information convention at Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership, after he hit the ceremonial opening tee photographs with previous champions Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player. “I do not see an actual working mechanism for the 2 excursions to get again collectively. I believe that is one of many causes you have not seen an settlement since June two years in the past.”
Twelve LIV Golf gamers, together with seven previous champions, are competing on this week’s Masters. However golfers from the competing sides hardly ever play collectively outdoors of the 4 main championships.
“The one factor I do know is that Scottie Scheffler in his speech on the previous champions dinner on Tuesday night time mentioned, ‘I am glad we’re all collectively once more,'” Watson mentioned. “So the gamers want to get collectively. Nevertheless it’s actually as much as the powers that be to see if there is a framework by which the 2 excursions can cooperate.”
Sources have instructed ESPN that the PIF desires its governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, to function co-chairman of PGA Tour Enterprises’ board. The Saudis additionally need staff golf to be an integral a part of the game’s future ecosystem.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan suspended golfers who competed in LIV Golf tournaments and not using a conflicting-event launch.
“I do not see that framework taking place,” Watson mentioned. “Possibly they’re smarter individuals than I’m, however the important thing component of the PGA Tour — the one factor that’s required of you is to get permission to play in a competing match, conflicting occasion rule. That is there to guard the sponsors of our PGA Tour in order that the fields will not be depleted of all the great gamers as they go and play different tournaments. That is the principle requirement.”
Nicklaus, a six-time winner of a inexperienced jacket, mentioned LIV Golf compelled the PGA Tour “into doing a little issues that had been slightly untimely.” After LIV Golf poached a number of prime gamers, together with previous main champions Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka and others, the PGA Tour responded by introducing eight signature occasions with $20 million purses and decreased the variety of golfers with full-time playing cards.
The PGA Tour additionally distributed $930 million price of preliminary participant fairness grants in PGA Tour Enterprises to its members after receiving a $1.5 billion funding from Strategic Sports activities Group, a consortium of billionaire skilled sports activities staff house owners and others.
“The PGA Tour is doing high quality,” Nicklaus mentioned. “I believe they’ve modified their construction. The gamers now personal a chunk of what is going on on. I believe their plan of bringing together with their elevated occasions and their plan of bringing younger gamers alongside within the different tournaments has been very profitable. We’re making new stars for the sport.
“Would I like to see all of them come collectively? Positive, I believe all of us would. However I believe the PGA Tour is the tour, and that is the place most of your good gamers are, and I believe it’s extremely wholesome regardless of which manner it goes, however clearly we might all wish to see all people collectively.”
