Tiger Woods was added as a sixth PGA Tour player director — joining Webb Simpson, Patrick Cantlay, Peter Malnati, Adam Scott and now Jordan Spieth — last fall. His responsibilities include helping the PGA Tour produce an overall vision and plan for the future, which is especially difficult at a time when LIV Golf continues to raid the Tour of its best players.
In some ways, Woods was brought in to stem the tide.
Tiger said Wednesday that he’s been involved in countless communication related to this larger issue. One of the most fascinating ongoing storylines in all of golf is what’s going to happen between the Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which funds LIV. The PIF is effectively the financial arm of the Saudi government, and it entered into a framework agreement with the PGA Tour last summer; the idea was to merge operations and create a for-profit arm of the Tour.
That agreement have not played out as planned, though. The two sides missed a Dec. 31, 2023, deadline, and the Tour got an infusion of money — $3 billion of it, actually — from the Strategic Sports Group, a collection of billionaire sports owners who wanted a piece of professional golf. In exchange for their $3 billion, they received a 25% stake in PGA Tour Enterprises, that new for-profit entity.
Theoretically, that is the same entity the PIF planned to invest into for an equity stake. That was the idea, at least. However, given that LIV Golf took Jon Rahm in December and Tyrrell Hatton a few weeks ago, it seems like there has been a bit of a shift.
Tiger coyly alluded to this Wednesday: “From what their representatives have discussed with us [about their goal or their end game], yes and no, because that changes and that evolves from a few months ago to what it is currently now”
Woods was asked whether that’s good or bad: “I don’t know if it’s good or bad; it’s an ongoing, fluid process.”
Woods also said that the Tour is no longer in the same state of financial need in which it previously existed. The balance of power has shifted a bit now that the Tour filled its coffers with that $3 billion infusion from SSG, which Woods said was the number originally proposed in the framework agreement between the PIF and Tour last summer.
“Ultimately, we would like to have PIF be a part of our tour and a part of our product,” Tiger said. “Financially, we don’t right now, and the monies that they have come to the table with and what we initially had agreed to in the framework agreement, those are all the same numbers. Anything beyond this is going to be obviously over and above. We’re in a position right now, hopefully we can make our product better in the short term and long term.”
This echoes what Jordan Spieth said a few weeks ago at the Pebble Beach Pro Am.
“I don’t think that it’s needed,” Spieth said of a deal with the PIF. “The positive would be a unification, but … I just think it’s something that is almost not even worth talking about right this second given how timely everything would be to try to get it figured out. But the idea is that we have a strategic partner that allows the PGA Tour to go forward the way that it’s operating right now without anything else with the option of other investors.
“Whether them or somebody else, that will just be a decision with them obviously being, you know, the active talks. But the short answer is we don’t have to, and the long answer is the positive there is a unification.”
Many questions remain, including how LIV players would even earn their way back onto the PGA Tour. Spieth and Rory McIlroy recently disagreed on that topic. McIlroy said he’s fine with everyone returning to expedite the entire process of getting the golf world back together. Spieth? It seems like he sees it differently, and even if he doesn’t, he has spoken with plenty of Tour players who do.
“I’ve asked a lot of players. I’ve done a lot of talking with a lot of players in the last couple months,” said Spieth. ” … That’s Rory’s viewpoint. I could name some guys with the same viewpoint; I could name some guys with a totally opposite viewpoint. So, it’s certainly mixed on how players feel about that.”
Woods was noncommittal but said the process has been arduous.
“We’re looking into all the different models for pathways back,” he said. “What that looks like, what the impact is for the players who have stayed and who have not left and how we make our product better going forward, there is no answer to that right now. … Trust me, there’s daily, weekly emails and talks about this and what this looks like for our tour going forward.”
Woods added that he’s confident SSG will make the entertainment product better for the Tour but did not shed any light on whether there would eventually be unification across LIV (which, again, is funded by the PIF) and the PGA Tour.
One thing is certain, though. Whatever does go down will have Woods’ fingerprints all over it. That’s how it has been for the past several months, and that’s how it will be in the future.
