Pga and Liv
That summit in the Oval Office in February, where Trump brought together the top brass of the US tour, including Commissioner Jay Monahan, Tiger Woods and Adam Scott – the leading voices in player representation – and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the head of the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) that runs the LIV, now seems a distant memory. At that time peace seemed only a matter of time, but shortly afterwards the paths of the two organizations diverged again. What has emerged is that the PGA proposed some kind of merger, and that Al-Rumayyan’s vision in no way involves dissolving his creation into another organization.
Since then the relationship has been in an ice age. The levels of hostility we saw in 2022 and 2023 have not recovered; The phase of intimidation and elimination in the form of high-profile signings financed by the endless flow of Saudi oil appears to be over (and in fact this week saw the first high-profile defection, that of Brooks Koepka), but none of the overtures that Monahan and Al-Rumayyan made from time to time have materialized, or at least have not reached the media. And yet two figures seen as obstacles to the agreement have disappeared from the equation: Monahan, who was blamed by many for the schism because he refused to listen when the LIV was in its infancy and the Arab strategy involved some sort of partnership with the PGA, and who left many feeling betrayed when he went behind the players’ backs to negotiate a preliminary agreement, announced in the summer of 2023, that ultimately proved worthless; and Greg Norman, the controversial first CEO of the super league, a figure who never had a good reputation in the upper echelons of the golf world and who was not recognized by his counterpart as a valid interlocutor.
To each his own. They have been replaced, respectively, by Brian Rolapp and Scott O’Neil, who, at least for now, seem more focused on figuring out how to improve their tours than on unifying them. Rolapp, a top NFL executive, is determined to join the PGA, which has made American football the most watched sport in the United States. According to reports in recent months, he is planning a major overhaul, which will include a significantly reduced timetable. The mantra is to make top golf a scarcer and therefore more exclusive product. Fewer tournaments and a structure designed to give the biggest stars more exposure, even at the expense of a middle class that has less and less influence on everything that happens on the other side of the Atlantic.
For his part, O’Neil has understood what Norman refused to admit: there are things even petrodollars can’t handle. One of them is the board of the world rankings. The LIV has already announced that it will eliminate one of the features that was anathema to its inclusion in the system, and which faced opposition from several internal voices, including that of a heavyweight like Jon Rahm: the three-round tournaments. From 2026 they will be played in four rounds, showing flexibility even at the cost of losing some of the competition’s distinctive identity. In addition, the plans mean that investments will be delayed. The era of massive contracts and millions of dollars allocated to pay fines imposed on players by their previous circuits is over; The era of self-sufficiency has arrived. The point is that franchises that are already attracting sponsors and establishing themselves as national or continental teams in a bid to gain popularity can take off. In this sense, the Fireballs, whose roster next year will include captain Sergio García, Josele Ballester, David Puig and Luis Masaveu, will be the first all-Spanish team since the project began in the summer of 2022.
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