Tiger Woods joins another White House meeting as PGA Tour moves closer to Saudi deal

By Canadian Press on February 20, 2025.

Tiger Woods joined PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and player director Adam Scott in a second White House meeting on Thursday, another sign the sport is moving rapidly toward ending the division brought on by Saudi-funded LIV Golf.

Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia and the financial muscle behind the rival league, was scheduled to join the meeting, according to a person briefed on the meeting.

The person, speaking on condition of anonymity because the meeting is private, said President Donald Trump initiated the meeting and was likely to be part of it.

Al-Rumayyan was in Miami Beach, Florida, on Wednesday to attend an investment summit where Trump spoke.

This is the second time in just over two weeks the PGA Tour leadership — Woods and Scott are on the board — has met at the White House. Woods had to leave before the Feb. 4 meeting because his mother died in Florida.

He said Sunday during the CBS broadcast of the Genesis Invitational that “we have another meeting coming up.”

“I think that things are going to heal quickly,” Woods, the tournament host, said on the broadcast. “We’re going to get this game going in the right direction. It’s been heading in the wrong direction for a number of years and the fans want all of us to play together, all the top players playing together, and we’re going to make that happen.”

LIV Golf launched in June 2022 and lured away several top names — Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm — over the next few years with signing bonuses reported to top $100 million in some cases.

The PGA Tour, PIF and the European tour (commercially known as the DP World Tour) signed an agreement in June 2023, but it expired at the end of the year as the Justice Department raised antitrust concerns.

The PGA Tour brought on Strategic Sports Group, a consortium of North American pro sports owners led by Fenway Sports, as a minority partner in the commercial PGA Tour Enterprises at the start of 2024 with a $1.5 billion investment.

PIF is negotiating to be a minority investor, though Monahan made it clear last week the priority was bringing all the best players together more often.

“Everything is moving forward with pace,” Monahan said. “When you look at all the parties involved, there’s a general enthusiasm for getting this done.”

The site Radar Atlas on X, which tracks private jet travel, posted on Wednesday night the planes belonging to the PGA Tour and Scott had arrived in Washington.

How that looks remains unclear, though Monahan did say he had a clear vision of the end product. Currently, the top LIV players can only face Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and the majority of golf’s best players at the four majors. Some LIV players also have access to a few European tour events.

Any agreement with PIF would require approval by the PGA Tour Enterprises board, the commercial outfit that grew out of the original June 2023 framework agreement.

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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

Doug Ferguson, The Associated Press

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