PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — While the PGA Tour was no doubt thrilled with its new partnership with Strategic Sports Group (SSG), which includes access to $3 billion, with $1.5 billion immediately available, that is just part of the needed repairs for a Tour that some saw as broken.
It’s important to remember that the PGA Tour is made up of hundreds of members who don’t think alike.
But the reality is that the more successful the player, the more his opinion matters.
So, when Policy Board member Jordan Spieth outlined his position on the new SSG deal on Wednesday, it included his opinion on the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia and their potential investment in the PGA Tour.
Spieth said he felt the PIF deal was no longer needed, but that it would be a positive step toward unification.
“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,” Spieth said. “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.”
Two days later, Spieth clarified his position on Friday at the AT&T and stated that it’s not that he doesn’t want the Tour to accept PIF money, or that he isn’t interested in working with them, but that he wants a deal that makes sense for everyone.
Since the PGA Tour is now flush with cash, its parameters for a deal have changed. It’s now more difficult to get a deal done with the Saudi group than when a framework agreement was first announced on June 6.
After his Wednesday press conference, Spieth called former board member Rory McIlroy, who had discussed the PIF earlier in the week.
“I think they’re different than a year ago because, you know, we’re potentially about to do a deal with PIF, who owned the large majority of LIV, and hopefully seeing things come back together here at some point,” McIlroy said of how talks with PIF have changed since June 6. “Yeah, I think the nature of the conversation was probably different than it would have been a year ago, absolutely.”
McIlroy confirmed that he had an hour-long conversation with Spieth.
Spieth wanted to see if everything was OK with McIlroy after he decided to take himself off a top player group text.
“I just want to remove myself from the fray a little bit,” McIlroy said. “I talked to him about his comments. And we had a pretty frank discussion.”
Spieth believed that both he and McIlroy are on similar pages and while McIlroy said they were seeing eye to eye on most things, there are still some issues.
“My thing was if I’m the original (potential) investor that thought that they were going to get this deal done back in July, and I’m hearing a board member say that, you know, we don’t really need them, now, how are they going to think about that, what are they gonna feel about that?” McIlroy said in recalling his call with Spieth. “They are still sitting out there with hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions, that they’re gonna pour it into sport. And I know what Jordan was saying, I absolutely know what he was saying and what he was trying to say. But if I were PIF and I was hearing that coming from here, the day after doing this SSG deal, it wouldn’t have made me too happy, I guess?”
Like Spieth, McIlroy agrees the terms must be favorable to both sides, but in the end, PIF needs to be part of the new PGA Tour Enterprises.
“Having PIF as your partner as opposed to not having them as your partner, I don’t think is an option for the game of golf,” McIlroy said. “I think they’re committed to investing in golf and in the wider world of sport and if you can get them to invest their money the right way to unify the game of golf.”
McIlroy went on to say that the reason that the game is not currently unified is because of PIF money, which is the only way the men’s pro game can be brought back together.
On Thursday, Adam Scott, who joined the board in December, said he does not believe that the PGA Tour needs the PIF’s money, but other considerations are at play that make continued discussion necessary.
“It’s no secret that the idea is to try and somehow unify the game.,” Scott said. “I think I’ve heard that used a lot over the last seven or eight months. And that was being used when the framework agreement was originally talked about. And I don’t know how realistic that really is at the moment. But that’s probably the main reason why these lines are open.”
But when asked if unification is necessary to meet the business goals of the newly capitalized PGA Tour, Scott he didn’t think so.
“And obviously, SSG don’t either, because they’ve been willing to do this deal,” Scott said. “Not contingent on anything to do with PIF.”
Ultimately, LIV and PIF are going to be a big part of the discussions among the PGA Tour and SSG, and where they shake out is difficult to guess since it’s just not a pure investment by one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, but a tour with 52 players, most having left the PGA Tour for financially greener pastures in LIV.
Any PIF discussions comes with talks of how players who defected could come back to Tour events, something that most players have differing views on and could likely further complicate a potential deal.
