Jay Monahan Doesn't Expect LIV Golf to Continue in 2024 in Its Current Form
The PGA Tour and the DP World Tour agreed to partner with the Public Investment Fund on Tuesday, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the LIV Golf League will exist in its current structure next year.
With numerous decisions still to be made, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan took questions from reporters via a conference call from the RBC Canadian Open where he first had a heated players-only meeting to explain the "framework" of an agreement reached with the PIF that will end litigation between the two parties and allow for LIV golfers to return to the PGA Tour in some way next year.
What is unclear is how the actual golf will be merged under the big umbrella that will consist of the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and the PIF.
Asked specifically about LIV and whether or not it would co-exist in its present form in 2024 with concurrent events and LIV branding, Monahan said:
"I can't see that scenario, but I haven’t gotten the full evaluation, the full empirical evaluation of LIV that I’m going to do to be able to comment on that," Monahan said. “But I don't see that scenario, no. To me, any scenarios that you’re thinking about that bridge between the PGA Tour and LIV would be longer term in nature."
LIV Golf is in its second season, having played seven of its scheduled 14 events. The remaining seven are expected to continue in 2023 as planned.
A big part of LIV is the team element which is viewed as its business model and its way toward profitability in the future. Monahan said a team aspect would be part of the future but gave no details.
His discussions with Public Investment Fund representatives go back seven weeks, he said, and started with two PGA Tour Policy Board members, Jimmy Dunne and Ed Herlihy, who first met with the Saudi-backed PIF before Monahan was brought in. Nobody else was in on the discussions, including Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, who had big roles in the formation of a new designated event structure on the PGA Tour that was meant to keep players from jumping to the rival league.
"The fact of the matter is that this was a shock to a lot of people because we were not in a position to share or explain, as we normally would, and that was really a result of the commitment we had made to maintaining confidentiality through the end," Monahan said.
Monahan admitted that players at the meeting were not happy.
"I would describe the meeting as intense, certainly heated," he said. "This is a very complex—obviously it's been a very dynamic and complex couple of years, and for players, I'm not surprised that—this is an awful lot to ask them to digest, and this is a significant change for us in the direction that we were going down.
"But as I'm trying to explain and I will continue to explain as we go forward, this ultimately is a decision that I think is in the best interest of all of the members of the PGA Tour, puts us in a position of control, allows us to partner with the PIF in a constructive and productive way, to have them invest with us, again, running the PGA Tour, having these three entities under one for-profit LLC.
“In terms of how did we get to this point and how did we go from a confrontation to now being partners? We just realized that we were better off together than we were fighting or apart. If you look at the values of the game, I think that's what the situation warranted."
Monahan said he expects criticism given his previous stance on LIV and investment from Saudi.
"I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite," Monahan said. "Anytime I said anything, I said it with the information that I had at that moment, and I said it based on someone that's trying to compete for the PGA Tour and our players. I accept those criticisms. But circumstances do change. I think that in looking at the big picture and looking at it this way, that's what got us to this point."