The Post’s Mark Cannizzaro answers questions surrounding the stunning PGA Tour merger with LIV Golf that was announced on Tuesday.
Q: What is PIF?
A: The Public Investment Fund (PIF) is one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds and is headed by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, who was accused of ordering the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Under the prince’s chairmanship, PIF has more than $600 billion in assets. It has also spent heavily on sports franchises, including the $409 million purchase of English Premier League team Newcastle United in 2021, and is the money behind LIV Golf.
Q: Who is the biggest winner of this merger?
A: The golf fans. They get to watch the world’s best players compete against each other in the big events, with the PGA Tour bans of LIV players competing in its events about to be lifted. The players, who will benefit more financially than ever with the Saudi money involved, win. So, too, does Greg Norman, who’s been calling for a global tour since the 1990s. He surely feels vindicated.
Q: Who is the biggest loser?
A: The PGA Tour comes out of this looking like it caved to the pressure of the Saudi money, sold out to the Saudi money. PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, who’s butchered this since the beginning, looks even worse than he did before after denouncing the players who left and banning them, and now looks like a commissioner who betrayed the players who stayed and remained loyal to the PGA Tour.
Q: What was LIV CEO Greg Norman’s role in this stunning merger?
A: It seems he had no role in the merger. He was informed about it just minutes before it was announced. What his role will be going forward is in question, but Norman served his role to the Saudis as the front man from the start.
PGA Tour and LIV Golf are ending a war — by joining forces.
The two golf leagues, along with the European DP World Tour, are merging into one company after a period of fierce rivalry, one where LIV Golf defectors were banned from competing on the Tour.
LIV, financed by the Saudi Public Investment Fund and led by legendary golfer Greg Norman, lured some of the top names in golf last year with reported nine-figure contracts, including Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau.
Other huge golf names, however, like Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, stayed loyal to the Tour, despite being offered a massive amount of money.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the PGA Tour-LIV Golf merger
Norman said last year Woods turned down a payday in the range of $700 million-$800 million to stick with the PGA Tour.
With the merger, the Saudi-backed LIV and the Tour are ending an antitrust battle and agreed to end all litigation between the two sides.
“After two years of disruption and distraction, this is a historic day for the game we all know and love,” PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in a statement. “This transformational partnership recognizes the immeasurable strength of the PGA TOUR’s history, legacy and pro-competitive model.”
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Q: Will players the likes of Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson and Cam Smith be playing on the PGA Tour this year?
A: That remains to be seen. Monahan announced that the players who’d been banned from the PGA Tour will have a chance to be reinstated. It’s likely that process will take place in the 2024 season.
Q: What are other coming results from this merger?
A: There are many things to be determined, such as whether the PGA Tour will conduct 54-hole events with no cuts like LIV does, or whether players will be allowed to play in shorts as they do on LIV or if there will be music playing during tournaments as it is in LIV events.
Q: Why did this happen now?
A: It’s possible that the PGA Tour, having doled out many more millions for the “elevated’’ events it created in response to the threat of the LIV Golf money, realized it would not be able to — or did not want to — continue paying out all that added money and decided to bring in the Saudis and their endless supply.
Also, there was pressure from the PGA Tour’s TV partners about financial restitution over a watered-down product with so many of the top players having been taken away from the PGA Tour events by the bans from the tour. Everything, of course, revolves around money.
Q: What does this mean for the players on the LIV Tour?
A: Players who jumped to LIV late in their careers, like Sergio Garcia, Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter, have made more money than they ever would have earned on the PGA Tour or the DP World Tour. Those players, stalwarts to the European Ryder Cup teams and banned from participation once they joined LIV, in theory will have the chance to be a part of those teams again — perhaps as captains.
Q: Who should be most angry by this merger?
A: The PGA Tour players who remained loyal to the tour and didn’t take the Saudi money offered to them (as an example, Rickie Fowler was offered a reported $75 million to join). They have to be livid about this development. Rory McIlroy, who’d become the PGA Tour’s unofficial spokesperson against LIV, must feel betrayed.