BREAKING: PGA Tour Player Directors to meet with PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan in less than 3 days

PGA Tour Player Directors would be meeting with the governor of the Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia, Yasir Al Rumayyan, after The Players Championship ends. The meeting would be taking place in Ponte Vedra Beach, home of the TPC Sawgrass.

The information was published by Golfweek this Friday, March 15. Six of the seven PGA Tour Player Directors (Patrick Cantlay, Jordan Spieth, Adam Scott, Peter Malnati and Webb Simpson) are in The Players field. Only Tiger Woods and Joe Ogilvie would be missing, but the latter would be arriving in the next few hours, according to the report.

The topic of the meeting is expected to be the framework agreement between the PGA Tour and the PIF, in a bid to speed up negotiations. When this agreement was made public in June 2023, a deadline of December 31 was set. However, the date was extended in an attempt to reach a final agreement before The Masters.

Nevertheless, the scenario has changed a lot, since the PGA Tour now has a multi-billion dollar agreement with the so-called Strategic Sports Group (SSG), so not all senior officials of the circuit are as interested as before in reaching an agreement with the PIF. In fact, a few weeks ago, one of the Player Directors, Jordan Spieth, stated the following:

“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. 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.”

Does the PGA Tour need a deal with the PIF?

Jay Monahan stated during his press conference prior to The Players Championship that he had recently met with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, in an effort to accelerate negotiations of the framework agreement with the PIF.

It is true that the PGA Tour is in a better financial position after its agreement with the SSG. But an understanding with the PIF would make it easier to resolve the fracture with LIV Golf, one of the fundamental problems that the American circuit currently has.