Jay Monahan’s update on PGA Tour-LIV deal strikes different tone

Former LIV Golfer Laurie Canter became the first member of the breakaway circuit to be eligible for the Players Championship, the PGA Tour’s flagship event.

But that’s about all the news to expect on the reunification front at the moment, according to PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan.

“I don’t see that happening,” Monahan told reporters on Tuesday ahead of the Arnold Palmer Invitational when asked if a deal between the Tour and Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund would be announced next week at TPC Sawgrass.

Rumors have been swirling that the meeting at the White House between Monahan, PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan and President Donald Trump didn’t go as well as both sides have claimed. Monahan pushed back on that narrative Tuesday but also made sure to temper expectations on a timeline for the deal.

“I think anything that I’ve said or we said, the three of us said, is consistent with what should be said when you’re in the middle of a complex discussion to try and reunify the game of golf,” Monahan said via Golf Channel. “It doesn’t speak to my confidence level. It speaks to the moment. I view that meeting as a huge step and so I look at that very positively.

“We had a recent meeting with the President, the Public Investment Fund, thought it was a constructive meeting,” Monahan said. “And we’re thankful for the President for his leadership, extremely thankful for him, for his willingness to host us in the Oval Office, and to help us continue those conversations. I feel like if you look at his commentary last week as ultimately seeing a deal happening and Yasir Al-Rumayyan’s comments at the FII about the good meeting that we had, I think we’ll just continue to move forward on those conversations.”

Monahan said that with the PGA Tour entering a busy stretch of the season and LIV Golf playing events in Hong Kong and Singapore in the next two weeks, there is no date for the next meeting between the three parties.

“It doesn’t mean there won’t be conversations, there’s just not a physical meeting set up,” Monahan said.

Following the PGA Tour’s first meeting with Trump, Monahan spoke with reporters at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and made it sound like he expected something to get done on the PGA Tour-LIV front soonish. Monahan spoke of a desire to have all the best players in the world play under the umbrella of one tour. This is antithetical to the rhetoric coming out of LIV Golf, which has been adamant that it plans to stick around and grow even when the merger is complete.

The disconnect between the PGA Tour’s reunification goal and LIV’s desire to remain a league is one of the biggest hurdles to clear. But Monahan also has to deal with a Tour membership that is split on the thought of LIV players returning to a Tour they turned their back on. While Rory McIlroy and others want to get everyone back together and move forward, Monahan knows that some players won’t be pleased with the end result of the merger whenever its completion arrives.

“I think Adam Scott put it very well last week, when you’re looking to reunify the game, not everybody is going to be happy,” Monahan said. “I would say that with our player directors, with our board, we’re highly conscious of reunification and focusing on that as a goal.  And ultimately when we get to that position that’s a question that we’ll all answer.  But I’m hopeful that when you look at what we’re trying to accomplish, what that means for the PGA Tour, what that means for the game on a long-term basis, that we will solve for that in the most effective and prudent way we possibly can.”

A month ago, Monahan struck a confident tone about the status of merger talks. While the commissioner claimed that hasn’t changed, words like “constructive” and “huge step” suggest that the reunification of golf might be further away than previously believed.

As for Canter, the Englishman has spent the last year playing on the DP World Tour after being a member of LIV Golf in 2022 and 2023. He last played on LIV in Las Vegas last February. Since then, Canter has won twice on the DP World Tour and has risen to No. 42 in the world, which got him invited into next week’s Players Championship.

“He earned his way,” Monahan said. “We’re excited to have him.”

The first former LIV player will tee it up at the Tour’s flagship event next week. It might be some time before the rest of his former cohorts follow suit.