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      Embattled PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan To Return July 17

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      Jay Monahan went on medical leave in June, days after he announced plans for the tour’s alliance with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, who went on medical leave last month as he and his organization faced outrage over a planned alliance with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, is expected to return to his position on July 17.Although Monahan, the commissioner since 2017, did not detail his condition in a brief memo to the tour’s board on Friday, he noted that recent years had been “grueling for us all” and that he had “experienced that toll personally in the days following the announcement of our framework agreement and encountered adverse impacts on my health.”He said that his health had “improved dramatically” since he went on leave on June 13. But Monahan’s timeline for his return means that he will miss, by six days, a Senate hearing in Washington to discuss the tentative deal with the wealth fund.When Monahan’s future was publicly uncertain, the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had agreed to allow two other witnesses to represent the tour: its chief operating officer, Ron Price, and a board member, James J. Dunne III, who was involved in the negotiations that led to the agreement.According to two people familiar with the discussions, who requested anonymity to discuss the private negotiations, the tour suggested to the committee in recent days that Monahan would consider testifying if the Senate agreed to postpone the hearing. The committee declined and chose to move ahead with its plans for Tuesday.Monahan is not the only leading golf figure who will be absent on Tuesday. Yasir al-Rumayyan, the wealth fund’s governor and one of the pre-eminent forces behind the LIV Golf circuit, which fractured the PGA Tour, declined to appear at the hearing, citing scheduling conflicts. Greg Norman, LIV’s commissioner, also said he was unavailable on Tuesday.Senators have said they might question al-Rumayyan and Norman later, a possibility the subcommittee left open for Monahan after Friday evening’s announcement.“We are glad to hear that Mr. Monahan is recovered and look forward to following up with him regarding any remaining questions after Tuesday’s hearing,” said Maria McElwain, a spokeswoman for Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut and the subcommittee’s chairman.”We are excited and eager to speak with Mr. Price and Mr. Dunne on Tuesday,” McElwain added. “They are both positioned to have significant information to share, and we’re looking forward to a robust and revealing discussion.”Price and another senior tour executive, Tyler Dennis, have overseen day-to-day operations for the tour since June 13, when Monahan and the board issued a short statement saying that the commissioner was “recuperating from a medical situation.” In the weeks afterward, tour officials repeatedly declined to describe Monahan’s condition or the circumstances that had led to his ceding of power at one of professional golf’s most turbulent moments.By the time Monahan stepped away, though, he had absorbed days of harsh criticism over the pact with the wealth fund, whose money his tour had previously denigrated as tainted, an about-face that he acknowledged would prompt charges of hypocrisy.The final details of the alliance have not been negotiated, but the tentative deal’s outlines call for the PGA Tour, the wealth fund and the DP World Tour, previously known as the European Tour, to bring their golf businesses into a new, for-profit company. Tour executives have argued that the deal, if it closes, will allow the Florida-based circuit to keep control of the sport because Monahan will be the new company’s chief executive and the tour will control the majority of board seats.But al-Rumayyan will be the new company’s chairman. Moreover, the wealth fund is expected to have extensive investment rights in the new company, promising the Saudis significant influence.Before June 6, when the deal involving the tour and the wealth fund was announced, Monahan was among the most unsparing critics of Saudi Arabia’s foray into professional golf.“The PGA Tour, an American institution, can’t compete with a foreign monarchy that is spending billions of dollars in an attempt to buy the game of golf,” Monahan said in June 2022. “We welcome good, healthy competition. The LIV Saudi golf league is not that. It’s an irrational threat; one not concerned with the return on investment or true growth of the game.”Last month, hours after he had sat alongside al-Rumayyan for a television interview, he adopted a decidedly different tone, in part because tour leaders had effectively concluded that their battle with the wealth fund was unsustainable.“I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite,” Monahan said last month. “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.”And the deal, he insisted, would allow the tour to work with the wealth fund in “a constructive and productive way.”Criticism rained down anyway. More

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      Michelle Wie West Wants to Win the U.S. Women’s Open One More Time

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      You could see the head tilts and darting glances when people peered around Pebble Beach’s Gallery Cafe, or as visitors sat on the patio that looks toward the cypress-guarded 18th green by Stillwater Cove. They surfaced at a luncheon with Brandi Chastain and Kristi Yamaguchi, and during a climb up a flight of stairs, and a stroll through a lobby.That’s Michelle Wie West, that 6-foot fixture of collective memory and modern golf history.She did not win as much as she wanted to, and certainly not as much as many people thought she would or should have. But after close to a quarter of a century in the spotlight, she is still one of the savviest stars women’s golf has ever had, a player plenty of people outside of golf know as a star even if they do not know golf.The competitive golf part of Wie’s life will most likely be done by dusk on Sunday, when the U.S. Women’s Open is scheduled to finish at Pebble Beach. If things don’t go well, and they might not since Wie West’s husband will be her caddie for the first time and she has barely played lately, it could be over by dusk on Friday. After the Open, she has no plans to return to elite competition, though she dodges the word “retirement” in public (and confesses to sometimes using it in private).She is 33.That went fast, didn’t it?Wie West on No. 18 at Lake Merced Golf Course during the Mediheal Championship last year.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesIn 2000, when she was 10 and Bill Clinton was president, she played the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship. She won the event when she was 13, the same age she made an L.P.G.A. tournament cut and had a turn in third place on a major tournament’s weekend leaderboard. She played a PGA Tour event at 14, turned professional at 15, rattled off three top-five finishes in her first three majors as a pro, battled wrist trouble, won the Open at 24 and then spent years with more injuries, cuts and withdrawals than strong showings.So it was not that fast, after all. Soon, though, it will apparently be finished. Barring a victory this weekend or a surprise in the years ahead, Wie West will finish with five L.P.G.A. Tour wins, including the 2014 Open at Pinehurst, tied for 69th on the career victory list. It adds up to a far better career than most players, though short of the mighty expectations that followed Wie West from the start and flowed from a blend of internet-age youth, talent, celebrity and marketability. (By way of comparison, Inbee Park, a 34-year-old player from South Korea, has won seven majors but has long drawn a fraction of the public attention that Wie West commanded.)“What’s the right word for this?” Wie West said in an interview in a sun-splashed lounge, well out of earshot of any aides.“I feel very — confident that I had the career that I wanted to,” she continued eventually. “Obviously, I wish I could have done more as well. I think anyone and everyone thinks that.”But, she said, “the what-ifs and the regrets and the ‘I wish I could have done this better’ can drive you truly insane.”Even last year’s announcement of a transition, to use her publicly preferred term, got derailed when her husband came down with Covid-19 and Wie West’s parents stayed back to help with child care. Ready to detail the wind-down she had rolled out on Instagram the previous week, Wie West wound up nearly alone at the 2022 Open in North Carolina.Wie West during the second round of last year’s U.S. Open.Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports, via ReutersShe had been mulling for years whether it was time to stop playing, frustrated by injuries and, more recently, torn by the notion of her family of three having only so much time together. In 2021, vulgar comments about Wie West by Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former mayor of New York City, jolted her into a fresh sense of purpose.But there eventually came a point, she said, when she realized the game’s toll was ultimately too high, when she feared her body would be so broken down she would not even be able to play a round for pleasure with her daughter. Her clubs have been in her bag almost exclusively ever since.“It’s hard,” she said, “it’s hard to know when the right time is to walk away.”That is assuredly in part because, for an athlete in any sport, stepping back from competition means the statistics are done and that the résumé is, with few exceptions, frozen. For Wie West, retiring or transitioning or whatever you want to call it meant firing up the inevitable debate about whether she had been a squandered or overhyped talent.She hears it, of course. She also gets it.“People love to chirp and have their own feeling and whatnot, and they totally have the right to it: They have been invested in my career,” she said. “I know I haven’t won as many as I, quote-unquote, should have.”At the same time, she seems to wonder how fair it is. She earned a degree from Stanford and won a U.S. Open, and those two feats, she figures, are what she wanted to do anyway.And yet she can still run through all of the ways her career could have been different: if she had held onto a share of the lead at the 2005 Open at Cherry Hills, if her quest that year to earn a spot in the Masters had worked out, if she had made the cut at her first PGA Tour event instead of missing it by a stroke.She is entering this week’s 156-woman Open with measured expectations against a deep field.The reigning champion, Minjee Lee, has won two majors since 2021 and is not ranked in the top-five in the world. And there is Rose Zhang, the 20-year-old Stanford student who last month won her debut tournament as a professional. Wie West’s group, which will tee off at 8:28 a.m. Pacific time on Thursday, includes the three-time major winner In Gee Chun and Annika Sorenstam, who logged 10 major victories in her career and received a special exemption into this week’s field.Wie West celebrated after winning the U.S. Open in 2014.Streeter Lecka/Getty ImagesThis spring, Wie West was musing about how she needed to get her stamina up for the rigors of a major, how she needed to hone her iron and wedge play before returning to one of golf’s biggest stages, especially since it will be played this year on one of the sport’s most beloved courses.“Just have to believe in myself, just get to a point where I feel confident that I can execute the shots and make the putts,” she said. “And I’m hoping that it all comes very quickly.”She plans to remain closely connected to the sport — she recently hosted the L.P.G.A. tournament that Zhang won — but insisted that she does not think much about how she transformed perceptions of the game that she said still enchants her.Even now, she said, she will play with her husband and become persuaded that, like every other golfer who has won, lost or never actually contested a major, she has unlocked the sport’s mysteries.“You get that one feeling and it feels really good, and you’re like, ‘I think I’ve figured out the game. I’ve figured it out!” she said. “I still catch myself saying that almost every time I play, so I know there’s an itch to want to get better.”Soon enough, after all of this time, it will be happening away from the spotlight. More

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      Minjee Lee Looks to Defend Her U.S. Women’s Open Title at Pebble Beach

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      Minjee Lee has spent these past few years feeling golf’s glories and agonies more than most.She won her first major tournament at the 2021 Evian Championship, a come-from-behind playoff victory, and followed it less than a year later with a record-setting win at the 2022 U.S. Women’s Open. Then came a tie for 43rd when she tried to defend her Evian title, worries about exhaustion and a pair of frustrating finishes in the first two majors of this year.Now ranked sixth in the world after reaching No. 2 last summer, Lee, a 27-year-old Australian, will have to conquer Pebble Beach Golf Links — the renowned course on the California coast — if she is to defend her Open title. The tournament begins Thursday.In a springtime interview at T.P.C. Harding Park in San Francisco, Lee discussed her masterful iron play, the hazards of Pebble Beach, the evolution of the women’s game and why winning a major once, never mind twice, is so difficult.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.You haven’t missed a cut at a major since 2019.I didn’t even know.How much of that represents a progression of your athletic talent versus your mind-set?You’re always trying to get a little bit better each day. So for me, for my progression and not having missed a cut over that period of time, I feel like I’ve put in a lot of hours and effort into my game and improving each day. It just shows my consistency over X amount of time.How did winning the Evian Championship in 2021 shape the subsequent years?It was a bit of a relief because there was a lot of talk: “When is she going to win her first major?” I heard a lot of things, but they were never to my face. They were always in passing or social media or a lot of things here and there. So it was kind of a relief, a monkey off my back. I knew I had it in me, but it finally happened — like, to actually get a win in a major is really, really hard.You always work toward winning majors, and your goals are very specific, so for that to be my first one, it led into my next year, as well.And as you learned last year at Evian, defending a championship is hard to do.Oh, yeah. It’s really hard.Going into Pebble Beach, how do you approach trying to defend a major?The hardest thing is to do your normal thing. Usually when you’re defending, you’re pulled in a lot of different directions: media, your practice rounds, you put in a lot of work because it’s a new venue and you have to do all of your prep starting from scratch.It’s not like Evian, where I already knew the golf course and had played it for years. [This year], it will be a little bit different. The U.S. Open has always meant a lot to me and to be able to win it was a dream come true for me. I don’t know how it will feel driving in there as a defending champion.The wind will be a factor at Pebble Beach. You grew up in Australia and dealt with the wind. You live in Texas and deal with the wind. Does it feel like an advantage this year?I like playing in the wind — I like a tough test of golf. I just feel like you can really use your creativity when it’s windy. Low shots are key, but it’s not always just the low shots. Are you going to use the wind? Are you going to fight the wind? It’s just a lot of different ways that you can play in the wind. I find it more fun when it’s harder, and because it really separates who is a good ball-striker and who isn’t as good, it really separates the field. I’ve always played in wind, so it doesn’t really feel that different for me.“I just feel like you can really use your creativity when it’s windy,” said Lee, using grass to gauge the gusts at the Mizuho Americas Open last month.Elsa/Getty ImagesThere are not many better iron players on the planet. Do you find yourself still emphasizing irons when you practice and prepare, or can you afford to spend more time on other things?I never really felt like I was better in that aspect until I saw the stat. Yeah, sure, my stats were better than the men, but I never really specifically worked on my irons — like, I always worked on my technique or how I move a certain way for a certain shot. But last year, it just happened to be better than any other year, and I’m not sure what really changed. It just kind of happened. You just work on something for so long, and then at one point, it just clicks. I probably don’t work on my swing as much right now; I’m working on other parts of my game, but only because those other areas are where I’d benefit the most.You’ve said you don’t pay attention to stats, but you set the Open scoring record last year, earning the highest payout in history ($1.8 million) for women’s golf. Do you think about those kinds of superlatives?I feel like I don’t — not as much as I should. I probably should look at it and think, “Oh, you did really well,” and then compliment myself. I just do my work, and when I’m away from the golf course, I don’t think about golf.There’s a moment in the Netflix documentary series “Full Swing” when Brooks Koepka talks about how golf is a game where, when things are going well, you think you’re never going to lose it, and when it’s not going well, you think you’ll never find your way back. This year hasn’t been a glide path for you. Where are you on that continuum?I had an off-season, like I always would in that period of time, and then played Asia and didn’t have that good of results. I was like, I’m just going to take a few weeks more at home, and I missed three events and that happened to be six weeks.Time went so quickly, and I was like, I’ve spent eight years going full-throttle, I’m allowed to take that time for myself. So I did, and I feel good. I feel quite refreshed. First week was Chevron — a major coming back for the first week — and I’m slowly working back into playing rhythms.You changed caddies recently. How has it affected you on the course?I’ve actually learned a lot about myself. When you’re younger, you rely a lot on your caddie, and I think I did that for quite a long time, just because I was young and didn’t know what I wanted as much. Now I know myself a bit better and I’ve matured a lot more.It just feels like I know what I want in a caddie and all that I need from my caddie. I don’t need the reassurance; I know what I’m doing. I just need somebody who knows me well, who is going to be a good companion out on the golf course. We spend so much time with them on the golf course, it’s like if you don’t like that person, it’s just not going to work.This is the first U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach, somewhere that looms large in golf’s imagination. What’s the bigger milestone for women’s golf: that the Open is being played at Pebble Beach, or that last year’s British Open was at Muirfield, where women couldn’t even be members until 2017?I’m a little bit mixed in that aspect. I’m really happy and grateful that we were able to play at Muirfield and have access to the golf course, and being at Pebble for the first time. I know that a lot of work goes into having those championships there. It’s not easy — nothing is easy, right? — but I am a little bit bittersweet that it took this much time to get the women on these golf courses. I’m very appreciative of the tours and the U.S. Golf Association and all of our sponsors for really pushing the women’s game and the L.P.G.A. to go to all of these great venues now, and I know it’s only going to get better.But I feel like it was a long time coming.“I just need somebody who knows me well, who is going to be a good companion out on the golf course,” Lee said of her caddie Rance De Grussa, a fellow Australian who began working with her earlier this year.John Minchillo/Associated PressIn February, you said one of your goals was not to be totally exhausted by the end of 2023. We’ve seen more and more elite athletes talk about burnout, mental illness, depression and exhaustion. How much of that weighs on your mind as you’re trying to sort out when to play?I’ve always had quite a full year. I’ve played a lot of events, and that’s what I really wanted to do. I wanted to play. But now I want to play less — like, I don’t want to be as tired coming down to some really important events at the end of the year.Now my priorities are different. I don’t need to spend all of my time playing every single event, trying to keep my card as a rookie. I’m getting older, so I want to look after my body, look after my mind. That’s what’s going to help me perform my best, so I think that’s why a lot of athletes are now talking about taking care of your well-being, taking care of your mind, where you are in your life. Just to be healthy inside and out I think is really important, and if nobody talks about it, nobody will really know about it either, so you can’t get the proper help if you need it.Does having won two majors help you feel liberated that you can take the breaks and take the pauses — that there’s maybe a little less to prove?Not really. I’ve never really thought about it in that way. Obviously, I am hungry for more: I want to win the other majors, and I don’t think that will ever change. And I’ve been close to world No. 1 a couple of times but not quite got over the line. So I still have a lot to show. I have a lot of fight left in me. I still have a lot of drive.You played for the first time when you were about 10. Looking back, do you wish you had started earlier? Started later?It was a good age for me. I swam and I played golf. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and I just tried a bunch of things: different sports, dance, music, everything. I was fortunate that my parents let me try everything. I just found it in golf, and I really enjoyed practicing and going and seeing my friends at the golf course. I used to hit these squishy golf balls around on the chipping green, and it was just fun. The way I got into it, I think it was the right way.Was golf your best sport?Well, I have pretty good hand-eye coordination, but I think because we were really a golfy family — my parents and my brother and my grandparents, they all loved playing golf, so we were just always around it.As a two-time Olympian, do you want to play in Paris next year?That’s pretty high on my list. I think Paris will be a pretty amazing turnout. The Olympics are probably the greatest honor you can have of representing your country, so I think that is going to be one of my bigger goals for next year.But Pebble Beach comes first. When do you start playing it in your head?I’m not really a look-up-the-golf-course-beforehand kind of girl. I’ve seen some holes on TV but nothing too much in detail.I like seeing the course and really visualizing it when I get there. I wouldn’t be able to tell if I did it on the map. I just like to internalize it when I get there.“You just work on something for so long, and then at one point, it just clicks, and that’s kind of what it did for me,” Lee said of how she hits her irons.Matt Rourke/Associated Press More

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      LIV Golf Resists Senate Request for Greg Norman’s Testimony on Saudi Deal

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      Less than two weeks before a planned hearing about a transaction that could reshape golf, lawmakers are struggling to assemble a witness list.The Capitol Hill meeting room has been booked, the senators’ calendars cleared. But less than two weeks before a Senate subcommittee wants to hold a hearing about the PGA Tour’s planned venture with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the panel’s ambitions for high-profile witnesses are encountering significant resistance.There is almost no prospect that the wealth fund’s governor, Yasir al-Rumayyan, will voluntarily go before Congress, on July 11 or ever. The PGA Tour’s commissioner, Jay Monahan, is on medical leave. And LIV Golf, a Saudi-financed league, is balking at sending Greg Norman, who won two British Opens in the decades before he became the circuit’s commissioner and lightning rod, to speak to the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.The dispute over witnesses, only weeks into the panel’s examination of the deal, suggests that the inquiry could be turbulent. Lawmakers are especially frustrated by LIV’s offer to send Gary Davidson, its acting chief operating officer, to the hearing instead of Norman.“We have requested testimony from Greg Norman, and unless there is a reasonable explanation for his absence — which we have not yet been provided — Greg Norman is who we expect to appear,” Maria McElwain, the communications director for Senator Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat who chairs the subcommittee, said in a statement.LIV declined to comment on Friday, but a person familiar with the circuit’s thinking, who requested anonymity to discuss private negotiations with Congress, said the league believed that Davidson was more steeped in its day-to-day operations and the potential ramifications of the deal that has rocked golf since it was announced on June 6. Norman and Davidson were not involved in the secret talks that led to the deal.Under the structure envisioned in a five-page framework agreement signed behind closed doors on May 30, the business operations of the PGA Tour, LIV and the European Tour, known as the DP World Tour — such as television rights and sponsorships — would be brought into a new for-profit company. The plan calls for the PGA Tour to control a majority of the board’s seats, for Monahan to be the company’s chief executive, and for the tour to maintain authority over many professional golf tournaments.But Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund would have extensive investment rights, and al-Rumayyan is positioned to become the company’s chairman, assuring the Saudis of significant sway over men’s professional golf if the deal closes.The planned venture has drawn weeks of scorn and skepticism from Washington, where lawmakers have fumed over Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, much as the tour did before it looked to go into business with the wealth fund. Some lawmakers have threatened to strip the tour of its tax-exempt status, and the Justice Department’s antitrust regulators could spend months scrutinizing the deal before deciding whether they will try to block it.And, hewing to the congressional pastime of publicly haranguing sports executives over issues such as steroids and the rights of college athletes, the Senate quickly scheduled a hearing to examine the deal, even though the most substantial details, like the valuations of assets, may not be resolved for months.In letters last week, though, Blumenthal and Ron Johnson, a senator from Wisconsin who is the senior Republican on the subcommittee, invited Norman, Monahan and al-Rumayyan to appear and be prepared to “discuss the circumstances and terms” of the agreement, as well as “the anticipated role” of the wealth fund in professional golf in the United States.LIV Golf chief operating officer Gary Davidson, right, talks with the Australian golfer Wade Ormsby at a LIV event earlier this year.Scott Taetsch/LIV Golf/LIVGO, via Associated PressThe senators, who have not subpoenaed any executives, had hoped to firm up the witness list by the middle of this week, but on Friday their panel was still bargaining with the tour, the wealth fund and LIV.The hearing, if it happens, will be among the most significant opportunities to date for golf executives to ease concerns about the planned transaction. But the proceeding, like any appearance before Congress, carries risks. A single misstep could intensify the public firestorm or, perhaps more troublingly for the deal’s supporters, encourage government officials to take an even more exacting look at the pact. (Antitrust experts, for instance, have predicted that Monahan’s assertion on June 6 that the deal will “take the competitor off of the board” will intensify the Justice Department’s scrutiny.)Norman, in particular, has a history of drawing criticism. Last year, for instance, he played down Saudi responsibility for the murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, saying, “Look, we’ve all made mistakes.” In recent months, he has made relatively few public comments, and he and his representatives have declined interview requests from The New York Times.But when Blumenthal and Johnson wrote to him on June 21, they said the subcommittee “respectfully requests that you appear in-person to testify.” LIV executives said Norman would be traveling abroad at the time, and they privately objected to the commissioner being subjected to congressional inquiry without his PGA Tour counterpart enduring the same scrutiny, which seems likely given Monahan’s medical leave.Monahan’s indefinite absence has complicated the tour’s representation at the hearing. The two executives named to lead the tour on an interim basis, Tyler Dennis and Ron Price, were not involved in the deal talks.Al-Rumayyan, however, was. But his appearance on Capitol Hill was never considered probable. One of Saudi Arabia’s most influential figures, he rarely gives interviews outside of tightly controlled settings, and lawyers representing him and the Saudi government waged an aggressive fight to keep him from being deposed in golf-related litigation in the United States. (The litigation was dropped as a part of the tentative deal — one of the few binding components of the framework agreement — and al-Rumayyan never gave sworn testimony.)The wealth fund declined to comment on Friday. The tour, in a statement, said it was “cooperating with the subcommittee’s requests for information and having productive conversations with them about who will represent the PGA Tour on July 11th.”It added, “We look forward to answering their questions about the framework agreement that keeps the PGA Tour as the leader of professional golf’s future and benefits our players, our fans and our sport.”The wealth fund and the tour are deploying armies of lobbyists, lawyers and political fixers to try to smooth the deal’s path. Before going on leave to recuperate from a “medical situation” that the tour has declined to describe, Monahan wrote to lawmakers to defend the agreement. He also complained that Congress had not given the tour enough support to withstand a Saudi “attempt to take over the game of golf in the United States,” as he put it.“We were largely left on our own to fend off the attacks, ostensibly due to the United States’ complex geopolitical alliance with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” Monahan wrote.It is not clear whether the Senate panel will escalate its efforts to secure testimony from Norman, or any of the other witnesses they requested, especially before the July 11 hearing. Most lawmakers are away from Washington for the Senate’s Independence Day break, and few are expected to return to Capitol Hill until the week of the hearing.The hearing’s current timing, though, could be fortuitous for golf leaders. Public attention will turn the following week to the British Open, which will be played at Royal Liverpool. Cameron Smith, who joined LIV not long after his victory last July on the Old Course at St. Andrews, will try to defend his title at golf’s last major tournament of the year. More

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      How the PGA Tour and Liv Golf Merger Could Collapse

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      The tentative agreement has been the talk of golf, but there is no guarantee the pact that aims to bring the tour and LIV Golf under one umbrella will overcome every threat.Golf’s big deal — a planned partnership between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — is not how big deals are ordinarily done.There were almost no outside bankers or lawyers involved in negotiations that led to a five-page framework agreement, and only so much input from the PGA Tour board. The initial pact had few binding clauses and did not assign values to assets. The plan that would, as the PGA Tour commissioner, Jay Monahan, put it, “take the competitor off of the board” came as the tour faced a Justice Department investigation over antitrust matters.“In some ways, this looks a little more like a settlement to me than an actual M&A deal,” said Suni Sreepada, a partner in the mergers & acquisitions group at Ropes & Gray who said the lack of definitive arrangements complicated the path to closing.“The fact that they were willing to publicly announce it does mean that the parties are pretty committed to doing something,” Sreepada said. “But I guess that leaves us with a question of who holds the leverage at this point? And how does this end up getting fleshed out?”If the agreement closes, it stands to reshape golf’s economic structure profoundly, bringing the business ventures of the PGA Tour, LIV Golf and the DP World Tour, formerly the European Tour, into a new company. The wealth fund is in line to have significant influence over investments in the company, which Monahan is poised to lead as chief executive.Despite the Saudi sway over the new company’s coffers, as well as the plan for the wealth fund’s governor, Yasir al-Rumayyan, to serve as the entity’s chairman, PGA Tour officials have insisted that the tour retains control over the competitions themselves. They also note that the tour, which had previously condemned wealth fund money as tainted and immoral, will control a majority of board seats.“We are confident that once all stakeholders learn more about how the PGA Tour will lead this new venture, they will understand how it benefits our players, fans and sport while protecting the American institution of golf,” the tour said this month.Those assurances have done little to curb outrage over the pact, which could still fall apart.Here are some of the obstacles the tour, whose board is meeting near Detroit on Tuesday, and the wealth fund will have to overcome during a process that could take months. If the deal is not done by Dec. 31, it could potentially collapse, allowing both sides to decide whether they want to “revert to operating their respective businesses.”The PGA Tour’s board could balk.The tour has an 11-member board that includes five players. The board’s chairman, Edward D. Herlihy, and a member, James J. Dunne III, were involved in the talks with the wealth fund, but others had little knowledge of the deal until the day it became public.The board must sign off on the agreement once the outstanding details are negotiated. Although Herlihy and Dunne are expected to vote for the pact they helped create, most other board members have been publicly silent or noncommittal.“I told myself I’m not going to be for it or against it until I know everything, and I still don’t know everything,” Webb Simpson, a board member who won the 2012 U.S. Open, said in a recent interview. And at a news conference on June 13, Patrick Cantlay, another player with a board seat, said “it seems like it’s still too early to have enough information to have a good handle on the situation.”Beyond the anticipated backing from Herlihy and Dunne, Rory McIlroy, who sits on the board, has indicated reluctant support for the deal, saying: “If you’re thinking about one of the biggest sovereign wealth funds in the world, would you rather have them as a partner or an enemy?”Other directors have not responded to messages or could not be reached for comment.With many of the agreement’s details still being negotiated, the board did not vote on the deal on Tuesday.The Justice Department could try to block the deal.The Justice Department was looking at professional golf before the deal was announced, with antitrust investigators examining the tour’s closeness with other leading golf organizations and its efforts to deter players from joining LIV.The proposed partnership did not extinguish the department’s interest. In fact, it appears to have strengthened it.Although the tour and the wealth fund have refused to characterize the transaction as a merger, antitrust experts say semantics may not matter. Even if the deal is structured as more of a partnership than an acquisition, the Justice Department could seek to block it, as it successfully did with JetBlue’s alliance with American Airlines.Monahan stirred more doubts in Washington with his public observation that a leading rival would no longer be a threat. Antitrust lawyers said the department could interpret his remark as evidence that the elimination of competition is the aim of the deal, not, say, improving the sport.But Monahan also said the agreement would help create “a productive position for the game at large.” The tour is expected to focus on this in the coming months, arguing that by combining resources and repairing the rift in professional golf, the proposed venture would offer fans the best of all worlds, including more competitions between the finest players on the planet.A LIV Golf event at the Trump National Golf Club in Washington, D.C., this year.Chris Trotman/LIV Golf, via Associated PressThe end of the tension could help persuade regulators to approve the deal, reasoning that it is good for consumers.“If I were the lifetime czar of antitrust in the United States, I would ban the deal and tell them go back and compete,” said Stephen F. Ross, who teaches sports law at Penn State and worked for the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission.But, he said, “the real world is that neither private litigation nor antitrust enforcers have ever been particularly good at policing competition between sporting entities to make sure that consumers’ preferences are respected.”The department could also scrutinize how the arrangement will affect professional golfers, given the Biden administration’s focus on workers. In its successful effort to block Penguin Random House’s takeover bid for Simon & Schuster, the department’s antitrust regulators cited the potential effects on author compensation.Even though professional golfers, who often earn millions of dollars in prize and sponsorship money, may appear to be a less sympathetic group of workers than others affected by corporate transactions, the department could be eager to build case law related to the labor consequences of deals.Congress wants the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to study the pact.The deal has been loudly criticized on Capitol Hill, and a Senate subcommittee has scheduled a July hearing. But a Senate hearing cannot stop the deal, and so some lawmakers have asked a Treasury Department-led panel to intervene.The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, is an interagency panel that has broad latitude to scrutinize any transaction that could result in a foreign entity controlling an American business and threatening national interests. Control is interpreted broadly, and can exist even in an investment for a minority stake.A transaction involving golf tours would not immediately seem to trigger a CFIUS review; it does not involve critical technologies and most likely does not involve much sensitive personal data about U.S. citizens. Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary, said earlier this month that it was “not immediately obvious” the deal involved national security concerns.The demands for a review have not detailed specific concerns besides a generalized distaste for a partnership between an American sports titan and an arm of a government “known for chilling dissent, jailing dissidents and enacting draconian punishments,” as Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, and Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, put it.But one possible reason to scrutinize the deal involves real estate since CFIUS can review agreements involving property close to sensitive military sites. One of the PGA Tour’s biggest assets that could be controlled by the new for-profit entity is the Tournament Players Club collection of more than 30 golf courses across the United States that are owned, licensed or operated by the PGA Tour. More

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      PGA Tour Board Meets To Discuss Merger With Saudi-Backed LIV Golf

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      The 11-member board did not vote on the surprise pact, whose most significant details are still being negotiated.The PGA Tour’s board, with its members gathered in the same room for the first time since a fraction of them negotiated a deal with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to reshape golf, signaled Tuesday that it intended to move ahead with the agreement and past an outcry that has stretched from clubhouse locker rooms to Capitol Hill.But it also made plain that closing the deal was no certainty.The board, as expected, did not vote on a deal stocked with tentative terms that call for a web of golf businesses — including the tour, the Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit and the European Tour, now known as the DP World Tour — to be housed in a new company. The entity is expected to be flush with Saudi cash but, for now, under the day-to-day control of PGA Tour leaders. But executives hoped that the regular meeting of the board, which is expected to weigh the pact formally only once final terms are negotiated, would help stabilize the tour’s course during a turbulent run of internal division and global scrutiny.That period, executives and board members know, could last for months.Tour executives, the board said in a carefully worded statement Tuesday night, have “begun a new phase of negotiations to determine if the tour can reach a definitive agreement that is in the best of interests of our players, fans, sponsors, partners, and the game overall.”The board, wary of further alienating the players who make up the tour’s membership, some of whom were infuriated after being blindsided by news of the pact, said it was “committed to the safeguards in the framework agreement that ensure the PGA Tour would lead and maintain control of this potential new commercial entity.”The board’s meeting came three weeks after the surprise announcement of the deal, and one day after the tour gave a Senate subcommittee a copy of the five-page framework agreement. The tentative accord, signed in the early-morning hours of May 30 at a Four Seasons hotel in San Francisco, capped seven weeks of secret negotiations, but it was mostly notable for how few binding commitments it included — and how many consequential details remained to be sorted through.Although the tour and the wealth fund are expected to contribute their golf ventures, like LIV, into the new company, the deal’s architects signed the framework agreement so quickly that no valuations were included or, apparently, even completed in advance. The agreement does not quantify the scale of the wealth fund’s expected investment in the new company, though it offers an outline for its leadership structure and protects the Saudi fund’s investment rights.Its few binding clauses include a nondisparagement pledge covering the tour and the wealth fund (but not the players) and a truce that keeps the rival circuits from recruiting golfers from one another. If a final agreement is not in place by the end of the year, barring a mutual extension, the tour and the wealth fund can “revert” to their businesses without any financial penalty, like a breakup fee.Board approval, if it comes, does not guarantee that the deal will last. The Justice Department’s antitrust regulators are among the government officials examining the accord, and they could ultimately try to block it. The pact is also poised to draw scrutiny next month on Capitol Hill, where a Senate subcommittee has scheduled a hearing for July 11.But Tuesday’s meeting was seen as pivotal to the way forward for the tour and an 11-member board that includes five players and luminaries in business, law and finance. Only two members of the board, Edward D. Herlihy and James J. Dunne III, were involved in the negotiations that led to the deal, and it appears many board members did not know they were underway.The board meeting, held at a Detroit-area hotel, began in the early afternoon and stretched into the evening. A person familiar with the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private gathering, said it had not focused entirely on the deal; rather, the person said, the board also spent significant time on more technical matters of the sport, such as competition cuts and eligibility.The majority of the meeting focused on the framework agreement, though, with board members receiving a briefing from the tour’s bankers about how they will try to assign values to the circuit’s varied assets. Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, was absent from the meeting in Dearborn; on June 13, the tour announced that he was going on leave as he recuperated from an unspecified “medical situation.”Board members did not comment as they left the meeting, allowing the statement to stand on its own. Only one player who sits on the board, Rory McIlroy, has publicly suggested any measure of support for the deal. In recent weeks, other players have said they wanted to learn more about the accord and what it would mean for the tour.But board members have been told in recent months that the tour could not afford to maintain its duel with LIV, the league founded with billions of dollars from the Saudi wealth fund that enticed some of the game’s biggest stars with guaranteed contracts and enormous prize money. The wealth fund was also facing some pressure as it confronted setbacks in a court battle against the tour, and as LIV struggled to attract audiences and attention in the United States for reasons beyond its financial backer.If the deal collapses, though, both sides have already secured a mutual victory: the dismissal of litigation in California after the tour, the wealth fund and LIV agreed to drop their clashing cases. The dismissals were made with prejudice, meaning that they cannot be refiled, even if the rest of the pact disintegrates.For as guarded as the tour’s statement was on Tuesday night, the dismissal of the litigation was mentioned in its very first sentence. More

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      Details of PGA Tour and Liv Golf Merger Reveal What’s Left to Settle

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      The five-page agreement provoked a furor but included only a handful of binding provisions.The PGA Tour’s tentative deal with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund included only a handful of binding commitments — such as a nondisparagement agreement and a pledge to dismiss acrimonious litigation — leaving many of the most consequential details about the future of men’s professional golf to be negotiated by the end of the year.The five-page framework agreement was obtained Monday by The New York Times. The proposed deal, announced on June 6 by the tour and the wealth fund, the financial force behind the renegade LIV Golf circuit, has caused an uproar throughout the golf industry. But a review of the agreement points to the rushed nature of the secret, seven-week talks that led to the deal and the complex path that remains ahead for the new venture, a potential triumph for Saudi Arabia’s quest to gain power and influence in sports and, its critics say, to distract from its reputation as a human rights abuser.Most crucially, the tour and the wealth fund must still come to terms on the values of the assets that each will contribute to their planned partnership. Bankers and lawyers have spent recent weeks beginning the valuation process, but the framework agreement includes no substantive details of projected figures or even the size of an anticipated cash investment from the wealth fund.Instead, much of the agreement focuses on the basic structure of the new company that is to house what the accord describes as all of the “commercial businesses/rights” of the PGA Tour and the European Tour, now known as the DP World Tour.The wealth fund is expected to contribute its “golf-related investments and assets,” including the LIV circuit that split the sport, and will have the first opportunity to invest in the new company. The tentative agreement says that the PGA Tour is to maintain “at all times a controlling voting interest” in the new company, but that Yasir al-Rumayyan, the wealth fund’s governor, will serve as the chairman of the new joint entity. Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner who recently went on leave because of an unspecified “medical situation,” is in line to become its chief executive.The new company, according to the agreement, could pursue “targeted mergers and acquisitions to globalize the sport” and may look to incorporate “innovations from LIV,” such as the team golf concept that the league has championed since it debuted last year.Those provisions, though, are not binding until the tour and the wealth fund strike a final agreement. Instead, the only ironclad caveats of the agreement involve seeking the dismissal of litigation, a mandate fulfilled on June 16; a ban on recruiting players to rival circuits; a deadline of Dec. 31 to sign final accords, absent a mutual extension; and confidentiality and nondisparagement clauses.The effective gag agreement appears far-reaching and prohibits the tour and the wealth fund from “any defamatory or disparaging remarks, comments or statements” about the other side and any “ultimate beneficial owners” — a phrase that could be interpreted to include the Saudi government, which the tour had previously condemned for its human rights record.“I recognize everything that I’ve said in the past and in my prior positions,” Monahan, a leading architect of the deal, said this month. “I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite. 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.”Saudi officials have denied that their investments in sports, which include efforts in soccer, Formula 1 racing and boxing, are intended to sanitize the kingdom’s reputation. Instead, they have depicted those investments as a glossy component of a sweeping effort to diversify the country’s economy under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto leader who is also the wealth fund’s chairman.Al-Rumayyan, the wealth fund’s governor, signed the agreement on behalf of the Saudis, with no evidence of direct involvement by Greg Norman, LIV’s commissioner.Monahan and Keith Pelley, the DP World Tour’s chief executive, effectively represented the golf establishment when they signed the deal behind closed doors in San Francisco on May 30. It was sprung upon almost the entire golf industry, including most of the PGA Tour’s board, a week later.The board, which has been considering the deal that it was largely shut out of negotiating, is expected to discuss the pact’s initial terms during a meeting in Detroit on Tuesday. The 11-member board is not believed to be planning a vote yet because the final nuances of the accord may not be hammered out for months.The deal faces scrutiny well beyond the tour’s board. In Washington, Justice Department officials and congressional investigators are preparing to pore over the details of the accord, which antitrust regulators could ultimately try to block. The tour shared a copy of the agreement with a Senate subcommittee on Monday evening, just more than two weeks before a hearing on Capitol Hill that many expect to become contentious.But tour executives concluded in recent months that the new economic order that LIV’s swift rise provoked — swelling legal bills, larger prize purses, a diluted product with the world’s most marketable players competing against one another only four times a year at golf’s major tournaments — was unsustainable. They sought a détente with the Saudis and found a receptive audience in and around the wealth fund, where some officials were frustrated by a series of legal setbacks connected to LIV and uneven success in gaining traction in the crucial American sports market.The second paragraph of the framework nodded toward the turmoil, with the tour and the wealth fund saying they were interested in “ending divisions.” Some elements of the deal amounted to olive branches. In one section, for instance, the two sides agreed to “cooperate in good faith and use best efforts” to bring secure Official World Golf Ranking accreditation for LIV events.The fate of LIV, which sapped the PGA Tour of some of its star players after offering exorbitant contracts and prize purses, is not included in a binding part of the deal. Instead, the new company, if it comes to pass, is expected to “undertake a full and objective empirical data-driven evaluation of LIV and its prospects and potential.”The framework does not outline any financial penalties if the deal does not ultimately progress, but it says the tour and the wealth fund “can revert to operating their respective businesses” if the agreement collapses. More

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      Rory McIlroy Just Misses a Hollywood Ending at the U.S. Open

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      Despite briefly sharing the lead with the eventual champion, Wyndham Clark, McIlroy settled for second but vowed he would get a fifth major title.It might have been fitting if someone from Holywood won this year’s U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club. But Rory McIlroy, born in the Northern Ireland town of Holywood, is not having that kind of year.On Sunday, McIlroy was chasing his first major championship title in nine years, a drought that continues to shadow a luminous career that began with four major titles from 2011 to 2014. In April, he missed the cut at the Masters Tournament. A month later, he finished tied for seventh at the P.G.A. Championship.Then, on June 6, McIlroy, the most vociferous loyalist supporting the PGA Tour in its feud with the Saudi-back LIV Golf circuit, learned only a few hours before news broke that the two tours had shockingly formed a business partnership.McIlroy, like almost all of the PGA Tour’s players, felt blindsided.But on Sunday, a buoyant, smiling McIlroy, 34, was again enthusiastically chasing another major title, in the final round of the 123rd U.S. Open. He birdied the opening hole and for most of the next four hours seemed poised to reel in the eventual tournament winner, Wyndham Clark, the third-round co-leader with Rickie Fowler.McIlroy, however, never birdied another hole, and in the end, Clark, after some nervous closing moments, outlasted McIlroy by a stroke as both golfers shot even-par 70s. It was McIlroy’s third runner-up finish at a major and his 10th finish in the top five of a major since 2014.“I fought to the very end, and I’m getting closer,” McIlroy said Sunday of his chase for a fifth major title, adding: “I just got to keep putting myself in these positions and, you know, sooner or later it’s going to happen for me.”McIlroy said he felt a link between his performance on Sunday and his second-place finish at last year’s British Open at St. Andrews.“The last two real chances I’ve had at majors have been pretty similar performances,” he said. “Not doing a lot wrong.”McIlroy’s pursuit went down to the final strokes of the event, as Clark, playing in the final group of the day, was forced to execute a two-putt from 60 feet on the 18th green to clinch the championship.“I fought to the very end, and I’m getting closer,” McIlroy said of his chase for a fifth major championship.Michael Madrid/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConMcIlroy conceded that he was hoping for a miscue.“You don’t want to wish bad on anyone, but you’re really hoping for a three-putt,” he said. “You’re hoping to somehow get into a playoff to keep giving yourself a chance. You’re rooting for one guy, and that guy is yourself at that point. A mistake can give you a glimmer of hope.“But Wyndham was pretty much rock solid all day, and that was a great two-putt at the last.”McIlroy’s fourth round began auspiciously as he reached the green on the par-5, 585-yard first hole with his second shot and two-putted for an opening birdie that briefly moved him into a tie for the tournament lead.But he struggled to capitalize on that early momentum even as he registered par after par — a streak of 12 in all. He showed nerve in sinking several tense four-foot par putts but failed to get his approach shots close enough for easier birdie attempts.McIlroy was hanging on but could not convert any putt longer than seven feet throughout the middle of his round. On the eighth green, he pulled an eight-foot birdie putt well left of the hole, a missed opportunity that McIlroy specifically mentioned in his post-round news conference.At the par-3 ninth hole, McIlroy’s towering approach shot with an iron came to rest 14 feet from the flag. As he walked onto the green, fans in two packed grandstands implored him to make a fairly straightforward putt that would have put him in a tie with Clark, but again McIlroy could not seize the moment.McIlroy’s run of consecutive pars ended at the par-5 14th hole after his tee shot bounded into the rough left of the fairway. He was forced to lay up short of the green with a second shot, although he then faced a short wedge shot to the green.McIlroy later said he was choosing between two clubs for the shot, but he felt a wind gust just before he began his swing, and that impeded the shot’s momentum.“I had the right club, but I might have just had to wait an extra 15 or 20 seconds to let that little gust settle,” he said.McIlroy caught a break on No. 14 when his ball embedded in a grassy bank.Richard Heathcote/Getty ImagesMcIlroy’s golf ball landed about a foot short of perfect and failed to clear a large bunker protecting the front of the 14th green. The ball embedded in a grassy bank between the sand and the green.He was granted free relief in the grass to the right of the bunker, but his dicey, downhill chip to the green rolled 26 feet from the hole. That led to bogey, and McIlroy fell to nine under par, which extended Clark’s lead to two strokes.McIlroy closed with four routine pars.He was asked at the conclusion of his Sunday news conference if he was growing weary of answering questions about the nine-year wait for a fifth major championship victory. He conceded that it was exhausting but added: “At the same time, when I do finally win this next major, it’s going to be really, really sweet. I would go through 100 Sundays like this to get my hands on another major championship.” More