Golf is nearing the end of its fourth year of professional division, and nothing suggests that reunification will happen anytime soon. In fact, the most sensible bet at this point might be that it will never happen. Far from investing in continuing to build bridges between two sides that seemed closer than ever at the beginning of the year, with the return to the White House of Donald Trump, who appeared determined to become the intermediary to bring the negotiations to a successful conclusion, both the PGA and the LIV have spent the last few months designing significant changes aimed at further strengthening their respective products.
Pga and Liv
That summit in the Oval Office in February, where Trump brought together the top brass of the American tour, including Commissioner Jay Monahan, Tiger Woods, and Adam Scottthe leading voices in player representationand Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the head of the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) that governs the LIV, now seems a distant memory. At that time, peace seemed just a matter of time, but the paths of both organizations diverged again shortly afterward. What has emerged is that the PGA was proposing a kind of merger, and that Al-Rumayyan's vision in no way includes seeing his creation dissolved into another organization.
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Since then, the relationship has been in a glacial period. The levels of hostility seen in 2022 and 2023 have not recovered; the phase of harassment and takedowns in the form of high-profile signings financed by the endless flow of Saudi oil seems to be over (and in fact, this week saw the first high-profile defection, that of Brooks Koepka), but none of the rapprochements that Monahan and Al-Rumayyan used to stage from time to time have materialized, or at least they haven't reached the media. And yet, two figures perceived as obstacles to the agreement have left the equation: Monahan, whom many blamed for the schism for refusing to listen when the LIV was still in its infancy and the Arab strategy involved some kind of partnership with the PGA, and who made many feel betrayed when he negotiated a preliminary agreement behind the players' backs, announced in the summer of 2023, which ultimately proved worthless; and Greg Norman, the controversial first CEO of the super league, a figure who has never been well-regarded in the upper echelons of golf and whom his counterpart did not recognize as a valid interlocutor.
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Each to their own. They have been replaced, respectively, by Brian Rolapp and Scott ONeil, who, at least for now, seem more focused on figuring out how to improve their tours than on unifying them. Rolapp, a top NFL executive, is determined to apply to the PGA what has made American football the most-watched sport in the United States. According to reports in recent months, he is planning a major overhaul, which includes a significantly shorter schedule. The mantra is to make elite golf a scarcer, and therefore more exclusive, product. Fewer tournaments and a structure designed to give more prominence to the biggest stars, even at the expense of a middle class that has increasingly less influence on everything happening across the Atlantic.
ONeil, for his part, has understood what Norman refused to admit: there are some things that not even petrodollars can fight. One of them is the governing board of the world rankings. The LIV has already announced that it will eliminate one of the features that was anathema to its inclusion in the system, and which faced opposition from several internal voices, including that of a heavyweight like Jon Rahm: the three-round tournaments. From 2026 onwards, they will be played in four rounds, demonstrating flexibility even at the cost of losing part of the competition's distinctive identity. Beyond that, the plans involve slowing investment. The era of mammoth contracts and multi-million dollar sums allocated to pay fines imposed on players by their previous circuits is over; the era of self-sufficiency has arrived. It's about letting franchises that are already attracting sponsors and establishing themselves as national or continental teams in an attempt to gain popularity take off. In that sense, the Fireballs, whose roster next year will include captain Sergio Garca, Josele Ballester, David Puig, and Luis Masaveu, will be the first all-Spanish team since the project began in the summer of 2022.
