PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — A few hours after PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan deftly avoided the countless traps that pepper the professional golf landscape, Adam Scott said the quiet thing out loud.
In his annual State of the Tour press conference, Monahan appeared to send a direct message to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund: “[President Donald Trump] wants to see the game reunified. We want to see the game reunified,” he said Tuesday at TPC Sawgrass, with no mention of PIF.
Asked repeated follow-up questions, the commissioner sidestepped and obfuscated, which is no surprise given the uncertainty of the ongoing negotiations between PIF, which owns LIV Golf, and the Tour to reunite the professional game.
Scott, who is a player director on the PGA Tour Enterprises board of directors and a member of the circuit’s transaction subcommittee, was not as vague when he was asked if the circuit’s hope to bring the game back under “one tour” was possible?
“I think it is part of the stumbling block. The Tour’s being very careful and respectful of everyone and wanting to give everyone — the golf fans and the media and the players — the product that they want,” he said. “But we’re starting from two different sides of this, so I think it’s hard to find the balance that’s acceptable for everybody. And it also may not be ultimately possible.”
Scott, who attended both meetings last month in the White House with President Donald Trump, was also asked if team golf, which is LIV Golf’s primary focus, was the biggest obstacle in the negotiations.
“I think the biggest hangup is in how we see the highest level of competitive golf going forward. The product of LIV and the product of the PGA Tour work in very different ways,” he said. “I think the challenge is figuring out how that can come together and be really reunification, which is kind of what everyone is shooting for.”
