PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan delivered his annual State of the Tour address Wednesday before the first round of the Tour Championship, the season-ending event in Atlanta.
Monahan talked about innovations the Tour is making in production of Tour events, talked about players being more engaged as equity in the Tour and how strong the Tour’s schedule is with a balance of signature events and full-field events.
But the question that many golf fans wanted answered remained unanswered: When is men’s professional golf going to be united again after two years of the split between the PGA Tour and the LIV Tour?
It’s not that reporters didn’t ask plenty of questions about how negotiations are going with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund. It’s not like reporters didn’t ask about what negotiations are taking place 15 months after the initial announcement of a framework agreement with the PIF, if there is a deadline for negotiations or if the Tour has decided on a path for players to return from the LIV Tour if their contracts with the PIF come to an end. It’s just that tour officials provided no answers to those questions.
Monahan and those around him simply skirted the issue, mostly falling back on the idea of not wanting to negotiate in public and saying that the negotiations are complex and will proceed at their own pace. Those answers might be fine for a boardroom, but it is not great when you are trying to convince fans to continue to watch a product that is not as strong as it was a year ago.
The Tour might dispute that statement, but then again the Tour a year ago had Jon Rahm as a member before he moved to LIV. Bryson DeChambeau isn’t on the PGA Tour anymore, either, and he happens to have won the U.S. Open in June. The PGA Tour has elite players who are having terrific years, like Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele and Rory McIlroy. But the Tour would be stronger with Rahm and DeChambeau and maybe one or two other LIV players.
Fans need more information
I still run into people who say they are far less interested in the PGA Tour since the split with LIV that started in 2023. Too many people are still saying they watch less golf than they have in the past. They are not watching LIV golf, either, if you believe the minuscule television ratings for that tour. One or two people I talk to say they just don’t watch PGA Tour golf at all anymore, limiting their viewing to the major championships. Ratings for PGA Tour events seemed to crater early in the year but have rallied this summer. That still doesn’t mean the Tour is thriving with some fans after the LIV split.
By not answering questions about the split and efforts to reunite men’s golf, Monahan adds to the frustration of some fans. Most fans don’t care about tour equity ownership for the golfers or increased purses or changes in title sponsors. They do care about which golfers are playing in a given week. Monahan and his staff did nothing to clear any of that up.
It’s possible that the PGA Tour is burning the midnight oil in negotiations, that emails and text messages are flying back and forth between Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. and Saudi Arabia. It’s possible that the PGA Tour in 2026 – it’s likely too late for changes in 2025 – is being shaped right now.
But the fans can’t know that without better answers than, “We don’t want to negotiate in public.” And the fans deserve at least some information about where their sport is headed, at least if the fans are being asked to continue their allegiance to the sport. Fans might not be investing money into the tour like the Strategic Sports Group or the title sponsors of each tournament. But they are being asked to invest their time in watching the sport and their emotions in rooting for top players.
The PGA Tour needs to pay off that investment with more detailed information about the future of the sport.
Larry Bohannan is the golf writer for The Desert Sun. You can contact him at (760) 778-4633 or at larry.bohannan@desertsun.com. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter at @larry_bohannan. Support local journalism. Subscribe to The Desert Sun.