Remember the Titanic Meme? Where Rose Dawson says, ‘It has been 84 years’. That is how long it feels that the PGA Tour and the PIF have been talking about a potential deal between the two parties. Initial talks between Jay Monahan and the PIF governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan started in 2023. The discussions took up pace recently after the PGA Tour commissioner and player representative Adam Scott met with the President Donald Trump to accelerate and help seal the deal. Why’d they meet the President? Because he loves golf, and during his campaign, he said he’d take a mere 15 minutes to get the deal signed.

Post that another meeting took place at the Palm Beaches in Florida where the Cognizant Classic is about to take place. The meeting which took all day, had Tiger Woods, Adam Scott, Webb Simpson, Patrick Cantlay, Peter Malnati, Camilo Villegas, and Commissioner Jay Monahan. Woods and Scott had joined remotely. Peter Malnati one of the players on the board, recently talked to Sports Illustrated about the whole process behind the decision making.

“It’s been really interesting to me. We talk all the time in golf about things we can’t control, and in this we talk about all these ideal scenarios. And a lot of it is out of our control, and that goes against the golfer’s creed. ‘What would the PIF accept? Or is this a waste of all of our time?’” The Two-time PGA Tour winner also feels that the involvement of the President in the deal is a huge force that could help push the deal over its current ambiguous state. However, there’s a twist!

Malnati also indicated that a deal being confirmed will be a huge feather in the cap for the President, and he will relish taking credit in case the partnership comes to fruition. “As stupid as this is … and it’s really stupid … the President of the United States wants to be involved and I think he wants to take credit for reuniting men’s professional golf. That’s a powerful tool to have in your back pocket.”

Donald Trump was also recently asked about the deal, and he joked saying “much more complicated” than a Russia-Ukraine peace deal. The February 20 meeting with President Trump, was not able to bring finality to the discussions with Yasir Al-Rumayyan.

“Rumblings from informed sources suggest that Thursday’s meeting at the White House didn’t go as well as Tour executives had hoped, which suggests that PIF governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, remains determined to keep shoveling cash into the furnace of his own pridefulness. There’s no metric by which his folly can be judged economically successful,” noted Eamon Lynch about the meeting.

The deal, despite having undergone several iterations of discussions, still has some major hurdles to overcome to reach a finalization. It has been nearly 18 months since the initial talks took place, and this delay has been a great cause for further delay. Ironic, right? “I think where we are right now that’s encouraging is we do have some pretty good idea of what it might look like to reintegrate some of those (LIV) players,” stated Malnati.

The Tennessee Resident feels that the inclusion of the DP World Tour in some capacity is also something that the team has discussed and come to a conclusion about. “The optimism around this has really expedited the process of what constitutes a unified men’s professional golf and what it would look like. And how does the DP World Tour fit into this? That is important, too. I think we’ve answered some of those questions,” Malnati added.

All things point to a deal taking place. PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan expressed a far more positive tone when talking about the ongoing talks regarding a PGA-PIF deal.

Jay Monahan’s one-tour vision

Monahan’s idea centers more around bringing golf back to its competitive best, which is exactly what the fans want. “What it means is the reunification of the game, which is what we have been and are focused on. Candidly, that’s what fans want. So when you talk about reunification, that’s all the best players in the world competing with each other and against each other,” he said.

“I think if you solve things if we respond to what our fans are telling us, we put together the best, the strongest possible schedule and product; to me, all that will resolve itself,” added Monahan as he explained that reunification is what the fans ultimately want. All other nitty-gritties are secondary in the deal.

The finality of a deal was also a big question in my mind. Monahan made peace by saying that everyone involved wanted the deal to be done as soon as possible, which gave more impetus for the deal to be confirmed soon. “I don’t think you’re ever close until you’re finalized. I would say this: Everything is moving forward with pace, and I think there’s a general—when you look at all the parties involved, there’s a general enthusiasm for getting this done.”

The PGA-PIF deal looks imminent. How the golfing landscape will look at the end of this remains a mystery for now. When it does, golf fans, be ready for some radical change!