McIlroy says PGA Tour deal with Saudis isn’t close

ORLANDO, Fla. — Rory McIlroy believes the PGA Tour completing a deal with the Saudi backers of LIV Golf would be the ideal scenario because it would bring back together all the best players in the world.

“But I don’t think the PGA Tour needs a deal. I think the momentum is pretty strong,” McIlroy said Wednesday ahead of the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and player director Adam Scott twice met last month with President Donald Trump at the White House to see if they can reach an agreement. Tiger Woods and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, joined the second meeting.

Monahan said the priority was reunification and it was a “huge step,” though he did not indicate when they would meet again and did not anticipate an announcement next week at The Players Championship.

At issue is how to integrate players while keeping LIV’s concept of team golf. Al-Rumayyan is bullish on team golf. LIV has 12 teams that have investors and sponsors. Each LIV event awards prize money to individual scores and team scores, and the season ends with a team championship.

McIlroy suggested that has led to the stall in negotiations.

“It takes two to tango,” McIlroy said. “So if one party is willing and ready and the other isn’t, it sort of makes it tough.”

McIlroy has not been at the White House meetings, though he serves on the transaction subcommittee of PGA Tour Enterprises that has been negotiating with the Saudis.

He was the strongest critic of LIV when it began in 2022, only to soften his views when Jon Rahm defected to the rival league at the end of 2023. McIlroy said on a British soccer podcast that he encouraged PGA Tour board members to meet with Al-Rumayyan, which led to the surprise framework agreement in June 2023.

McIlroy pointed to signs of momentum on the PGA Tour, from improved television ratings to the TMRW Golf League at a high-tech indoor arena that is shown on ESPN channels in prime time early in the week.

“I think a deal would still be … the ideal scenario for golf as a whole,” he said. “But from a pure PGA Tour perspective, I don’t think it necessarily needs it.”

He said the landscape “might have looked a little different” when he spoke two weeks ago at Torrey Pines — one week after the first White House meeting and a week before the second meeting — and said players staunchly opposed to bringing back LIV players need to “get over it” and move forward.

Now he sensed talks at a standstill.

“I don’t think it’s ever felt that close,” McIlroy said. “But it doesn’t feel like it’s any closer.”

LIV Golf resumes its schedule with events in Hong Kong and Singapore over the next two weeks. It doesn’t play in the U.S. for the first time until the week before the Masters, when it plays at Trump Doral outside Miami.

LIV, which now has a television deal with Fox, has put together a more international schedule than the first three seasons. There also is the question of which LIV players would even be interested in returning to the PGA Tour.

“I continue to see LIV Golf growing,” U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau said Wednesday in Hong Kong. “It’s going to grow at an exponentiating pace for years to come, and we aren’t going anywhere.”