Tiger Woods, PGA Tour reportedly meeting with Saudi Arabia officials in New York

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the PGA Tour is reportedly having more meetings with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund this week as discussions continue with the goal of striking a deal to reunite the fractured professional game.

ESPN’s Mark Schlabach was first to report that PGA Tour officials, as well as Tiger Woods, are meeting with PIF representatives in New York on Tuesday and that the latest rounds of talks “are scheduled to last multiple days.”

The popular flight tracking account @radaratlas2 on Twitter/X shared that private jets owned by Woods, Saudi Aramco and the PGA Tour all touched down in New York on Monday. The account also tracked the same jets for a previous meeting between the two sides in the Bahamas earlier this year. Saudi Aramco is chaired by Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who also serves as the governor of the PIF and chairman of LIV Golf.

Woods and his TGR Foundation also hosted his annual Nexus Cup event in New York this week.

The PIF plans to invest more than $1 billion into PGA Tour Enterprises, a new for-profit entity launched by the Tour and the Strategic Sports Group, a consortium of U.S.-based sports franchise owners. Joe Gorder, PGA Tour Enterprises chairman, and John Henry, owner of Fenway Sports Group, are members of a transactional subcommittee that is negotiating with the Saudis, as is the 15-time major champion Woods.

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said at last month’s Tour Championship that talks with the PIF were "stronger" than they'd been in the past since the Tour, DP World Tour and PIF, signed a shocking framework agreement on June 6, 2023. A deadline for Dec. 31, 2023 was set to reach a definitive deal, but the timeline was extended and talks have slowly meandered on throughout 2024.

So what does all this mean? As of right now, absolutely nothing. The only achievement of the framework agreement was the end of litigation between the two sides. Since the agreement was announced, there have been more questions, fewer answers and a greater divide than ever between the two rival factions in men’s professional golf. Over the last 15 months players like Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton have taken their talents to LIV and the Saudi-backed league has doubled down on its global schedule. Meanwhile, the Tour continues to spend exorbitant amounts of money trying to keep up.

Unless a clear-cut, definitive deal is struck, these meetings are nothing more than window dressing. We’re no closer to a unified game, and the only time fans will see players from both sides of the professional golf aisle on the same course will be in the made-for-TV match in December between Rory McIlroy/Scottie Scheffler and Bryson DeChambeau/ Brooks Koepka in Las Vegas.

Until then, we continue to wait.