By Doug Ferguson
The most disruptive year in golf ended Tuesday when the PGA Tour and European tour agreed to a merger with Saudi Arabia's golf interests, creating a commercial operation designed to unify professional golf around the world.
As part of the deal, the sides are dropping all lawsuits involving LIV Golf against each other effective immediately.
Still to be determined is how players like Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson, who defected to Saudi-funded LIV Golf for nine-figure bonuses, can rejoin the PGA Tour after this year.
Also unclear was what form the LIV Golf League would take in 2024. Commissioner Jay Monahan said in a memo to players that a thorough evaluation would determine how to integrate team golf into the game.
The agreement combines the Public Investment Fund's golf-related commercial businesses and rights — including LIV Golf — with those of the PGA and European tours. The new entity has not been named.
“They were going down their path, we were going down ours, and after a lot of introspection you realize all this tension in the game is not a good thing,” Monahan said in a phone interview with The Associated Press.
“We have a responsibility to our tour and to the game, and we felt like the time was right to have that conversation.”
Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, will join the board of the PGA Tour, which continues to operates its tournaments. Al-Rumayyan will be chairman of the new commercial group, with Monahan as the CEO and the PGA Tour having a majority stake in the new venture.
The PIF will invest in the commercial venture.
Monahan said the decision came together over the last seven weeks.
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Opponents say it will harm seaweed, desecrate ancient Hawaiian remains, and waste water.
The deaths of two horses over the weekend join 10 others within the last month at the home of the Kentucky Derby.
NFL player R.K. Russell made history in 2019 when he was the first ever active player in the league to come out as bisexual. He's also an accomplished poet and writer and his new book The Yards Between Us: a Memoir of Life, Love and Football is out. Russell sat down with Cheddar News anchor Hena Doba to talk about his experiences.
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Carmelo Anthony, the star forward who led Syracuse to an NCAA championship in his lone college season and went on to spend 19 years in the NBA, announced his retirement on Monday.
Fans angry at being blocked from entering a Salvadoran soccer league match despite having tickets knocked down a small access gate to the stadium, creating a crush that killed 12 people and injured dozens, officials and witnesses said Sunday.
