PGA Tour and LIV Golf representatives, including Tiger Woods, are set to meet in-person in New York on Friday as they bid to strike a deal to end the game’s power struggle.
Thursday marks a year to the day that the PGA Tour and Saudi-backed LIV announced they would try and merge in news that shook the sport to its core.
Progress since then has been slow but according to The New York Times, key figures from both sides are now set to meet in New York this week. The report says that ‘both sides caution that a breakthrough is far from imminent.’
Woods is expected to be joined by John Henry, the Liverpool FC and Boston Red Sox owner who is on the PGA Tour’s transaction committee.
The Times says Rory McIlroy, one of LIV’s most vociferous critics before the merger news came out, will be joining the call remotely as he is playing in the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield. McIlroy tees off for his second round at 9:55am local time.
Tiger Woods is reportedly attending a New York meeting between PGA Tour and LIV on Friday
Woods, a member of the PGA Tour policy board, recently hosted a meeting with PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and Yasir Al-Rumayyan – the governor of PIF, which funds LIV, in the Bahamas.
Adam Scott, another PGA Tour player director, said earlier this week that talks between the PGA and LIV would advance soon.
‘I think the PGA Tour has a vision of what it wants to look like 12, 18 (months) and then going forward, five, 10 and 20, you know, or at least 10 years down the line, let’s say, and what it should evolve into,’ he said to Golfweek.
‘But at the moment there’s another party that they’re negotiating with that has to believe in that vision as well, and I don’t know exactly what their vision is.
‘I think we are getting there, for sure. Eventually someone is going to have to put it out exactly what it is, and I think that will happen very soon. You have to break the ice, kind of, and someone has to show a hand. It’s got to happen soon. It’s moving along as quickly as it can.’
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