Rumayyan will undoubtedly argue to his master, Mohammed bin Salman, that joining forces with the PGA and DP World Tours justifies a trivial outlay in the grand scheme of all things Saudi, but the truth is the LIV model in isolation was heading nowhere fast. All Rumayyan managed to do was convince Jay Monahan of the PGA Tour that further sums would be better spent on collaboration than in propping up LIV and funding legal battles.
- The 14 LIV events that will play out in the coming months will almost certainly never be seen again afterwards. A stop in Valderrama clashes with the PGA Tour’s Rocket Mortgage Classic. The following week, LIV returns to the Centurion Club as the PGA Tour hosts the John Deere Classic.
The DP World Tour stages the British Masters and Made in Himmerland tournament on the same weeks. In a time of collaboration, there is no point in LIV trying to grab eyeballs at the same time as their new bedfellows. Especially, that is, because a key objection of the DP World and PGA Tours to LIV’s existence was that they wandered into European and North American territory.
“I can’t see that scenario,” Monahan said of competitions running concurrently, including with LIV branding. “But I haven’t gotten into the full empirical evaluation of LIV that I’m going to do to be able to comment on that. But I don’t see that scenario, no.”
