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The PGA Tour, DP World Tour and the LIV Golf League, which have been embroiled in a bitter legal battle for more than a year, have agreed to merge and move forward in a larger commercial business, the circuits announced Tuesday.
The tours called the stunning development "a landmark agreement to unify the game of golf, on a global basis."
The landmark deal was reached without the knowledge of many PGA Tour members and LIV Golf players and agents.
Said one PGA Tour player reached by ESPN on Tuesday, "No f---ing way."
In a statement, the circuits said the parties have signed an agreement that "combines PIF's golf-related commercial businesses and rights (including LIV Golf) with the commercial businesses and rights of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour into a new, collectively owned, for-profit entity to ensure that all stakeholders benefit from a model that delivers maximum excitement and competition among the game's best players."
“After two years of disruption and distraction, this is a historic day for the game we all know and love," PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in a statement. "This transformational partnership recognizes the immeasurable strength of the PGA Tour's history, legacy and pro-competitive model and combines with it the DP World Tour and LIV -- including the team golf concept -- to create an organization that will benefit golf's players, commercial and charitable partners and fans."
As part of the deal, the sides are dropping all lawsuits involving LIV Golf against each other effective immediately.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in a memo to players that a thorough evaluation would determine how to integrate team golf into the game.
"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.
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.
The PIF had dumped more than $2 billion into the golf enterprise, which critics have claimed is a form of sportswashing to repair the Saudi Arabian monarchy's history of human rights violations.
The LIV Golf League, which was being financed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) and fronted by two-time Open Championship winner Greg? Norman, and 11 of its players, including Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau, had sued the PGA Tour in federal court last year, alleging that the PGA Tour had used its monopoly power to squash competition and influence vendors, media companies and others from working with LIV Golf.
The PGA Tour filed a countersuit, alleging that LIV Golf had interfered with its contracts with players.
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.
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