Tiger Woods says talks between PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s PIF are ongoing

LOS ANGELES — Tiger Woods stated he is not against the Public Funding Fund being an investor within the PGA Tour, and that negotiations with officers from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund are ongoing.

“Finally, we wish to have PIF be part of our tour and part of our product,” Woods stated Wednesday throughout a information convention forward of The Genesis at Riviera Nation Membership. “Financially, we do not proper now, and the monies that they’ve come to the desk with and what we initially had agreed to within the framework settlement, these are all the identical numbers.

“Something past that is going to be clearly over and above. We’re ready proper now [where] hopefully we are able to make our product higher within the brief time period and long run.”

Past that, Woods, a participant director on the PGA Tour’s coverage board, did not provide many particulars on a possible take care of the PIF and what the tour’s future may seem like.

The PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and the PIF signed a framework settlement on June 6 to mix their belongings into a brand new for-profit entity, PGA Tour Enterprises. The framework settlement had a Dec. 31 deadline. A deal wasn’t reached and the deadline was prolonged.

On Jan. 31, the PGA Tour reached a take care of Strategic Sports activities Group (SSG), a consortium of billionaire sports activities workforce homeowners led by John Henry and Tom Werner of Fenway Sports activities Group, which may inject as a lot as $3 billion into PGA Tour Enterprises. The brand new firm was launched the following day.

A possible take care of the PIF may inject one other $3 billion or extra into PGA Tour Enterprises.

In a memo to gamers on Feb. 7, the PGA Tour stated it might grant greater than $1.5 billion in fairness in PGA Tour Enterprises to previous, present and future members over the following a number of years. Underneath the plan, $930 million in preliminary participant fairness grants shall be awarded to 193 PGA Tour members who will fall in considered one of 4 classes.

“On the finish of the day, we’re attempting to offer the most effective leisure, and with the intention to try this you must have the most effective gamers play,” Woods stated. “We need to contain the historical past and the traditions of our tour, and have the pathways, accessibility, the entire intangibles which have made the PGA Tour what it’s proper now and what has been, and hopefully what it would proceed to be even higher.

“And the way will we try this? That is the entire thought of why we’ve a gaggle like SSG to offer us with info and assist and attempt to create the most effective tour we might presumably have.”

SSG’s buyers embody Mark Attanasio (Milwaukee Brewers), Arthur Clean (Atlanta Falcons), Wyc Grousbeck (Boston Celtics) and Steve Cohen (New York Mets), amongst others.

“The consortium that they’ve at SSG, the companions that they’ve which have come collectively to be part of this group, is sort of outstanding, to be sincere with you, within the sports activities business,” Woods stated. “They’re unbelievable leaders. On the time that we’d like nice management going ahead, I feel this elicits that — the wonderful brains of concepts that may make this tour higher, and we’re trying ahead to that.”

When requested about doable pathways again to the PGA Tour for gamers who jumped to the LIV Golf League the previous couple of years, Woods described it as an ongoing course of.

“We’re trying into all of the completely different fashions for pathways again,” Woods stated. “What that appears like, what the impression is for the gamers who’ve stayed and who haven’t left, and the way we make our product higher going ahead, there isn’t a reply to that proper now.

“We’re various levels of concepts, and what that appears like within the brief time period, we do not know. We do not even know in the long run what that appears like. Belief me, there’s day by day, weekly emails and talks about this and what this appears like for our tour going ahead.”

Woods stated the PIF’s endgame has modified throughout greater than eight months of negotiations since a framework settlement was signed June 6.

“From what their representatives have mentioned with us, that adjustments and that evolves from a couple of months in the past to what it’s at the moment now,” Woods stated.

Requested whether or not that is an excellent or unhealthy improvement, Woods replied, “I do not know if it is good or unhealthy. It is an ongoing, fluid course of.”

Woods, 48, shall be making his first begin in an official PGA Tour occasion since he pulled out of the weather-delayed third spherical of the Masters in April. He was limping badly within the season’s first main due to extreme ache in his proper foot and ankle.

The 15-time main winner underwent fusion surgical procedure on April 19 to deal with post-traumatic arthritis he suffered within the automotive wreck. The process sidelined him for almost eight months.

“How the physique feels from day after day and the grind of attempting to observe and prepare for an occasion, simply the general simply getting old strategy of all of it, that has been the trick of it and been the problem of it,” Woods stated. “Since then I’ve had my ankle fused, in order that’s completely different.

“[I’m still] attempting to get used to the brand new feels of the physique. That is at all times the problem. And the challenges of attempting to get tour-ready, that is what we have been attempting to do the final couple weeks, attempting make certain I am bodily match and able to play this occasion.”