Scottie Scheffler and the future of PGA Tour

• golf

Scottie Scheffler admitted ahead of the FedEx St. Jude Championship, the first of three FedEx Cup playoff ties, that he still didn't have a clue about the PGA Tour's strategy, especially in relation to the merger announced on June 6 with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF).

Scottie Scheffler, statements

"I went to the players' meeting (Editor's note, only 25 of them were present. Rory McIlroy and Patrick Cantlay, two of the six members of the Players' Board, were conspicuous by... their absence).

Nobody knows exactly what this agreement means, warned the winner of the 2022 Masters. The path seems long to achieve something concrete. To be clear, we still don't really have a clear picture of what's going on right now..." Rumors are rife about this agreement with the Saudi PIF.

Some even go so far as to question this deal, which surprised a good number of PGA Tour players, in particular the most influential such as Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm. LIV Golf, also known as the Super Golf League, is a professional golf circuit.

It was founded in 2022, with the sponsorship of the Public Investment Fund (it is the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia) 1. The circuit rivals the PGA Tour (United States) and the DP World Tour (Europe), offering substantially higher prize money.

The name LIV refers to the total number of holes to be played in each event (54 in Roman numerals, corresponding to 3 rounds of 18 holes), as opposed to the usual 72 holes (4 rounds of 18 holes) on other tours. Alternatively, 54 is the score obtained by scoring a birdie on every hole on a par 72.2 round.

In March 2022, the CEO of LIV Golf, former professional golfer and former world number one Greg Norman, announced the schedule for the first season of the LIV Golf Invitational Series. This consists of eight tournaments, to be played over a total of 54 holes without cut.

Each tournament will have a field of 48 players, who will be grouped into 12 teams of four players, with simultaneous starts. The total amount of prizes to be distributed amounts to 255 million dollars.