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 supply 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 property 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 deal with Strategic Sports Group (SSG), a consortium of billionaire sports activities staff homeowners led by John Henry and Tom Werner of Fenway Sports activities Group, that 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 will 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 will probably be awarded to 193 PGA Tour members who will fall in certainly one of 4 classes.

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

“And the way will we do this? That is the entire thought of why we’ve a bunch like SSG to offer us with data and assist and attempt to create the perfect tour we may probably have.”

SSG’s traders 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 kind of exceptional, to be trustworthy 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 potential 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 influence 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 seems to be 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 just a few months in the past to what it’s at present now,” Woods stated.

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

Woods, 48, will probably 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 daily and the grind of attempting to follow and prepare for an occasion, simply the general simply getting older means 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 all the time 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 be certain I am bodily match and able to play this occasion.”