Price and another senior tour executive, Tyler Dennis, have overseen day-to-day operations for the tour since June 13, when Monahan and the board issued a short statement saying that the commissioner was “recuperating from a medical situation.” In the weeks afterward, tour officials repeatedly declined to describe Monahan’s condition or the circumstances that had led to his ceding of power at one of professional golf’s most turbulent moments.
By the time Monahan stepped away, though, he had absorbed days of harsh criticism over the pact with the wealth fund, whose money his tour had previously denigrated as tainted, an about-face that he acknowledged would prompt charges of hypocrisy.
The final details of the alliance have not been negotiated, but the tentative deal’s outlines call for the PGA Tour, the wealth fund and the DP World Tour, previously known as the European Tour, to bring their golf businesses into a new, for-profit company. Tour executives have argued that the deal, if it closes, will allow the Florida-based circuit to keep control of the sport because Monahan will be the new company’s chief executive and the tour will control the majority of board seats.
But al-Rumayyan will be the new company’s chairman. Moreover, the wealth fund is expected to have extensive investment rights in the new company, promising the Saudis significant influence.
Before June 6, when the deal involving the tour and the wealth fund was announced, Monahan was among the most unsparing critics of Saudi Arabia’s foray into professional golf.
“The PGA Tour, an American institution, can’t compete with a foreign monarchy that is spending billions of dollars in an attempt to buy the game of golf,” Monahan said in June 2022. “We welcome good, healthy competition. The LIV Saudi golf league is not that. It’s an irrational threat; one not concerned with the return on investment or true growth of the game.”
Last month, hours after he had sat alongside al-Rumayyan for a television interview, he adopted a decidedly different tone, in part because tour leaders had effectively concluded that their battle with the wealth fund was unsustainable.
