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Nick Lachance

The chair of a powerful Senate subcommittee launched a probe Monday into the partnership between the PGA Tour and its Saudi-funded rival, requesting documents and communications that led to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/06/06/pga-tour-liv-merger-reaction/" target=_blank>the alliance that rocked the golf world</a> last week.

The PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which had funded and operated LIV Golf, last week announced <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/06/06/liv-golf-pga-tour-merger/" target=_blank>the creation of a new for-profit commercial entity meant to unify the sport</a>. In <a href="https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023-06-12-Blumenthal-Request-to-PGA-re-Agreement_Redacted.pdf" target=_blank>separate letters </a>to PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and Greg Norman, the chief executive of LIV Golf, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said there are “serious questions regarding the reasons for and terms behind the announced agreement.”

Blumenthal, the chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, demanded a broad array of documents, including communications that led to the alliance, records related to the dispute between the competing groups that fractured the sport over the past 1½ years and records related to the PGA Tour’s tax-exempt status. Blumenthal told the organizations he wants to see the documents by June 26.

A PGA Tour spokesman said in a statement that the tour is “confident that once Congress learns more about how the PGA Tour will control this new venture, they will understand the opportunities this will create for our players, our communities and our sport, all while protecting an American golf institution.” A LIV spokesman declined to comment.

News of Blumenthal’s probe landed as the world’s top players are converging on Los Angeles Country Club for the U.S. Open, one of golf’s four major championships, which will feature stars from the PGA Tour and LIV Golf.

While the deal was announced Tuesday, there are still unanswered questions and unsettled issues surrounding the agreement, and the surprising partnership could face hurdles, including obtrusion from Congress. The PGA Tour’s policy board will need to approve the final framework of the agreement, and it also might need to pass muster with the Justice Department, which had launched an investigation last year of the PGA Tour over potential antitrust violations.

As golfers arrived Monday in Los Angeles for the U.S. Open, which begins Thursday, the partnership loomed large, even as most players seemed to be in the dark about the details.

Cameron Smith, who joined LIV after winning the 2022 British Open, said that when he first heard about the deal last week, he initially thought it was “kind of a joke.” Then he received a call from <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/06/09/yasir-al-rumayyan-pga-tour-liv-golf/" target=_blank>Yasir Al-Rumayyan</a>, the governor of the Public Investment Fund and chairman of the newly created PGA-LIV partnership. Smith said Al-Rumayyan “didn’t really explain too much” in the call, which took place just minutes before the chairman joined Monahan on a CNBC segment touting the agreement. As to its finer points, Smith said there were “a lot of curious players on both sides.”

Matt Fitzpatrick, the reigning U.S. Open champion, echoed that sentiment.

“I found out when everybody else found out, so I know literally nothing,” he said. “It’s pretty clear that nobody knows what’s going on apart from about four people in the world.”

Fitzpatrick, who has previously discussed the alliance being “<a href="https://www.golfmonthly.com/news/merger-a-tough-one-to-swallow-for-players-who-turned-down-liv-matt-fitzpatrick" target=_blank>probably a tough one to swallow</a>” for PGA Tour golfers who turned down lucrative offers from LIV, was asked during a media session whether such golfers should be compensated. A moderator attempted to intervene, but Fitzpatrick said he would answer. He then appeared to think for nearly 10 seconds before saying, “Yeah, I’ll pass.”

While a congressional inquiry isn’t likely to quash the deal on its own, it could subject the parties to mounting public pressure they would rather avoid and potentially produce records, including financial statements and emails, that could draw increased scrutiny on the alliance.

Blumenthal was among several lawmakers to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/06/07/pga-liv-saudis-doj-antitrust/" target=_blank>express surprise and voice concern last week</a> when the alliance was announced. In his role as chair of the investigations subcommittee, he has broad authority to scrutinize the deal and issue subpoenas on a range of matters, from corporate and financial crimes to terrorism.

In the letters, Blumenthal said he wants to know how a jointly operated commercial entity will be structured and governed and how the PGA Tour intends to preserve its tax-exempt status. He described Saudi Arabia’s human rights record as “deeply disturbing” and said he has “concerns about the Saudi government’s role in influencing this effort and the risks posed by a foreign government entity assuming control over a cherished American institution.”

Nearly a week after the sides announced the basic framework of the deal, which also includes Europe’s DP World Tour, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/06/06/pga-merger-what-to-know/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_32" target=_blank>terms and details of the partnership</a> are still largely unknown. The organizations agreed to drop their lawsuits against each other, which could happen as early as this week, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the process. The Public Investment Fund is poised to inject billions into the sport, which could help stabilize the PGA Tour but has stoked concerns from many players about the tour’s governance going forward.

Al-Rumayyan will serve as chair of the newly created commercial entity and will have a seat on the PGA Tour’s influential policy board.

Monahan wrote a letter to some lawmakers Friday, stressing that the deal was not a merger and that the PGA Tour would “retain administrative oversight of golf tournaments, including the administration of the competition and rules governing professional tournament golf.”

“At its core, the PIF is investing in the PGA Tour as it has invested in other U.S.-based companies. The PGA Tour and its tournaments will continue to operate as they do today,” Monahan wrote in the letter, which was first obtained by <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/12/pga-tour-senators-00101592" target=_blank>Politico</a>.

Monahan also appeared to spread some of the blame, noting that in the course of the battle with LIV Golf, he’d made overtures to many lawmakers and “suggested ways that Congress could support us in these efforts.

“We were largely left on our own to fend off the attacks, ostensibly due to the United States’ complex geopolitical alliance with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” he wrote. “This left the very real prospect of another decade of expensive and distracting litigation and the PGA Tour’s long-term existence under threat.”

In interviews with The Washington Post last week, Blumenthal called the deal a “disgrace” and warned that congressional scrutiny could be forthcoming. He noted that the secrecy behind the deal was a concern for many stakeholders.

Ken Cedeno

“If anybody had known about it beforehand, they probably never could have gotten it done because it would have been such an outcry of opposition,” he said, “and so they did it behind everyone’s back.”

While several other lawmakers expressed concerns, congressional leaders were largely subdued in their remarks last week, with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) saying he would “leave it up to the professionals there to figure out what’s best for golf.”

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the ranking Republican on the investigations subcommittee, said in a statement Monday that “it was dismaying to watch the game being torn apart with players pitted against each other.”

“It sounds like the PGA and LIV had reached the brink of mutually assured destruction and decided to call a truce by attempting to repair the damage done. I wish them success in doing so and hope any role Congress plays will be constructive,” he said.

In the House last week, Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) introduced a bill that would seek to strip the PGA Tour of its tax-exempt status.

Blumenthal said Monahan had visited with him last June, in the early stages of the heated PGA Tour-LIV feud, imploring the senator to speak out against the tour’s Saudi-funded rival. In that meeting, which took place at the Travelers Championship in Cromwell, Conn., Blumenthal said the two discussed Saudi influence, sportswashing and the increasingly untenable economics underpinning the sport, and he said Monahan emphasized “the moral authority of the PGA and its standing in the world and in America.”

The rise of Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the potential new king of golf

“He enlisted me to speak vehemently about the negative effects of the LIV tournament on the sport and damage it does in terms of sportswashing. And now for him to 180 degrees abandon the 9/11 families and others, I think, it speaks volumes,” he said.

Blumenthal, who also serves on Judiciary’s antitrust subcommittee, has said he thinks the Justice Department should scrutinize the deal.

“Think of it this way: Suppose Ford, GM and Tesla all decided, ‘We’re going to merge.’ The Department of Justice would be all over it,” Blumenthal said. “Granted, there was no LIV a year or two ago, but the antitrust law looks at what’s done with monopoly power in the present, not the past.”

<i>Gus Garcia-Roberts in Los Angeles and Paul Kane and Mariana Alfaro in Washington contributed to this report.</i>

University of New Mexico

Rick Maese is a sports features writer for The Washington Post. He has written about the NFL since joining The Post in 2009, including three seasons as beat writer for the Washington Redskins.

Rick Maese

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