Tiger Woods has revealed daily emails are being sent regarding a pathway for LIV Golf players returning to the PGA Tour as the game strives for a peaceful reunification following years of division.
Since the emergence of LIV Golf in 2021, the PGA and DP World Tour have been at loggerheads with the Saudi-backed breakaway circuit, resulting in multiple lawsuits being filed and the suspensions of numerous LIV golfers from both Tours, including the likes of Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka and Jon Rahm.
If eligible, LIV golfers are still permitted to play in the game's four Major Championships - Masters Tournament, Open Championship, U.S. Open and PGA Championship - as they are seperate entities to the PGA and DP World Tour.
Despite the bitterness between the three organisations, they stunned the sporting world last year when announcing they were to form "a new collectively owned" entity - something PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan had previously ruled out.
With talks still ongoing to reach a conclusion to the deal, Woods, who is a player-director on the PGA Tour's policy board, admitted they are looking into all possible avenues for a pathway back for LIV Golf defectors.
“We're looking into all the different models for pathways back,” said the 15-time Major champion ahead of the Genesis Invitational, his first official PGA Tour start since last year’s Masters Tournament.
“What that looks like, what the impact is for the players who have stayed and who have not left and how we make our product better going forward, there is no answer to that right now.
“We're looking at a very different -- varying degrees of ideas and what that looks like in the short term, we don't know. We don't even know in the longer term what that looks like. Trust me, there's daily, weekly emails and talks about this and what this looks like for our tour going forward.”
The original framework agreement for the deal between Public Investment Fund (PIF), who are behind LIV Golf, and the PGA and DP World Tour had a December 31 deadline, but after an agreement wasn’t reached that was extended.
Since then, the PGA Tour has reached a deal with Strategic Sports Group (SSG), a consortium of billionaire sports team owners led by John Henry and Tom Werner of Fenway Sports Group, that could inject as much as $3 billion into PGA Tour Enterprises.
That deal has raised speculation whether that hampers the agreement between PIF and the two leading tours in the men’s game.
“Ultimately we would like to have PIF be a part of our tour and a part of our product,” said Woods.
“Financially, we don't right now, and the monies that they have come to the table with and what we initially had agreed to in the framework agreement, those are all the same numbers.
“Anything beyond this is going to be obviously over and above. We're in a position right now, hopefully we can make our product better in the short term and long term.”
Woods begins his first round at the Genesis Invitational at 21:25 GST, alongside Justin Thomas and Gary Woodland.
