Negotiations between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund remain stagnant, Adam Scott confirmed to reporters Wednesday ahead of the Wyndham Championship.
Scott, a member of the Tour’s policy board as a player director, joined PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and Tiger Woods at a White House meeting with President Donald Trump and PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan on Feb. 20. That was Scott’s second trip to the White House this year to discuss a potential agreement.
The latter meeting, according to multiple reports, did not go as planned, though Monahan said ahead of The Players that it marked a “huge step.” ESPN then reported in early April that the Tour had rejected a recent PIF offer to invest $1.5 billion into the Tour’s for-profit entity, PGA Tour Enterprises, which this week officially welcomed its new CEO, Brian Rolapp, formerly of the NFL. The PIF’s desire to keep LIV Golf intact was reportedly a major hangup for the Tour.
And then last month, PGA Tour members were informed in a mandatory meeting, which Rolapp also attended, ahead of the Rocket Classic in Detroit that the Tour and PIF were “at loggerheads with no resolution in sight,” according to a Golfweek report.
“I don’t think it’s any breaking news that the talks have gone silent,” Matt Kuchar told Golfweek. “They said we’re still open to negotiations.”
Scott was asked Wednesday about next steps in the Tour-PIF talks.
“Obviously there’s not much happening between [the two sides],” Scott said. “I don’t know if more White House visits are really necessary. It was really quite an experience, I have to say. Those conversations haven’t advanced far from there, and with Brian stepping in, a lot of that’s going to fall onto his desk now. I think that he needs some time to kind of really get up to speed and understand what’s going on with that.”
So far, Scott has been impressed by Rolapp.
“His credentials are obviously excellent on paper, but I have a few things that I really liked about Brian,” Scott said. “I think like his personality from the little bit that I know of it, like this calmness to him. I know he’s really excited to take on this role going forward, but he has a very calm nature about him, you know, to me, which was one of the guys involved, I thought I quite liked that. I think he’s coming in at a very interesting time in the professional game and I think that calm demeanor’s going to serve him well.”
Scott enters this week’s Wyndham at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, North Carolina, ranked No. 85 in FedExCup points. He’ll need to crack the top 70 by Sunday evening to advance to the playoff opener, the FedEx St. Jude Championship, which starts next Thursday.
“This will be my last chance to play on the PGA Tour potentially for some weeks; it’s do or die and that’s a fun way to play,” Scott said. “Sometimes we or I have fall in the trap of like there’s always next week if it doesn’t work out, and that’s not the case here.”