After more than a year of bitter arguments and accusations from afar, Jay Monahan and Yasir al-Rumayyan finally met in May on a prearranged blind date at a cafe or hotel in Venice.
Now the oddest bedfellows will attempt to reshape the future of professional golf and repair the damage caused by years of civil war they once waged against one another.
The 53-year-olds at the helm couldn’t be more different: Monahan, the American commissioner of the PGA Tour since 2017, and al-Rumayyan, the trusted confidante of Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and overseer of his country’s massive public investment fund.
It’s that fund, reportedly worth about $700 billion, that made its way into golf last Tuesday. That ended a fierce, court-complicated battle between the PGA’s American and European tours and the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Tour. It immediately solved the PGA Tour’s financial difficulties.
Now al-Rumayyan becomes the chairman of this organization. Monahan will be his CEO. And one of the many complex questions that arise from this is that of internal logistics. How will this unlikely duo master the game of golf and get along both on and off the course?
Monahan has deep New England roots and a background in sports marketing. His leadership style is as calm as a golf crowd waiting for a winning putt.
“I enjoy all forms of human interaction,” he told Golf Digest in 2017. “Talking to people, listening to them, often just observing them.” Even with unpleasant people, I enjoy finding out what drives them. It’s sort of a requirement for the job I’m doing now, because the spectrum of people is so broad and their situations so dynamic. Your needs and goals may be material, but it is human interaction that gets us there.”
Al-Rumayyan, the wealthy disruptor with a deep passion for golf, puts Monahan’s social skills to the test. Certainly his “needs and goals” are material.
While al-Rumayyan will only hold one of the (now) 11 seats on the PGA Tour board of directors, he and the wealth fund will have the exclusive right to invest in the new company. That means they control the finances and plan to pump in billions of dollars.
In his only public appearance since the merger was announced last week, a CNBC-televised closing where the two sat amicably side-by-side, al-Rumayyan said he would let Monahan lead the operation.
He noted that the “voting system” and the majority of the board “will not be on our side.”
But the very presence of al-Rumayyan – and the deal itself, which for now is just a framework that could take months to formalize – are a stark reminder that money can trump anything.
“The Saudis are going to want to dominate here,” said James M. Dorsey, Adjunct Senior Fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School for International Studies. “They don’t like to play second fiddle. And they don’t believe money talks without reason.”
What kind of takeover leader al-Rumayyan will become is unclear. His PIF portfolio is vast and he runs dozens of state-owned companies, including oil giant Saudi Aramco and mining company Ma’aden. He largely leaves leadership teams to direct them as they see fit.
But the relationship with Newcastle United, the English football team, might provide the best golf guide.
The PIF bought an 80 per cent stake in Newcastle United in 2021. The English club’s supporters immediately welcomed the change of ownership, as the prospect of success on the pitch was more important than difficult questions. Thanks to the PIF funds provided by al-Rumayyan, Newcastle have risen to the top of the English Premier League.
At Newcastle he has left day-to-day decisions to others, although he has been quick to approve talent development spending and has not been invisible.
Occasionally he appears to games. (Contrast that with the largely absent presence at Manchester City of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates, who made headlines on Saturday by reaching the Champions League final.) He has the ball across the field of the team and was photographed in the dressing room.
But al-Rumayyan has a greater passion for golf. Around LIV, his pet project, he is known as HE (His Excellency) and has had a strong public presence. At last year’s LIV event in Bedminster, New Jersey, al-Rumayyan socialized with former President Donald J. Trump, the course’s owner. For a time, al-Rumayyan wore a Make America Great Again cap.
However, most don’t expect him to make public appearances in golf or be a familiar figure at trophy ceremonies. Part of that is his portfolio; He has many other business responsibilities.
“How much time does he have to plan in?” Dorsey said. “This is a man at the head of an empire. He oversees a variety of things. I think you’re going to see a lot of his lieutenants and not a lot of him, at least once that’s sorted out.”
Part of it is the Saudi culture; Given Prince Mohammed’s autocratic leadership, he “must walk a fine line,” according to Kristian Ulrichsen, a Middle East fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
“If you appear too big and you have the impression that you are Mr. Saudi Arabia, Bin Salman cannot take it well if you step on his toes,” Ulrichsen said. “But we also saw that al-Rumayyan is probably the most trusted and competent member of his inner circle.”
Al-Rumayyan was a little-known bank executive in 2015 when King Abdullah died. Power consolidated around Prince Mohammed, who soon launched Vision 2030, an ambitious reshaping of Saudi Arabia and its reputation. Part of this involved building the PIF as a diversification tool for the growth of global capital, both financial and cultural.
Prince Mohammed put al-Rumayyan in charge of the fund to exorcise the aging elite he says is hampering the country’s ambitions – by jailing and mistreating hundreds of them.
Persistent human rights abuses and the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi on the orders of Prince Mohammed, according to the Central Intelligence Agency, have made the Saudis pariahs around the world.
But under al-Rumayyan’s leadership, the investment fund grew exponentially.
Investing in sport in particular has proven to be an effective reputation wash, which some refer to as “sportswashing”. The culmination of that effort could be the takeover of golf, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken announced the same week while visiting Prince Mohammed in Saudi Arabia.
“This was part of establishing Saudi Arabia on the world stage,” Ulrichsen said of the Saudi foray into international sports. “And in this case, it shows that Saudi Arabia is welcome back at the head of the United States, especially after the events that took place after 2018.” That period of isolation is definitely over now.”
For the Saudis, the Gulf deal is more of a global news event than a national one. The front page of Arriyadiyah, the kingdom’s top sports newspaper, was dominated on Wednesday by news of French soccer player Karim Benzema joining Jeddah-based Al-Ittihad, the latest award for the Saudi top flight, which also includes Cristiano Ronaldo belonged to . The Gulf merger announcement was not on any page of the newspaper that day, earning only a brief mention on page 11 on Thursday.
But al-Rumayyan is on a one-man mission to use Gulf to Saudi Arabia’s advantage. He helped establish the Saudi Golf Federation and Saudi Golf Company, formed in 2019 to promote golf in the country.
One uncertainty is Monahan’s long-term role as CEO. Tax records obtained by ProPublica show he was paid a salary of $14 million in 2021 for his role as PGA Tour commissioner. He spent most of 2022 and early 2023 fighting off LIV through insults and lawsuits.
That lawsuit has now been withdrawn, saving the poor PGA Tour money while protecting al-Rumayyan and the wealth fund from testimony and discovery.
Was it all a gimmick that can now be forgiven? Or could al-Rumayyan be working behind the scenes to find a leader better suited to his goals?
Monahan wants golf fans, sponsors and its own players to resist the knee-jerk, collective flinch at this new regulation, portrayed by many as a money-over-ethics transaction, and consider where global golf may be in 10 years .
It most likely depends on what al-Rumayyan wants.
It could be mere adjustments to payouts, timing and format to revitalize a ailing, traditional company – as he did with Newcastle. Or it could be an overhaul. A possible comparison, unrelated to the PIF, is how international cricket launched Twenty20 to counter sluggish, multi-day competitions with something shorter, livelier and more expendable, akin to what LIV attempted.
For now, at the heart of all of this is the relationship between these two men — an incredibly wealthy financier from Saudi Arabia and a traditional sports executive from Massachusetts.
“We sat, he and I, in Venice for about two hours trying to understand each other,” al-Rumayyan said. “He talked about his desires, his life. I did the same. Even my family was with me in Venice. We had lunch with a large group. Understanding and positive thinking is what really unites us as we continue to develop the game of golf. The passion we both have has really cemented this type of agreement.”
Spring in Venice can cast such a spell.
Skeptics might point out that Venice is made up of a series of islands and it’s easy to get lost. Cynics might notice it dropping.
Ahmed Al Omran contributed to the coverage.