Commissioner Jay Monahan says Congress left PGA Tour 'on our own' - ESPN

LOS ANGELES — Three days before a U.S. Senate subcommittee opened an inquiry into the PGA Tour's planned alliance with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and the DP World Tour, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan told U.S. senators in a letter that the federal government's inaction caused him to agree to the controversial partnership.

«While we are grateful for the written declarations of support we received from certain [congressional] members, 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,» Monahan 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.»

On June 6, the PGA Tour announced that it was forming a new entity with Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund (PIF) and the DP World Tour. PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan will serve as chairman of the new company; Monahan will be the CEO. The PGA Tour will continue to operate on its own, although Al-Rumayyan will join the tour's policy board.

«After a divisive battle spanning two years including extensive ligation that divided our great sport, we have decided on an arrangement that will end the divisiveness and grow the sport of golf, while preserving the PGA Tour as the primary organizing entity for men's professional tournament golf,» Monahan wrote. «Let me be clear that despite numerous reports, this arrangement is not a merger between the PGA Tour, LIV Golf, and the PIF.»

Monahan described the new company as a subsidiary of the PGA Tour, in which the tour «will at all times hold the majority of the Board seats and be in control of this new company, regardless of