PGA Tour reports progress with Saudi PIF, offers no details - ESPN

The PGA Tour reported progress without details from a face-to-face meeting between its negotiating committee and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia as it tries to work toward a deal.

«We want to get this right, and we are approaching discussions with careful consideration for our players, our fans, our partners and the game's future,» the tour said in a statement released Saturday morning.

The meeting in New York on Friday evening involved the «transaction committee» of PGA Tour Enterprises and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund that pays for rival LIV Golf.

PGA Tour Enterprises is the commercial group that came out of the framework agreement announced a year ago among the PGA Tour, PIF and the European tour.

PGA Tour Enterprises brought on Strategic Sports Group, which invested an initial $1.5 billion earlier this year. Negotiations are ongoing to bring in PIF as a minority investor, and there has been more activity than previously believed.

Rory McIlroy, who joined Tiger Woods and Adam Scott on the transaction committee, said it has been meeting with PIF representatives every Monday, Wednesday and Friday over the last couple of weeks. The tour referred to negotiations as «accelerated» in recent months.

Friday's meeting was the first in-person discussion since players and board members met with Al-Rumayyan in the Bahamas the day after The Players Championship in March.

The tour said the committee and PIF have been meeting «multiple times weekly to work through potential deal terms and come to a shared vision on the future of professional golf.» It said only that «more progress was made» in New York.

«We remain committed to these negotiations, which require working through