Tiger Woods was ‘very frustrated’ by secretive PGA Tour deal with Saudi PIF

Tiger Woods has revealed his frustration at the secretive way in which a potential peace deal in golf’s civil war was agreed and insisted: “That won’t happen again”.

Woods will compete for the first time since undergoing ankle surgery in April in this week’s Hero World Challenge and believes contesting one tournament a month is a realistic target for 2024.

However, the questions in his pre-tournament press conference in the Bahamas were predominantly about the future shape of men’s professional golf after he took on a major role in those discussions by becoming a player-directory on the PGA Tour’s policy board.

Tiger Woods has joined the PGA TOUR Policy Board as a sixth Player Director.

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 1, 2023

The world of golf was stunned when a framework agreement between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) was announced on June 6th, with a deadline of December 31st for a deal to be finalised.

“Going back to that, I would say that my reaction was surprised as I’m sure a lot of the players were taken back by it, by what happened so quickly without any input or any information about it, it was just thrown out there,” Woods said.

“We were very frustrated with what happened. We were all taken back by it.

“It happened so quickly without any of our involvement. No one knew. That can’t happen again.

“How do we do that is having six player directors so we control the board, and we control what we’re going to do.

“I think Jay (Monahan, PGA Tour commissioner) has been a part of the direction, he understands what happened prior to that can’t happen again and won’t happen again, not with the players that are involved and not with the player directors having the role that we