The LIV league was Yasir Al-Rumayyan's baby - but the governor of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund has now taken his leave. Photo / Jeff Halstead, Icon Sportswire
There seems something deeply ironic about being at Trump Doral and watching so many of the PGA Tour’s top players competing for US$20 million ($33.9m) in this week’s Cadillac Championship, while Yasir Al-Rumayyan takes his stunning leave from LIV Golf.
For it was here, at the President’s course a few years ago where the governor of Saudi Arabia’s $1 trillion Public Investment Fund (PIF) swore his unconditional faith to the breakaway league. “This is my baby,” Al-Rumayyan told the assembled LIV players. The pros were thus uplifted and emboldened and why not? They only had to look back over the brief history of LIV to be convinced that HE – short for His Excellency – would never walk away.
At that point in the fraught and remarkable LIV story, headlines were raging that LIV was about to be subsumed by the PGA Tour. A few months before, Al-Rumayyan and PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan had stunned the world by jointly announcing the “framework agreement”. The sporting civil war was considered over but, with Monahan notionally in control, LIV still appeared to be a casualty. Yet, in that Doral week, the last of the 2023 campaign, Al-Rumayyan insisted this would not be the case. “I’ve talked to HE,” Ian Poulter, who joined LIV in 2022, told Telegraph Sport. “And he told me, never mind 2024, 2025 – LIV will go on and on.”
No, he never did mention 2027, but that did not deter the rebels. They had seen Al-Rumayyan stand by the LIV concept throughout.
He stuck with it in the early days when in conjunction with the Premier Golf League – the initial organisation that first mooted a circuit filled with the superstars participating in teams – the project failed to gain the required traction.
He stuck with it, after deciding that PIF would go on its own, appointing the fiery Greg Norman to be the frontman. He stuck with it when, in the weeks before the launch, Phil Mickelson, his biggest catch, told a journalist that “the Saudis are scary motherf***ers to deal with” and he was only doing so to get leverage over the PGA Tour.
He stuck with it when Norman turned up at a press conference in London and - when questioned about the Saudi human rights issues and, more pointedly, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident Saudi journalist who was cut up with a bonesaw - replied: “Well, we all make mistakes”.
The question had centred on the involvement of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Al-Rumayyan’s boss could not have been too happy with the resulting outcry as the victim groups of the September 11 attacks picked up on what they termed the Saudi “sports washing”.
But, yes, Al-Rumayyan stuck by it, writing cheques for golfers that defied not only convention but credibility itself.
Big names ... and even bigger money
Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Sergio Garcia, Poulter, Lee Westwood … PIF even managed to lure Henrik Stenson, at the time the Europe Ryder Cup captain and after that the 2022 Open champion, Cameron Smith. Nobody was out of reach. And through all this, Norman baited the Tour loyalists, with Rory McIlroy at the vanguard of the traditionalists. Tiger Woods also joined in and explosive quotes filled the normally cosseted golfing columns.
It was bitter stuff. Europe’s Ryder Cup legends Garcia, Poulter and Westwood took the DP World Tour to court and, when they lost the hearing, resigned. Friendships were affected, relationships were irretrievably broken.
But there followed the “framework agreement” and for a while there was an uneasy peace. Al-Rumayyan did not stop strategising and as the negotiations stalled he made another incredibly combative play in late 2023. Jon Rahm was signed for a deal topping £350m ($806.2m) and soon the Spaniard’s Ryder Cup partner, Tyrrell Hatton, had crossed as well. Hostilities had resumed and not even Donald Trump, that self-avowed fixer of conflicts, could halt the renewed battles.
Trump tried, however.
After his own ostracisation from the PGA Tour – Doral was struck from the schedule shortly before his first presidency in 2016 – Trump had found a new home for his golfing portfolio with what he called “my Saudi friends”. His courses have so far staged 11 LIV events and he is very grateful. Yet Trump saw a bit of hero status and a way back to the Tour if he could just broker one of his famous deals.
He beckoned the Tour, including Woods, to the Oval Office, as well as Al-Rumayyan, an ally who, with PIF, had placed billions into the investment fund of the President’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. This would be a cinch and, as Trump said, “sorted in no time”.
Al-Rumayyan ‘insulted’ by $500m offer
Yet once again, Al-Rumayyan stuck up for LIV. During the talks, the PGA Tour put a value on LIV of $500m. They thought they were being generous, but by then PIF had already ploughed in more than $3b and Al-Rumayyan felt insulted. He was gone and the Tour was left to go it alone once more, but this time armed with a $1.5b injection from US private equity.
Freed up by the doomsday possibilities, the Tour suddenly began to change. Smaller fields, bigger prizes, significant equity for the players … all to stop a renewed LIV exodus. It worked. By ultimately aping its upstart rival, the Tour kept its heavyweights and soon claimed back one of its own.
A couple of big LIV wins were on the horizon when Koepka picked up the phone to call Woods last December. LIV had fought for world ranking status for so long and finally they and their events would be recognised. By then, Scott O’Neil, a fast-talking chief executive, had replaced Norman – who was to exit not on exactly amicable terms – and he had a hotline to the majors.
The US Open and Open granted LIV entries via their money lists, the US PGA was generous with invites and even the Masters was beginning to be welcoming. But Koepka told Woods he wanted to return to the Tour and after their new chief executive, Brian Rolapp, awarded the five-time major winner an instant route back, the first domino fell.
Within a few weeks, Patrick Reed refused a new contract and the rumblings intensified. LIV suddenly looked vulnerable and with the war developing in the Middle East, PIF signalled a new strategy in its investments – more inward-looking, less risk. But Al-Rumayyan would stick by his pet project, surely?
After all, up to $6b had been dedicated to the long-term plan and all the right noises were emerging of blue-chip backers such as HSBC, Qualcomm and Rolex, providing a return. Not nearly a profitable return, admittedly, but O’Neil had assured the players in March that PIF had guaranteed the funding through 2030. Al-Rumayyan was sticking by them. Nothing was changing.
But now it has and it is and as far as Al-Rumayyan – who is also the chairman of Newcastle United – is concerned, nobody inside LIV can understand why. Granted, the war must be a principal factor, but to pull out so quickly and apparently so ruthlessly, leaving his baby to survive on its own? The staff are in shock; the players are in shock and although O’Neil is talking a good survival game, there is little confidence in what happens next. Who will stick by LIV now?