LIV CEO says a deal with the PGA Tour isn't necessary but can work if it grows the game

DORAL, Fla. (AP) — LIV Golf CEO Scott O'Neil said Wednesday that he has not been directly involved with reunification talks between his tour and the PGA Tour since taking his job three months ago, adding that he doesn't believe such a deal is absolutely necessary. Those negotiations involving the PGA Tour and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia have gone on for more than a year now, some of them even with President Donald Trump involved. At times, progress seems to be happening. Other times, not so much. "If the deal can help grow the game of golf, I'll jump in with two feet," O'Neil said at Trump National Doral, the president's course where LIV will play this weekend — and where Trump is expected to appear, possibly as early as Thursday. "Do we have to do a deal? No. Is it nice to do a deal? So long as we're all focused on the same thing, to grow the game of golf." What that means remains unclear, and likely is one of the reasons why there is no deal yet. The divide in golf has been there for nearly three years now since LIV got off the ground. LIV players such as Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka are banned from playing on the PGA Tour. That means the world's top players are competing against one another only four times a year at the majors. "I think we all hoped it would have been a little bit further along, and that's no secret," Koepka said. "No matter where you're at, you always hope everything is further along. But they're making progress, and it seems to be going in the right direction." Earlier this year, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan made clear that he still thinks a deal is possible. "We believe there's room to integrate important aspects of LIV Golf into the PGA Tour platform," Monahan said last month. "We're doing everything that we can to bring the two sides together." Monahan has said that the priority of the meetings with PIF was about reuniting all the best players more often. "Our team is fully committed to reunification," Monahan said. O'Neil and Monahan know each other, and O'Neil has been invited to Augusta National for the Masters next week. O'Neil said in an interview session with a handful of reporters that he's encouraged by what he's seen in his first three months at LIV. The players, he said, are much more competitive even off the course than he envisioned. He said more sponsor deals are done and waiting to be announced. He insisted that ratings will improve now that LIV is playing in North America and not during what was the middle of the night for much of the U.S. for the season's first four stops — Saudi Arabia, Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore. "We don't know everything that's going on, but from what we've heard, there's a lot of positive growth and positive momentum from a sponsorship side," DeChambeau said. O'Neil also pointed to what he says are ways LIV is growing the game, citing that 30% of its fans have never been to a golf tournament before and 40% of the crowd is female. "We're a global sport. We're (Formula 1) of golf. F1, I imagine, has more people watching in (Asia-Pacific) when they're in Singapore than they do when they're in Miami," O'Neil said. "I like where we are. I like it a lot."