Tiger Woods in April on the Masters.
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Tiger Woods stated on Sunday that he had by no means seen a doc that reveals he was requested to rally assist for the PGA Tour in its combat towards LIV Golf, his first public remark in regards to the saga since the bombshell Tour-LIV deal was introduced a month in the past.
At 7:11 p.m. ET, Woods’ Twitter account posted this 35-word statement:
“In response to the talking points memo released this weekend, I have never seen this document until today, and I did not attend the players meeting for which it was prepared at the 2022 Travelers.”
The tweet is presumably referring to paperwork which can be a part of an antitrust go well with introduced towards the PGA Tour by legal professional Larry Klayman after the Tour banned gamers who had joined LIV. The 357 pages of the go well with have been first obtained by Twitter account @desertdufferLLG and have been examined by Sports Illustrated reporters by way of the fifteenth Judicial Circuit Court in Palm Beach County, Florida.
The paperwork declare that Woods was given “potential talking points” forward of a Tour gamers assembly eventually June’s Travelers Championship. At that time, LIV had performed one occasion; subsequently, the Tour made a number of strikes to influence gamers to stay with it, fairly than take giant, assured cash from the upstart sequence.
At the Travelers assembly, based on the lawsuit, Woods was to talk after Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, and he was requested to say the next:
— “Guys, let me start by saying, I think Jay, our captain in this scenario, is working his ass off.”
— “I know it’s easy to just motor along and play your schedule and do your thing, but you should know, LIV Golf is trying to take down the PGA Tour and take over golf.”
— “Guys, make no mistake, if this is an arms’ race — and if the weapons here are dollar bills — the PGA Tour can’t compete.”
— “But if we refuse to go anywhere, no matter how much dirty money they throw our way, that’s our silver bullet.”
— “Unfortunately, 20 of our former members have given them a head start. They’ve chosen a shit ton of money over this Tour, everything it’s given them and everything it stands for.”
— “So when you ask, what can I do, I have two ideas. First, do what I did: Tell the Saudis to go fuck themselves. And mean it. Second, tell the world, over and over, any chance you get, that you are sticking with the Tour because you are part of something bigger than yourself. That you are the PGA Tour, and the PGA Tour is you. That it’s damn good, and it’s worth fighting for.”
On June 6, just below a 12 months after that Travelers Championship, the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund — which bankrolls LIV — introduced that that they had come to an settlement. They will function a brand new, for-profit enterprise and finish pending litigation among the many sides, with a path again for LIV gamers. Notably, the deal was reportedly negotiated by simply 4 folks — Monahan, PGA Tour coverage board members Ed Hirlihy and Jimmy Dunne, and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the PIF governor.
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Since the deal was introduced, Woods had been mum on something related to the Tour or LIV. But he had spoken out towards LIV beforehand, most memorably eventually July’s Open Championship.
“As far as … the players who have chosen to go to LIV and to play there, I disagree with it,” Woods stated then. “I feel that what they’ve performed is that they’ve turned their again on what has allowed them to get to this place.
“I just don’t see how that move is positive in the long term for a lot of these players, especially if the LIV organization doesn’t get world-ranking points and the major championships change their criteria for entering the events,” he continued. “It would be sad to see some of these young kids never get a chance to experience it and experience what we’ve got a chance to experience and walk these hallowed grounds and play in these championships.”
Woods has been absent from golf for a lot of this 12 months — he underwent a foot process in April and has not performed since the Masters.
