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[ad_1] LOS ANGELES: Uncertainty and controversy over a potential merger with LIV Golf's Saudi backers loom over the US PGA Tour as its 2024 season tees off Thursday in Hawaii. The PGA's tournament of champions, now dubbed The Sentry, again will be played at Kapalua, this time in support of wildfire-devastated host Maui following last August's tragedy. A field of 59 will compete in the $20 million opener with four-time major winner Rory McIlroy the only qualified player skipping the event to begin his 2024 campaign later. Even as the PGA Tour returns to a calendar-year format, the impact of last June's shock announcement of a framework merger deal with the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) and DP World Tour lingers over the series. Reigning Masters champion Jon Rahm of Spain, who won last year's Kapalua crown, will not defend his title, having jumped to LIV last month for rich financial guarantees. That signals the upstart series can drain top PGA tale...

[ad_1] Congressional lawmakers are expected to grill two PGA Tour officials on Tuesday in a hearing focused on the organization's controversial deal with Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Golf . Ron Price, the PGA Tour's chief operating officer, and Jimmy Dunne, a member of the group's governing board, are set to appear before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Price amid criticism that the alliance between the once bitterly competitive professional golfing  enterprises amounts to "sportswashhing" Saudi Arabia's record of human rights abuses. Lawmakers also have raised concerns that the deal violates federal antitrust laws as it would merge two golf organizations into one super league where the world's most talented golfers would compete, monopolizing the sport.  "The PGA Tour brazenly announced the deal as an agreement to 'merge commercial operations under common ownership,'" Sena...

[ad_1] WASHINGTON: PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, sidelined nearly a month by an unspecified medical issue, will return to work on July 17, the tour announced on Friday. Monahan's return will come six days after he misses a hearing by US lawmakers into the PGA-LIV deal. Monahan, who left his duties on June 13, was ripped by many players as a hypocrite after negotiating a merger deal with the Saudi backers of rival LIV Golf following a year of urging players to reject record financial offers to stay with the PGA Tour. Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) governor Yasir al-Rumayyan, who made the deal with Monahan, will not appear at the hearing and neither will LIV chief executive Greg Norman, citing schedule conflicts. In Monahan's place will be Ron Price, the tour's chief operating officer, and Jimmy Dunne, a PGA Tour board member who was a negotiator of the deal. Monahan revealed his return in a memo to the PGA board, tour members and staff. "Thank yo...