Jack Nicklaus says reuniting men’s golf ‘above my pay grade’

Jack Nicklaus expressed his desire to see the world’s best golfers compete more frequently, but admitted he doesn’t have a solution to achieve this. Speaking on Tuesday before the Memorial Tournament, which he hosts, the 84-year-old golf legend addressed the issue of reuniting men’s professional golf. He admitted, “It’s a question I don’t know how to answer.”

The Memorial Tournament, one of the PGA Tour’s flagship events, boasts a $20 million purse and features many of the top-ranked players. This elevated status and prize pool emerged after LIV Golf lured several elite players away from the PGA Tour with lucrative offers. Nicklaus remarked, “You can look at it two ways. One is that we’ll have a very successful tournament here and a lot of PGA Tour tournaments will have very successful tournaments and have great fields and great players. I think the LIV tournaments have had — you know, have some good players and they have — and they compete at the major championships. … I don’t know whether that’s imperative that (reunification) happen. I think it would be better if they all played together more often. I do think that. But, you know, that’s above my pay grade, I think, to really answer that 100 percent because I don’t know all the ramifications of it.”

Ongoing negotiations between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF), LIV’s financiers, have made little progress nearly a year after a surprising merger announcement. Currently, players from the PGA Tour and LIV Golf only compete together at the four major championships. Nicklaus recounted an anecdote from the Masters, where he asked PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan if the tour was doing well. Monahan assured him, “We’re doing fine,” which Nicklaus took as sufficient reassurance.

Nicklaus added, “So as far as I know, the Tour’s doing fine and their problems are going to get worked out. How it is, I don’t know.” When discussing broader issues in professional golf, he humorously noted he was “not part of the problems.” He expressed satisfaction with reports that the PGA Tour’s TV ratings were improving.

“I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the day-to-day of the tour anymore,” Nicklaus said. “I’m 84 years old. … So I’m a few years removed and I don’t think that I’m in the middle of that. I’m trying to be in the middle of the Memorial Tournament and be involved in that. I think that there are a lot smarter people and a lot better people that are better versed on what’s going on than I as it relates to the problems of the game of golf.”