The PGA Tour and LIV Golf, the insurgent league bankrolled by billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, said on Tuesday that they had agreed to a merger, ending a bitter and costly fight for supremacy of men’s professional golf that had divided top players, everyday fans and corporate sponsors.
The merger represented the most stunning success to date of Saudi Arabia’s ambition to become a player in global sports. Yet unlike its purchase of a Premier League soccer team or its sponsorship of events as diverse as boxing cards and Formula 1 auto races, its billion-dollar play for control of golf seemed from the start like nothing less than an attempt to seize control of an entire sport — one that in the United States has occupied a rarefied place in the sports firmament for more than a century.