A private jet was waiting to whisk Peter Malnati away from the Mexico Open on Sunday to the site of this week’s Cognizant Classic in Florida, a mode of transportation the two-time PGA Tour winner might not ordinarily utilize.

But his presence was needed in Palm Beach Gardens and while he’d have preferred to spend his Monday with his family or working on a golf game that was giving him fits, the PGA Tour summoned him for a board meeting.

Malnati, 37, is somewhat the outlier on a PGA Tour Policy Board that includes Tiger Woods, Adam Scott and Webb Simpson, all major championship winners.

And he’s noted the challenges of taking part in a painstaking process of trying to reunify men’s professional golf while struggling to find form in his day job.

“It’s been really interesting to me,” Malnati says in a phone interview with Sports Illustrated on Monday night following a daylong meeting. “We talk all the time in golf about things we can’t control, and in this we talk about all these ideal scenarios. And a lot of it is out of our control, and that goes against the golfer’s creed. ‘What would the PIF accept? Or is this a waste of all of our time?’

“In general, it has been an eye-opening experience and I will end my term on the board with a lot deeper understanding of the PGA Tour and the world of professional golf.”

Malnati’s three-year term comes to an end later this year and he acknowledges the commitment to the task has been at times both frustrating and enlightening.

His victory last year at the Valspar Championship came during the same week that he and other board members met for the first time with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund that backs the LIV Golf League.

Nearly a year later, there is no deal but there have been recent rumblings that one is closer, especially given PGA Tour buoyancy over meeting with President Trump twice at the White House. Malnati was not part of those meetings but admits it has led to an interesting turn.

“As stupid as this is … and it’s really stupid … the President of the United States wants to be involved and I think he wants to take credit for reuniting men’s professional golf,” Malnati says. “That’s a powerful tool to have in your back pocket.”

Malnati said that the meeting Monday included PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and fellow board members Scott, Simpson, Patrick Cantlay and Camilo Villegas. Woods, who was ill, attended remotely as did Scott.

Although he would not provide details, Malnati suggested the most recent meeting on Feb. 20 with President Trump did not lead to the agreement some had hoped might happen. Al-Rumayyan, who was not at the first meeting, was in attendance.

Bringing the factions together more than 18 months after the original framework agreement was announced on June 6, 2023, has proven to be difficult.

“I think where we are right now that’s encouraging is we do have some pretty good idea of what it might look like to reintegrate some of those (LIV) players,” Malnati says. “The guys who won majors, etc. It’s not specific, but to reintegrate LIV players into the PGA Tour.

“I think if nothing else, the optimism around this has really expedited the process of what constitutes a unified men’s professional golf and what it would look like. And how does the DP World Tour fit into this? That is important, too. I think we’ve answered some of those questions. And (the PGA Tour staff) have done a tremendous job of putting a plan together.”

Malnati would not divulge specifics but admitted there remain significant hurdles.

Monahan’s “one tour” outlook two weeks ago at the Genesis Invitational suggested a plan to bring LIV Golf under PGA Tour Enterprises in some way. That is obviously complicated and would need regulatory approval, something the Tour likely is hoping that Trump would greenlight with the U.S. Department of Justice.

Figuring out exactly what LIV Golf would look like going forward—the league is headed to Hong Kong and Singapore in the coming weeks—remains part of that process.

Earlier Monday, Malnati took part in a Zoom call as part of the Valspar Championship media day in advance of the tournament at Innisbrook that takes place in three weeks.

He was originally scheduled to attend in person until he was called into the Policy Board meeting. He ducked out of that for a few minutes to talk about his victory last year as well as the state of his game now, which he said “has been absolutely dreadful.”

Since winning last year, Malnati—whose only previous victory came at the Sanderson Farms Championship in 2015—has a best finish of a tie for 33rd at the Memorial Tournament. He’s missed 15 cuts, including at three major championships last year. He’s dropped from 65th in the Official World Golf Ranking to 147th.

“Around the time of the U.S. Open, I felt really good,” he said. “But I ended up missing the cut. From then until about three weeks ago, it’s been a slow, steady downward spiral. I was digging myself a pit of golfing misery. I was playing badly and let it spiral.”

Malnati said he had a bit of reset three weeks ago and made cuts at both the WM Phoenix Open and the Mexico Open, although he was not happy with the end result.

“I hope it’s a bit of a turning point,” he said.

Malnati told a funny story about the first time he was paired with Woods, in 2019 at the Genesis Invitational at Riviera, just a few months before Woods won the Masters.

Weather had caused a late-afternoon start off the 10th tee, and Woods opened birdie-eagle-birdie.

“We walk back to the 13th tee and I’ve been awestruck the whole time,” Malnati said. “Crowds are enormous and it’s one of the few times in my life I’m speechless … I haven’t said a word to him but we’re waiting for the fairway to clear and I say, ‘You know Tiger, a lot of people get nervous their first time playing with me, but you’re handling this really well.’

“He cracked up and laughed so hard. The rest of the time he talked to me like we were pals and so it was really neat. It was a cool experience for me.”

The two have gotten to know each other better as board members, and Malnati said they are not always in agreement.

“Being on the board with him. It’s been really interesting,” Malnati said. “He and I are not always of the same mind about a lot of things. But there’s a lot of things where we actually are. We have conversations where he gets kind of big and idealistic. And I’ll ask him, ‘What kind of PGA Toru do you want (son) Charlie to play? Do you Do you want Charlie to play a Tour that looks anything like the Tour you played or do you want it to look completely different?’ And we’ll have sort of a conversation around that idea.

“There are times I can talk to him and it’s like talking to a peer. Then there’s times we talk and I feel like I’m talking to a guy who 13-year-old me idolized. I’m not from a golfing family and I got into golf because when I was 13 years old I watched him win the U.S. Open by 15 shots (in 2000). To see Pebble Beach and this incredible athlete fist pumping and booming drives. That for me is really cool. I wanted to try that. A year later I got my first job at a golf course.

“It’s been great to get to know him. You can’t describe what he means to our sport. To have him in the board room, people listen. He’s not always right but he says a lot of stuff that is brilliant, too.”

When Malnati joined the Policy Board, it was with the intention of looking out for the average Tour player, whom he believes has not always been represented properly.

“I think my peers in the locker room really appreciate my candor and authenticity,” he says. “In the boardroom, I’m not controversial at all, but I’m not always with the majority opinion. It can lead to a little bit of conflict. But honestly, the only way I can walk out of the board room and feel content is to be truthful and honest and open and curious.

“Those are things I’ve tried to be. I’m very much O.K. with not always being of the majority opinion and expressing my own. On the whole, I think I’m received positively but not without the occasional conflicts or drawbacks.”