The PGA Tour tees off its 2025 season in Lahaina, Hawaii at the scenic Kapalua Plantation Course this week, marking the start of yet another year of deep division at the sport’s highest level.

To the optimist golf fan, 2025 was set to be a year of reunification. A year where golf’s two warring tours — the storied PGA Tour and its Saudi-funded disruptor LIV Golf — could come together, reuniting the world’s best players under one umbrella. It’s been 18 months since PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan had a sitdown with his LIV counterpart, Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan, to announce a framework agreement between the competing entities on CNBC. So far, that framework agreement has been a fruitless venture for a multitude of reasons.

As such, the world of men’s professional golf has continued to evolve — or more accurately, devolve — in its post-framework era, with fans left wondering if the sport is worth their continued patronage. Entering 2025, the pro game faces an uphill battle to keep fans engaged with an eye toward a more permanent resolution in 2026.

While the tea leaves suggest a deal of some kind will get done for next season, there are still plenty of hurdles to clear before anyone is singing Kumbaya. So for those who have tuned out of the ongoing feud, or have had their eyes fully glazed over since it began, here’s where we stand headed into a vital year for professional golf.

Reunification is the party line, but do actions speak louder than words?

The PGA Tour and LIV Golf have gone out of their way to signal publicly that the two sides are still working to reach a deal. Monahan and Al-Rumayyan played a pro-am together at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in October of last year. Recently, reporting has emerged about the PIF making a minority investment in the PGA Tour — a far cry from the proposed framework agreement of 2023, but still progress.

Additionally, LIV Golf is in ongoing talks with Europe’s DP World Tour about a potential “tie-up” that would create a shared schedule between the two circuits, presumably allowing for players with status on either tour to compete in (at least some of) the other’s events. The PGA Tour subsidizes part of the DP World Tour’s operation.

But even given all the signs pointing towards a coming together, with both sides acknowledging at times that the current arrangement is untenable, there’s still reason for worry. The two tours aren’t exactly playing nice.

Entering its third full season, LIV Golf continues to encroach on some of the PGA Tour’s prime real estate. LIV’s first four events of 2025 will compete directly against key dates on the PGA Tour calendar. An opening tournament in Riyadh will go head-to-head with the PGA Tour’s WM Open. The following week, LIV Adelaide will compete directly against Tiger Woods’ tournament, The Genesis Invitational. A few weeks later, LIV Hong Kong will go head-to-head with another PGA Tour signature event, the Arnold Palmer Invitational. One week after that, LIV Singapore goes directly against the PGA Tour’s flagship tournament The Players.

In August of 2023, LIV Golf’s Chief Media Officer stated in an interview, “The LIV Golf league is an additive league in the golf ecosystem…[w]e don’t schedule against the more significant PGA Tour events…the notion has always been to fit inside the schedule of the other significant events.” Barely a year later, LIV Golf is opting for a decidedly different strategy and one that suggests a war of attrition is still very much on the table.

Then there’s the reality that LIV is still trying to poach some of the PGA Tour’s top talent. Last December, Jon Rahm — the reigning Masters champion at the time — defected for LIV. Of course, the tour also boasts several of golf’s biggest stars including Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson, and Cameron Smith. Rumors of others defecting have swirled as recently as last month when Tony Finau was floated to be the next to join LIV (though he’d later deny the rumors and is set to tee it up in Hawaii this week on the PGA Tour).

To say the two tours aren’t quite getting along would be an understatement. They’re still actively in competition mode. Any grand proclamations about reunification have to be taken with a grain of salt. And if reporting about the small size of PIF’s investment in the PGA Tour is true — just 6% — a full-blown merger seems like a pipe dream, at least for now.

The new administration brings a favorable regulatory environment

The bull case for reunification was aided significantly in November when voters decided on a new president. Donald Trump’s incoming administration is likely to bring with it some favorable regulatory conditions when it comes to a potential partnership between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf.

Trump, who in his four years out of office aligned himself with the PIF and allowed his golf courses to become a regular fixture on the LIV circuit, will presumably have more appetite for a deal than the outgoing Biden administration. Generally speaking, the antitrust issues inherent in a potential reunification are less of a concern for Republicans than they are for Democrats. And with Trump’s interest in the game of golf, facilitating a reunification would come as both a personal and political win.

“I think the chances of the merger going through increase quite a bit under a Trump administration,” former FTC attorney Amanda G. Lewis told The Athletic back in October.

Again, the nature of any sort of merger is wide-ranging. It could mean a complete pairing of the two entities, with players from both tours competing together in the vast majority of events. However, given the current posturing of the two tours, a more limited partnership with some overlap in the respective tours’ schedules, but where they still operate as separate entities seems more likely.

Even given the more favorable regulatory environment, the latter possibility would be much easier to pass muster with the DOJ, as well as with members of Congress who have taken interest in the rift.

Both sides are preparing for life without the other

Maybe the most obvious indication that the divide in men’s professional golf will continue in the near term is that both tours have taken measures to operate independently of the other.

On the PGA Tour side, Monahan and Co. were able to secure a $3 billion investment from the Strategic Sports Group (SSG), a consortium of American sports team owners led by Fenway Sports Group. The injection of cash has allowed the PGA Tour to increase the size of its purses to compete with the beaucoup bucks the Saudis have poured into LIV. They also have around $4 billion in guaranteed media rights payouts from its broadcast partners at CBS, NBC, and ESPN+ between now and 2030 when the deals expire. That gives the PGA Tour a decent amount of runway in the event a deal doesn’t come to fruition in the next year or two.

The PGA Tour is also branching out into more television-friendly products. TGL, the simulator golf league featuring some of the PGA Tour’s top stars including Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, is set to debut later this month. The league will get some favorable television windows on ESPN in primetime, and fit entire rounds of competitive golf into a digestible two-hour broadcast. Whether or not TGL will be a long-term success is difficult to predict, but it shows that the PGA Tour is taking steps to modernize and make its product more accessible.

As for LIV Golf, reports began circulating last month that after two years living in relative obscurity on The CW, the circuit is prepared to sign a media rights deal with Fox. The deal has not yet been reached but reportedly includes a modest rights fee. That’s more than the tour could claim with its old CW deal, which was a revenue-sharing agreement. Finances aside, since those don’t really matter for the PIF-sponsored golf league, the exposure of a legitimate broadcast network like Fox can help LIV reach a substantially larger audience than before.

When it came to viewership in 2024, neither league had a great story to tell. The PGA Tour saw year-over-year declines for most of its best events on the calendar, and LIV’s ratings found themselves as the butt-end of many jokes. That’s somewhat to be expected when going from one product with all of the world’s best golfers competing against each other to two watered-down products with weaker fields. But given that both tours find themselves on a solid financial footing, for now, a declining linear television audience won’t exactly be driving either side to the negotiating table.

2025 and beyond

The obvious backdrop to all of this is that a prolonged fracture in the sport risks disenfranchising fans. Outside of the professional game, golf is having a moment. The sport’s influencer space is booming. More people are playing golf now than ever before. Yet, neither the PGA Tour nor LIV Golf has been able to fully capitalize on the sport’s surging popularity.

There’s still a clear interest in the professional level of the game. The four majors — some of the only times each year players from both tours compete against each other — still draw significant television audiences, at least by today’s standards. But the current clusterf*** plaguing golf’s professional circuits makes it a difficult ask for fans who are new to the sport.

2025 will be a telling year for how the future of men’s professional golf ultimately shakes out. The agreements (or non-agreements) made this year could reverberate well into the future, with major implications on how golf fans consume the sport for decades to come.