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14 Of The Best Australian Golfers Of All Time

We take a look at some of the best golfers to come from the island of Australia.

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Australia has produced some incredible golfers many of which have gone on to win Major Championships and become the number one golfer in the world. Below, we have taken a look at the greatest Australian golfers of all time.

In no particular order, we start with Peter Thomson.

Peter Thomson

Born: 1929 Died: 2018 Tour Wins: 85 Majors: 5

Arguably the greatest Open Championship golfer ever, Thomson won that particular major five times and had 13 other top-10s in it. He won all over the world and played a key role in the early beginnings of the Presidents Cup too and his overall contribution to Australian golf is difficult to measure.

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Greg Norman

Born: 1955 Tour Wins: 88 Majors: 2

The Great White Shark was the worlds number one golfer for 331 total weeks which is a number only surpassed by Tiger Woods. In total he won 88 times as a professional and two Major championships but it could have been so many more. He lost in a playoff in every Major title throughout his career and was frequently on the receiving end of incredible chip ins or impossible shots.

Born: 1987 Tour Wins: 16 Majors: 1

Day is another Australian golfer to get to world number one thanks to one particular stretch in 2015 that yielded five wins, four of which came in a six tournament stretch. One of those wins was his sole Major Championship victory at the 2015 PGA Championship and he has won some of the biggest tournaments around the world.

Born: 1980 Tour Wins: 29 Majors: 1

Similar to Day, Scott has also got to world number one and has won a sole Major Championship which came at the 2013 Masters in a playoff against Angel Cabrera. Incredibly this came just months after he had bogeyed the last four holes at the 2012 Open Championship to lose to Ernie Els.

Norman Von Nida

Born: 1914 Died: 2007 Tour Wins: 46 Majors: 0

World War Two may have curtailed the peak of his career, but Von Nida still won 46 times as a professional with many of those victories coming in Australia.

Geoff Ogilvy

Born: 1977 Tour Wins: 12 Majors: 1

To date, Ogilvy's career has seen him win the 2006 US Open and three World Golf Championship tournaments.

Steve Elkington

Born: 1962 Tour Wins: 17 Majors: 1

Elkington won 10 times on the PGA Tour during his career but his finest year came in 1995 where he came tied 5th at The Masters, tied 6th at The Open and then beat Colin Montgomerie in a playoff at the PGA Championship.  He is also one of very few golfers to win The Players Championship twice.

David Graham

Born: 1946 Tour Wins: 38 Majors: 2

Graham is part of a very exclusive club in that he is one of five golfers to have won a event on six different continents. (The others are Gary Player, Hale Irwin, Bernhard Langer and Justin Rose ). Additionally Graham won two different Majors, the 1979 PGA Championship and 1981 US Open.

Born: 1920 Tour Wins: 86 Majors: 1

From 1960-1969, Nagle was incredible at The Open Championship in particular. He had six top-10s and a win during that stretch and would go on to win 86 times as a professional.

Bruce Crampton 

Born: 1935 Tour Wins: 44 Majors: 0

Crampton won 14 times on the PGA Tour but his career really hit its stride on the Champions Tour where he won 20 times, including a two-year stretch that included 11 of those wins. Sadly he never won a Major at either level but had numerous runners-up finishes.

Graham Marsh

Born: 1944 Tour Wins: 70 Majors: 0

Marsh turned professional in 1969 and became truly a global golfer. He had wins on the European Tour, Australasian Tour, PGA Tour, Japan Golf Tour, Champions Tour and won national Opens in countries like India, Thailand, Malaysia, Switzerland, Germany and Holland.

Karrie Webb

Born: 1974 Tour Wins: 57 Majors: 7

One of the finest female golfers ever, Webb collected 7 Major titles and 41 other LPGA Tour wins. She has also acted as a mentor to young golfers like fellow Australian Hannah Green who won her first Major title in 2019.

Jan Stephenson

Born: 1951 Tour Wins: 26 Majors: 3

Just elected into the World Golf Hall of Fame, Stephenson won 3 Major titles in 3 years at a time when the LPGA Tour was extremely competitive.

Stuart Appleby

Born: 1971 Tour Wins: 17 Majors: 0

In 2010 Appleby became one of very few players to shoot 59 on the PGA Tour which came during the final round of the Greenbrier Classic. He played on five Presidents Cups and won 9 times on the PGA Tour.

Other worthy mentions:  Marc Leishman, Wayne Grady, Ian Baker-Finch, Peter Senior, Craig Parry

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10 Of The Best English Golfers Of All Time

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10 Of The Best South African Golfers Of All Time

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Top 10 Australian Golfers of All Time

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Who are the best golfers to come from Down Under? Australia is a relatively small (in terms of population) country that has produced many good and some all-time great professional golfers. The history of golf includes dozens of PGA Tour victories plus a helping of major championships won by Aussie golfers.

For this ranking, we consider the question, "Who are the 10 best male golfers ever to come from Australia?" And we rate them from one through 10 (plus toss in a few honorable mentions).

Peter Thomson

In the eight years from 1951-58, Peter Thomson won the British Open four times, was runner-up twice and finished sixth the other time. For good measure, he added a fifth Open title in 1965, plus nine other Top 10 finishes in the tournament.

Thomson rarely played in the United States (not unusual for international players of his era), including the majors, but did have a fourth-place at the Masters and a fifth at the U.S. Open . He also won once on the PGA Tour in 1956.

As a senior golfer, he had one dominating Champions Tour year with nine victories in 1985—one of the best seasons in that tour's history.

Thomson won 26 times on the European circuit that preceded formation of the European Tour, and 34 times in Australia and New Zealand.

Greg Norman

Greg Norman is probably so well-known for his losses—a combination of some chokes (such as the 1996 Masters ) and some rotten luck (such as the 1987 Masters)—that his successes are often overlooked. But as Tom Watson once said, "A lot of guys who have never choked have never been in the position to do so."

Norman put himself in position a lot , and sometimes he failed to get the job done. But 20 times, he won on the PGA Tour, and twice he won the British Open . He was the PGA Tour's leading money winner three times, its scoring leader three times, and its Player of the Year in 1995. He was considered the best golfer in the world for long stretches during his career. He had 30 Top 10 finishes in majors.

Should he have won more? Yes. But he won a lot as it was, nearly 90 times around the world. He's also the only golfers on this list to pose in the nude, which he did in 2018 (at age 63!) for the "body issue" of ESPN the Magazine .

Scott Halleran/Getty Images

Scott had a pretty good career going—eight PGA Tour wins, including the 2004 Players Championship and a WGC win—but was stuck on those "best golfers without a major" lists. Then he won the 2013 Masters .

Scott has eight other wins on the European Tour (outside of the Masters and now two WGC victories). And after he won in back-to-back weeks in 2016 at the Honda Classic and WGC Cadillac Championship, was up to 13 total wins on the USPGA Tour.

Scott has also won in Asia, South Africa and Australia. His wins on the PGA Tour of Australasia include the 2009 Australian Open and the 2012 and 2013 Australian Masters. He's been a regular at the Presidents Cup throughout his career, been as high as second in the world rankings, and finished as high as third on the USPGA money list.

David Graham

Graham had a reputation as a tough, big-tournament player. He finished in the Top 10 in majors 16 times, and that included two wins: the 1979 PGA Championship and the 1981 U.S. Open.

At the 1979 PGA, Graham shot 65 in the final round to force a playoff, then beat Ben Crenshaw with a series of big putts in extra holes.

Graham won eight times on the USPGA, plus five times on the Champions Tour, and also had wins in Europe, Australia, South America, South Africa and Japan.

Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images

When Jason Day won the 2016 WGC Dell Match Play Championship, it was his second consecutive win on the PGA Tour. A week earlier, Day won the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Those two victories in the early part of 2016 put Day at nine career PGA Tour victories.

Then he won the 2016 Players Championship, and two wins early in 2018 bumped his PGA Tour win total to 12.

One of those victories was the 2015 PGA Championship, which Day won with a final score of 20-under. He thus became the first golfer to finish a major at 20-under or better.

Steve Elkington

David Cannon/Getty Images

Elkington probably didn't achieve as much as he should have on the PGA Tour, his career hampered several times by battles with injuries and illness. But he did win 10 times, including the 1991 Players Championship. And the big one: the 1995 PGA Championship , where Elkington beat Colin Montgomerie in a playoff.

Elkington was in another playoff at a major, but lost the 2002 British Open to Ernie Els (Stuart Appleby and Thomas Levet were also in the playoff). He had six other Top 5 finishes in majors.

Bruce Crampton

Bruce Crampton was one of the best golfers in the world in the first half of the 1970s. He won four times on the PGA Tour in 1973, and earned the PGA Tour's Vardon Trophy for low scoring average in 1973 and 1975.

But he probably has nightmares about Jack Nicklaus. Crampton finished second in four majors during that period—the 1972 Masters and U.S. Open, the 1973 PGA Championship and 1975 PGA Championship. Who beat him? All four times, he was runner-up to Nicklaus. So Crampton never won a major, but he did win 14 PGA Tour titles, plus another 20 on the Champions Tour.

Arnold Palmer famously helped revitalize the British Open by crossing the pond to play the 1960 Open, at a time when most American stars rarely if ever played it. But Palmer finished second that year to Kel Nagle.

Nagle was 39 years old but playing in a major for only the fourth time. He had played mostly on the Australasian Tour to that point (a tour on which he eventually won 61 times). So Nagle's best years were arguably already behind him.

Yet Nagle was competitive throughout his 40s. He was runner-up to Palmer at the 1961 Open, and lost a playoff to Gary Player at the 1965 U.S. Open. But he also won during the 1960s at the French Open and Canadian Open, among other titles, and from 1960-66 finished in the Top 5 at the British Open all but one year.

Jim Ferrier

By the time Ferrier won the 1947 PGA Championship, he had taken up United States citizenship. But he was born in Manly, New South Wales, and won 10 times on the Australasian Tour in the 1930s. He moved to America to try the USPGA Tour in the 1940s, and he was winning tournaments there from 1944 through 1961—18 wins in all, including his one major. Ferrier was runner-up in three other majors.

Geoff Ogilvy

Ogilvy hasn't won a lot on the PGA Tour, and hasn't been all that consistent. But the tournaments he has won have mostly been marquee events. Of his eight wins through the 2018 season, three were WGC tournaments, twice he won the winners-only PGA Tour season-opener, and then there's that 2006 U.S. Open title. He finished inside the Top 10 on the money list twice.

Four golfers who get honorable mentions are:

• Stuart Appleby, nine PGA Tour wins and a round of 59.
• Graham Marsh, 20 wins in Japan, 15 on the Australasian Tour, 10 on the European Tour, six on the Champions Tour.
• Bruce Devlin, eight PGA Tour wins and 16 wins in Australia.
• Joe Kirkwood Sr., first Australian golfer to win extensively in the U.S., with 13 PGA Tour wins mostly in the 1920s.
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2023 Fortinet Australian PGA Championship field: Players, rankings

The 2023 Fortinet Australian PGA Championship field is set with the passing of the typical Friday entry deadline. The field is set for this event, played at Royal Queensland Golf Club in Australia.

The Fortinet Australian PGA Championship field is headlined by the likes of Cam Smith , Adam Scott , Adrian Meronk and more.

This is set to be a 156-player field is played out over four days, with this event featuring a mixture of players from the DP World Tour and Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia, as this event is co-sanctioned.

We do not yet have Monday qualifiers for this event.

The week-of alternate list has been determined, and the field will be updated off the list based on any player withdrawals.

The field will be playing for a $2,000,000 purse, with four of the top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking among the top contenders.

2023 Fortinet Australian PGA Championship field

Top 50 players in 2023 fortinet australian pga championship field, about the author.

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Tiger Woods to land $100M, PGA Tour equity payments for loyalty, revealed

The new PGA Tour Enterprises equity payments for 193 players who remained loyal has been unveiled.

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PGA Tour Enterprises , the newly formed for-profit entity, is prepared to dole out massive sums of money to reward player loyalty amid the LIV Golf discord.

The PGA Tour struck a deal with Strategic Sports Group worth up to $3 billion three months ago. As part of the fundraising efforts, the Tour will disseminate hundreds of millions of dollars to its membership, per The Telegraph.

Tiger Woods, the 15-time major champion, will receive the largest sum upwards of $100 million. Rory McIlroy will net a cool $50 million. Other top players like Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas will earn $30 million.

The entire payout structure to all players has yet to be made public.

Nearly two thirds of the money infused into the company will be handed out via equity shares. However, a safeguard was put in place to avoid players taking the money and then jumping ship for LIV Golf.

Fifty percent of the money will be vested after four years on Tour. Another 25 percent will be added two years after that and all 100 percent will be vested after eight years.

There are a number of factors that determined a players’ worth.

Chief among them are the ‘career points’ and how players have fared through the Player Impact Program (PIP).

The former is a model that looks at career achievements through the lens of longevity. The latter, which was established a couple of years ago to combat the money thrown by LIV at players, takes into account how an individual has helped promote and grow the sport through ticket sales, sponsorships, media consumption and fan engagement.

Understandably, Woods would top the list. He continues to move the needle . One just needs to look at The Masters less than two weeks ago.

Television ratings were initially up as Woods performed well and made the cut for the 24th consecutive appearance, setting a new PGA Tour record . However, after he faltered to historic lows Saturday, ratings plummeted during the weekend.

The Tiger Woods effect is a problem that the PGA Tour and professional golf is still yet to solve.

However, if a deal is ever reached between LIV and the PGA Tour, bringing the best players together might at least stem the tide.

Kendall Capps is the Senior Editor of SB Nation’s Playing Through. For more golf coverage, follow us @_PlayingThrough on all major social media platforms.

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2024 LIV Golf Adelaide schedule, field of players, teams, prize money, purse, live stream, TV schedule

Liv golf makes its way down under for its annual event in australia.

LIV Golf returns to the land down under for the first of two international events following the Masters. The 54-hole circuit once again makes its way to LIV Golf Adelaide, where the league enjoyed tremendous success in its inaugural showing a year ago. It was Talor Gooch running away with the individual title on LIV Golf this time last year, but this year it is Joaquin Niemann.

The young Chilean has been tremendous in 2024 with a couple of LIV Golf titles to his name and a strong showing at the year's first major championship. Fresh off a top-25 result at the Masters, Niemann hopes to keep the momentum rolling in Australia. 

Outdoing Niemann at the Masters and representing one of LIV Golf's highest finisher was the man who needs no introductions to Australian golf fans, Cameron Smith. The 2022 Champion Golfer of the Year claimed another top-10 finish at Augusta National and continued a streak of solid play for the Australian. Smith has now rattled off three straight quality outings with a playoff loss to Abraham Ancer in Hong Kong. He will hope to impress his fans again as he leads his Ripper GC squad into a home game.

Ripper GC and the rest of the teams are looking up to last year's champions, Crushers GC. Bryson DeChambeau's team has opened up a wide lead over the rest of the league in large part due to their captain's play. DeChambeau contended at the Masters before ultimately finishes T6 alongside Smith. On LIV Golf, DeChambeau has connected on four straight top 10s and will look to do a hair better this week as he eyes his third trophy.

Meanwhile, players like Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and Jon Rahm hope to bounce back from mildly disappointing Masters, with others like Gooch, Tyrrell Hatton and Patrick Reed rounding out the action.

How to watch LIV Golf Adelaide

Event:  LIV Golf Adelaide | April 26-28 Purse:  $25 million Start time : 9:45 p.m. ET  Location:  The Grange Golf Club — Adelaide, Australia Viewing info:  Thursday - Saturday: 9:30 p.m. - 2:30 a.m. (CW App & LIV Golf Plus)

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‘I can be helpful’: Rory McIlroy hopes to unite golf with return to PGA Tour board

• PGA, LIV Golf and DP World Tour aiming to strike deal
• The 34-year-old spoke to Webb Simpson about taking his seat

Rory McIlroy has said “hard feelings” will need to be put aside to achieve peace in golf’s civil war but believes he “can be helpful” if he returns to the PGA Tour policy board.

As first reported by the Guardian on Monday , McIlroy is set to rejoin the PGA Tour board just months after stepping down. The 34-year-old will hope to assist in striking a deal between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which bankrolls LIV Golf.

McIlroy has previously said that he and Patrick Cantlay “see the world quite differently,” however, and also had an exchange of views with Jordan Spieth, another player-director, in February. Spieth had suggested the Tour’s multi-billion dollar deal with Strategic Sports Group meant investment from the PIF might not be needed.

“I think I can be helpful,” McIlroy said when asked about his expected U-turn before the Zurich Classic, where he will partner his Ryder Cup teammate, Shane Lowry, in the team event in New Orleans.

“I don’t think there’s been much progress made in the last eight months and I was hopeful that there would be. I think I could be helpful to the process. But only if people want me involved, I guess.

“When Webb [Simpson] and I talked, and he talked about potentially coming off the board, I said: ‘Look, if it was something that other people wanted, I would gladly take that seat’, and that was the conversation we had.

“I think that’s the whole reason. I feel like I can be helpful,” McIlroy added. “I feel like I care a lot and I have some pretty good experience and good connections within the game and sort of around the wider sort of ecosystem and everything that’s going on.”

Asked how he would achieve unification in the game given his differences of opinion with fellow players, McIlroy said: “Compromise, but also try to articulate your points as well as you can, and try to help people see the benefits of what unification could do for the game and what it could do for this tour in particular.

“We obviously realise the game is not unified right now for a reason and there’s still some hard feelings and things that need to be addressed, but I think at this point, for the good of the game, we all need to put those feelings aside and all move forward together.”

McIlroy said that he had approached Lowry about teaming up in New Orleans, having previously resisted repeated overtures from the two-times Masters champion , Bubba Watson.

“I basically didn’t want to ask Rory because I didn’t think that he would want to come and play,” Lowry said. “Then he was the one that said it to me and I was like, absolutely.”

“The Wednesday after the Ryder Cup we had a nice few drinks together. We talked about it that day and then he sent me a text around Christmas time and it was a nice little present for me to get,” he added. “I like playing golf from the middle of the fairway, so I’m looking forward to this week.”

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Webb Simpson offers to resign from PGA Tour board. But only if McIlroy replaces him, AP source says

Rory McIlroy, of Northern Ireland, watches his tee shot on the sixth hole during the second round of the RBC Heritage golf tournament, Friday, April 19, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

Rory McIlroy, of Northern Ireland, reacts after missing a putt on the first hole during the third round of the RBC Heritage golf tournament, Saturday, April 20, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

Jordan Spieth lines up a putt on the second hole during the first round at the Masters golf tournament at Augusta National Golf Club Thursday, April 11, 2024, in Augusta, Ga. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Patrick Cantlay waves after making a putt on the fifth hole during the second round of the RBC Heritage golf tournament, Friday, April 19, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

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A plan is in place for Rory McIlroy to rejoin the PGA Tour board, a move that would require the board’s approval and could be viewed as a chance to help to improve stalled negotiations with the Saudi financial backers of LIV Golf.

McIlroy resigned from the board in November , saying he felt he could no longer commit the time and energy required with the PGA Tour trying to finalize an agreement with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.

The deal with PIF was not finalized, and the PGA Tour instead took on Strategic Sports Group as a minority investor in a deal that could be worth as much as $3 billion.

Webb Simpson, one of the six player directors on the PGA Tour board and PGA Tour Enterprises board, has submitted a letter saying that he wants to resign as a player director but only if McIlroy replaces him, according to a person who has seen the letter.

The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Tuesday because the letter was not made public. The board is expected to discuss Simpson’s request as early as Wednesday.

PGA Tour Enterprises is the new commercial entity, though six players serve on both boards.

McIlroy’s resignation in November required the other five player directors — Simpson, Tiger Woods, Patrick Cantlay, Adam Scott and Peter Malnati — to elect a player to serve out the term through 2024. They chose Jordan Spieth.

Some of those players have been at odds with McIlroy over the last few months because the four-time major champion has changed his tune about LIV Golf and has suggested LIV players be allowed to return to the PGA Tour without penalty.

Spieth and McIlroy disagreed in February over Spieth’s comments that a deal with PIF was not needed because of the SSG investment, although it would help with unification.

The Simpson case, however, is different. He has not resigned from the board. The person said Simpson’s letter said he would resign if McIlroy could replace him; otherwise, he would stay on the boards.

The person said Simpson indicated the board currently does not have a European player — five are Americans and Scott is Australian.

SSG in a consortium of American sports owners, led by the Fenway Group, and McIlroy has an affiliation with Fenway through the new TGL team league due to start play in January.

The Guardian, which first reported McIlroy’s potential move back to the board , also noted McIlroy has a good relationship with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the PIF governor.

Al-Rumayyan met with the player directors — he even played nine holes with Woods — in the Bahamas a week after The Players Championship last month. Spieth described that meeting as a chance to talk while figuring out the next step.

There have been no reports of progress since then.

A London financial newspaper, City A.M., reported last week that LIV had offered McIlroy $850 million to join, based on sources it did not identify. McIlroy quickly shot down those rumors and said he would play the PGA Tour “for the rest of my career.” But he also reiterated his hopes that golf could be unified again outside the four majors.

“The game is better when we’re all together,” he said last week at the RBC Heritage.

The hurdle for any kind of a deal has been how to unify the game. Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson are among players who signed bonuses said to be worth upward of $100 million that led to the divide.

McIlroy said last month at The Players Championship that Al-Rumayyan “wants to do the right thing” for all of golf and that LIV Commissioner Greg Norman and others have done the PIF leader a disservice.

“So the closer that we can get to Yasir, PIF and hopefully finalize that investment, I think that will be a really good thing,” McIlroy said.

SSG’s initial investment of $1.5 billion is for a first-of-its-kind equity ownership program. PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said in a February memo that $750 million in aggregate equity would be granted to 36 players based on career performance, last five-year performance and Player Impact Program results.

Those players are to learn details of how much they receive this week.

AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

With Saudi negotiations stalled, Rory McIlroy potentially returning to PGA Tour board as peacemaker

A plan is in place for Rory McIlroy to rejoin the PGA Tour board, a move that would require the board’s approval and could be viewed as a chance to help improve stalled negotiations with the Saudi financial backers of LIV Golf.

McIlroy resigned from the board in November, saying he felt he could no longer commit the time and energy required with the PGA Tour trying to finalize an agreement with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.

The deal with PIF was not finalized, and the PGA Tour instead took on Strategic Sports Group, a consortium led by Fenway Sports Group , as a minority investor in a deal that could be worth as much as $3 billion. McIlroy has an affiliation with Fenway through the new TGL team league due to start play in January.

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Webb Simpson, one of the six player directors on the PGA Tour board and PGA Tour Enterprises board, has submitted a letter saying that he wants to resign as a player director but only if McIlroy replaces him, according to a person who has seen the letter.

The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Tuesday because the letter was not made public. The board is expected to discuss Simpson’s request as early as Wednesday.

PGA Tour Enterprises is the new commercial entity, though six players serve on both boards.

McIlroy’s resignation in November required the other five player directors — Simpson, Tiger Woods, Patrick Cantlay, Adam Scott, and Peter Malnati — to elect a player to serve out the term through 2024. They chose Jordan Spieth.

Some of those players have been at odds with McIlroy over the last few months because the four-time major champion has changed his tune about LIV Golf, and has suggested LIV players be allowed to return to the PGA Tour without penalty.

Spieth and McIlroy disagreed in February over Spieth’s comments that a deal with PIF was not needed because of the SSG investment, although it would help with unification.

The Simpson case, however, is different. He has not resigned from the board. The person said Simpson’s letter said he would resign if McIlroy could replace him; otherwise, he would stay on the boards.

The person said Simpson indicated the board does not have a European player — five are Americans and Scott is Australian.

The Guardian, which first reported McIlroy’s potential move back to the board, also noted McIlroy has a good relationship with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the PIF governor.

Al-Rumayyan met with the player directors — he even played nine holes with Woods — in the Bahamas a week after The Players Championship last month. Spieth described that meeting as a chance to talk while figuring out the next step.

There have been no reports of progress since then.

A London financial newspaper, City A.M., reported last week that LIV had offered McIlroy $850 million to join, based on sources it did not identify. McIlroy quickly shot down those rumors and said he would play the PGA Tour “for the rest of my career,” but he also reiterated his hopes that golf could be unified again outside the four majors.

“The game is better when we’re all together,” he said last week at the RBC Heritage.

The hurdle for any kind of a deal has been how to unify the game. Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, and Dustin Johnson are among players who signed bonuses said to be worth upward of $100 million that led to the divide.

McIlroy said last month at The Players Championship that Al-Rumayyan “wants to do the right thing” for all of golf, and that LIV Commissioner Greg Norman and others have done the PIF leader a disservice.

“So the closer that we can get to Yasir, PIF, and hopefully finalize that investment, I think that will be a really good thing,” McIlroy said.

SSG’s initial investment of $1.5 billion is for a first-of-its-kind equity ownership program. PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said in a February memo that $750 million in aggregate equity would be granted to 36 players based on career performance, last five-year performance and Player Impact Program results.

Those players are to learn details of how much they receive this week.