Rory McIlroy wanted to bury his head in the sand.

DeChambeau won his second U.S. Open title on Sunday by getting up-and-down from 55 yards in a bunker — one of the toughest shots in golf — to deliver another unforgettable finish at Pinehurst and a celebration just as raucous as when his hero, Payne Stewart, won with a big par putt in 1999.

“That’s Payne right there, baby!” DeChambeau screamed as he walked off the 18th green.

This was nothing like DeChambeau winning at Winged Foot in 2020, when there were no fans and no drama. This was high suspense that ultimately came down to a trio of short putts.

McIlroy, who for so much of the final round looked certain to end 10 years without a major, had a one-shot lead until missing a 30-inch par putt on the 16th hole. Tied for the lead on the 18th, with DeChambeau behind him in the final group, McIlroy missed a par attempt from just inside 4 feet.

He was in the scoring room watching, hoping, for a two-hole playoff when DeChambeau got into trouble off the tee as he had done all day. But then DeChambeau delivered the magic moment with his bunker shot to 4 feet and made the par putt for a 1-over 71.

“That bunker shot was the shot of my life,” DeChambeau said.

Moments later, McIlroy was in his car, the wheels spinning on the gravel to get out of Pinehurst without comment. There wasn’t much to say. This one will sting.

“As much as it is heartbreaking for some people, it was heartbreak for me at the PGA,” said DeChambeau, who a month ago made a dramatic birdie on the 18th hole at Valhalla, only for Xander Schauffele to match him with a birdie to win the PGA Championship.

“I really wanted this one,” DeChambeau said. “When I turned the corner and saw I was a couple back, I said, ‘Nope, I’m not going to let that happen.’ I have to focus on figuring out how to make this happen.”

True to his form as one of golf’s great entertainers, he put on quite the show.

The par putt wasn’t as long or as suspenseful as Stewart’s in 1999. The celebration was every bit of that. DeChambeau repeatedly pumped those strong arms as he screamed to the blue sky, turning in every direction to a gallery that cheered him on all week.

As much as this U.S. Open will be remembered for DeChambeau’s marvelous bunker shot, McIlroy played a big part. He not missed a putt under 4 feet for 69 holes on the slick, domed Donald Ross greens. And then with the U.S. Open on the line, he missed two over the final three holes for a 69.

McIlroy had the look of a winner. He ran off four birdies in a five-hole stretch around the turn. He was a model of cool, the opposite of DeChambeau’s exuberance. He walked confidently to the 14th tee with a two-shot lead as the chants grew louder.

“Ror-EE! Ror-EE!”

DeChambeau could hear them, and he pounded a 3-wood on the reachable par-4 13th — the tees were moved forward to 316 yards — to the middle of the green for a birdie to stay close.

McIlroy took bogey from behind the 15th green, but he stayed one ahead when DeChambeau, playing in the group behind him, had his first three-putt of the week on the 15th when he missed from 4 feet.

And that’s where this U.S. Open took a devasting turn for McIlroy.

He missed a 30-inch par putt on the 16th hole to fall back into a tie. On the 18th hole, McIlroy’s tee shot landed behind a wiregrass bush. He blasted out short of the green and pitched beautifully to 4 feet. And he missed again.

DeChambeau kept fans on the edge to the end. He pulled his drive to the left into an awful lie, with a tree in his back swing and a root in front of the golf ball. The best he could manage was to punch it toward the green, and it rolled into a front right bunker.

“One of the worst places I could have been,” DeChambeau. But he said his caddie, Greg Bodine, kept it simple.

“G-Bo just said, ‘Bryson, just get it up-and-down. That’s all you’ve got to do. You’ve done this plenty of times before. I’ve seen some crazy shots from you from 50 yards out of a bunker,’” DeChambeau said.

During the trophy ceremony, the shot was replayed on a video screen.

“I still can’t believe that up-and-down,” DeChambeau said.

Since he won the U.S. Open at Congressional in 2011, McIlroy has seven top 10s in this championship without a victory — it’s been more than 100 years since anyone did that well without going home with the trophy.

DeChambeau becomes the second LIV Golf player to win a major, following Brooks Koepka at the PGA Championship last year.

An image of Stewart’s famous pose was on the pin flag at the 18th, and DeChambeau put on a Stewart-inspired flat cap during the trophy presentation, later replacing it with his “Crushers” cap from LIV.

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This is the 50th edition of the PGA Tour’s premier championship, and no one has ever defended his title. Next up is Scottie Scheffler, and the odds are as much in his favor as any of the previous winners.

That includes Woods, who only got one crack at it in 2002, didn’t break 70 and tied for 14th.

“I just think it’s a golf course where you don’t see a lot of repeat winners in general,” Scheffler said. “There’s not a guy that you have seen win on this golf course a bunch.”

Only five players have won twice on the Stadium Course at the TPC Sawgrass. Nicklaus won The Players three times, but that was before it moved permanently to this Pete Dye arena of endless thrills and that one (mostly) island green on the par-3 17th.

Scheffler is the No. 1 player in the world, the first time the defending champion of The Players has been atop the world ranking since Jason Day in 2016. The difference is Scheffler arrived at Sawgrass straight from a dominant performance to win at Bay Hill by five shots.

Already the best from tee-to-green, his putter finally came to life and the rest of golf’s best had every reason to be nervous.

“I’ve personally had some really, really nice ball-striking weeks,” FedEx Cup champion Viktor Hovland said. “But for him to have done that for so long and won so many tournaments that he’s done the last couple years is very, very impressive. Because you get into periods of times where you feel like you can’t miss and you’re hitting it on a string, but then next month it might feel a little bit difficult. He just seems to keep doing what he’s doing.”

Scheffler has been No. 1 for the last 10 months, and it’s not difficult to do the math. Along with three victories in the last year — that includes the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas — he has finished out of the top 10 only three times in 22 tournaments.

How that translates to Sawgrass is yet to be seen, even on a course where a year ago it looked as though he was playing alone. He led by six shots at one point and won by five shots, just as he did at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

History, however, is not on his side. The Stadium Course has a reputation of never favoring a single style of golf, and there is trouble just about everywhere that everyone seems to find at some point over the tournament.

“That’s why I think it’s one of the best places we play on tour, just because it really doesn’t suit one type of player,” Scheffler said. ”Bomb-and-gouge doesn’t really work out here. But then you even have the shorter hitters that plot it around that can struggle here, because you got to hit it exactly where you’re looking or you’re going to be punished pretty severely.”

What has changed is The Players now needs an asterisk, but only if it claims to have the strongest and deepest field in golf. World ranking aside, golf is so divided now because of the defections to LIV Golf that all the best are not at Sawgrass — not Masters champion Jon Rahm or Cameron Smith, who conquered Sawgrass two years ago. Not Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka or Bryson DeChambeau.

And by the sound of PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, there’s not an immediate fix.

“It’s going to take time,” Monahan said of any deal with the Saudis and any solution to the fractured landscape in golf.

The Players gets started on Thursday, and if nothing else, it’s a time to return the focus to inside the ropes, at least for four days.

Xander Schauffele isn’t a fan of Monahan, saying the commissioner has “a long way to go” to regain trust. Rory McIlroy spoke out in favor of Monahan on Wednesday morning, saying he was the right man for the job and the tour was in a stronger position with new money from a group of private investors.

And then there was Scheffler, suggesting any blame for the divide should be on the players who are not at Sawgrass this week because of LIV.

“If the fans are upset, then look at the guys that left,” he said. “We had a tour, we were all together, and the people that left are no longer here. At the end of the day, that’s where the splintering comes from.”

Schauffele perhaps summarized it best.

“I think you would like to have those players playing in an ideal world, but I feel like we’re sort of beating a dead horse in this media room a little bit,” he said.

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Knapp said he still sends a text after each round to his grandfather, who died last year, and this message might require a lot of detail.

He didn’t hit a fairway until the eighth hole and found only two the entire round. He never lost the lead, but twice allowed Sami Valimaki of Finland to catch him. They were tied with six holes to play until Knapp took over, getting up-and-down on four of the next five holes, one of them for birdie.

“I woke up in the middle of the night and I could fee my heart racing,” he said. “I was more excited to get things going. I wasn’t worried about performing — maybe I should have been.”

Tee-to-green, Knapp had his worst performance. But he spent extra time Saturday night on his short game, and it won the day for him.

“We talked about it last night … if the ball-striking is off, we’re going to have to trust our hands. And we did that, grinding out some pretty tough pars,” he said.

It wasn’t easy until the end.

Another big par save on the par-3 17th gave Knapp a two-shot lead going to the par-5 closing hole at Vallarta Vidanta. Valimaki, needing eagle to have a chance, hit his drive down the right side, off a cart path and it nestled next to a boundary fence. He had to take a penalty drop, effectively ending his chances.

Valimaki made par for a 69 to finish runner-up, still a big boost to his rookie season. Valimaki was among the leading 10 players from the European tour to earn PGA Tour cards this year.

“Maybe just a couple more putts drop in,” Valimaki said. “I feel like I have the game to win over here. It just wasn’t this Sunday.”

Knapp, who finished at 19-under 265, won in his fifth start of his rookie season. Along with winning $1,458,000 and moving into the top 10 in the FedEx Cup, the 29-year-old Californian is headed to the Masters and PGA Championship. He also gets into the remaining five $20 million signature events, starting with Bay Hill in two weeks.

It was a big turnaround for the former UCLA player who leans on a pair of initials.

One of them is LTD, an acronym he and his older brother have been using for years that means, “Living The Dream.” The other initials are tattooed on the inside of his left arm — GSFB, which stands for Gordon Sydney Frederick Bowles, his grandfather who died last year.

Playing golf at the highest level was a dream they shared, and Knapp had to choke back emotions Saturday talking about him, apologizing because he had never been asked publicly about his grandfather.

“Papa, thank you,” he said, pointing to the sky as he walked off the 18th green, soaked after friends and players doused him with water bottles after he tapped in for par.

Knapp was hopeful of the outcome. He didn’t imagine how he would get to the finish line.

Staked to a four-shot lead, he made bogey on the opening hole with a weak chip. He had to save par on the next hole after another pulled tee shot. The third drive was the worst, a hook some 50 yards left of the fairway into the water, leading to another bogey.

Three holes into the final round, his lead already was down to two.

“I didn’t have my best stuff today, that’s for sure,” Knapp said. “I knew I was going to be a nervous wreck. I knew it was going to be tough.”

It all turned in Knapp’s favor down the stretch. Valimaki failed to convert a 10-foot par putt after hitting into a bunker on the 13th, while Knapp saved par from short of the green. On the par-5 14th, Knapp hit a superb pitch to a foot for birdie, while Valimaki hit a poor chip to 25 feet and failed to make birdie.

That gave Knapp a two-shot cushion, and he kept it with bold par saves on the 16th and 17th holes, and then Valimaki allowed for the Californian to enjoy the walk up the 18th.

“Super pumped how I played the finishing stretch,” Knapp said. “Just grinded it out.”

Knapp, who came into the week at No. 101 in the world, became the seventh PGA Tour winner in eight tournaments to start the year who was outside the top 50.

Stephan Jaeger (65), C.T. Pan (65) and Justin Lower (68) tied for third.

Knapp spent four seasons on the Canadian tour and two on the Korn Ferry Tour until finally getting a PGA Tour card for this year. He once worked as a bouncer when he needed daytime hours to practice and cash to pay entry fees.

“Bumpy to say the last,” Knapp said about his career path. “But I wouldn’t have it any other way. If I look back on my career as a whole, I always struggle the first jump on. Now that I feel my feet are under me, I know myself and what I’m doing, it feels like the right time.”

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This is the current landscape in golf, and it figures to be that way for the rest of this year and probably well into the next one, if not longer.

Consider the immediate future.

Rory McIlroy and Rickie Fowler will be in Florida next week the same time Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau are in Saudi Arabia. At least there is an eight-hour difference in time zones, assuming everyone has The CW app.

For those who prefer to play the week before a major, LIV Golf will be on the Blue Monster at Doral ahead of the Masters and PGA Tour players will be in San Antonio. The week before the U.S. Open, LIV will be in Houston, the PGA Tour in Ohio for the Memorial.

All of which leads to the common refrain that all anyone wants is for the best players in golf to be on the same stage.

The only place for that is the majors, which always mattered more than all the other tournaments. Now the gap is getting larger.

The PGA Tour already has held three of its “signature events” with a $20 million purse, cold plunges and wild-caught seafood served in player dining. Nothing felt extraordinary about them. LIV Golf had a 59 and a playoff in the dark the first week, and a six-way tie for the lead late on the back nine the second week. The only noise sounded forced.

Golf has always had various starting lines depending on the level of interest. The most ardent fans tuned in for Kapalua and its magnificent ocean views for The Sentry to start the year. Torrey Pines is the first PGA Tour event on network television. Pebble Beach is the first weekend without the NFL (and more magnificent ocean views, even when the wind and rain cause waves to crash over the 18th fairway).

The Florida swing means the Masters is near. The Players Championship used to boast the strongest and deepest field in golf, a claim it can no longer make with 15 of the last 30 major champions (a total of nine players) now with LIV. At least it still has the island green.

That brings us to the Masters. What poetically is referred to as the annual rite of spring might just as well be called the start of the golf season.

“Yes and no,” Xander Schauffele said.

“If you just love golf, you should have no problem watching the LIV circuit on CW, and you should have no problem turning on CBS or Golf Channel when you watch the PGA Tour, LPGA, whatever you want,” he said.

And now for the “no.”

“If you want to see all the best in the world playing each other, then that would be your first tournament to watch,” Schauffele said. “But even then, there are guys who should be at Augusta, arguably, based on how good they are. But they made the choice, rolled the dice and they’re not going to be there unless they win something crazy.”

Winning “something crazy” ostensibly would be a major, which comes with a five-year exemption to the other majors.

Still to be determined is whether Augusta National hands out special invitations and to whom, and whether the PGA of America will consider players from other tours, as Kerry Haigh, the chief championships officer, said last year it would.

Otherwise, it won’t be long before the majors don’t have all the best.

DeChambeau has only two years left at the Masters before his exemption from winning the U.S. Open runs out. Cameron Smith has an exemption through 2027.

Patrick Reed has dropped to No. 100 in the world ranking — he never did reach No. 5, after declaring himself one of the top five players in golf in 2014 when he was at No. 20. Depending on what happens in the Masters, he will be well outside the top 100 for PGA Championship consideration.

The five-year exemptions for DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson at the PGA end after next year.

The Official World Golf Ranking hasn’t found a way to fairly include LIV Golf in its system, and LIV Golf hasn’t provided a reason with such a closed shop.

Is the OWGR fair? Yes. Accurate? Not so much. Johnson currently is at No. 238, right behind Ockie Strydom and Troy Merritt. But remember, the majors use the world ranking to determine their fields, and the heads of those organizations were the ones voting not to include LIV.

And so it’s on to Mexico and Florida and Texas for the PGA Tour, to Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong for LIV, and everyone meets up at Augusta National in April.

Rory McIlroy said he thought a signature event would feel cheapened because not all the best players — Jon Rahm, Johnson, Koepka — were there.

It was a peculiar opinion because that doesn’t always happen, anyway. Only five of the top 10 were playing when McIlroy won the Canadian Open in 2022. And even in a limited-field event like the CJ Cup in Las Vegas he won in the fall of 2021, Rahm, DeChambeau and Patrick Cantlay sat that one out. All were among the top 10 in the world.

All the best are found only at the majors. At least for now.

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Langer and son Jason, who works for an investment bank in New York, had 10 birdies in 11 holes to overcame a three-shot deficit early. Langer tied the PNC Championship record with his fifth win — three with Jason, two with older son Stefan. Raymond Floyd also won five titles.

Tiger Woods and 14-year-old son Charlie tied for fifth after a 61. The highlight was Charlie chipping in for birdie on the ninth hole with a celebration that looked very much like his father, who could only smile.

David Duval and son Brady finished birdie-eagle to be runner-up.

The 66-year-old Langer, a two-time Masters champion, earlier this year set the PGA Tour Champions record with his 46th career victory.

EUROPEAN TOUR AND SUNSHINE TOUR
Louis Oosthuizen won the Mauritius Open for his second title in two weeks, closing with a 3-under 69 to hold off Laurie Canter.

Oosthuizen had gone five years without winning and then picked up two in a row, winning last week in the Alfred Dunhill Championship. Both tournaments were co-sanctioned by the European tour and Sunshine tours.

His latest win came at Heritage La Reserve Golf Club, which Oosthuizen helped design.

Canter pulled ahead briefly on the front nine with Oosthuizen had two early bogeys. But the former British Open champion ran off four birdies in a seven-hole stretch around the turn. He led by one going to the par-5 18th, where a birdie gave him a two-shot win.

Sebastian Soderberg closed with a 63 and tied for third with Jacques De Villiers (71) and Daniel Brown (65).

PGA TOUR
The final round of the PGA Tour qualifying tournament was postponed until Monday because of flooding at both golf courses from torrential rain.

Sawgrass Country Club and the Dye course at the TPC Sawgrass received more than 4 inches of rain, with more weather in the forecast for Sunday, leading to the delay.

The top five finishers and ties earn PGA Tour cards for 2024, the first pure version of Q-school since 2012.

OTHER TOURS
Denwit Boriboonsub of Thailand closed with a 7-under 64 for a three-shot victory over Henrik Stenson in the Saudi Open, the final Asian Tour event of the year.

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And it’s no longer about Brooks Koepka or anyone else from LIV Golf.

“There’s still a lot of golf between now and then,” Johnson said that Sunday morning in May at the PGA Championship, a few hours before Brooks Koepka showed off his major swagger at Oak Hill with a victory that did more than restore his reputation as Big Game Brooks.

It moved him to No. 2 in the Ryder Cup standings. Given that Koepka appears to be back at full strength, that’s not such a bad thing.

Now consider the last two weeks.

Wyndham Clark showed plenty of moxie when he outplayed Rory McIlroy on the back nine of Los Angeles Country Club and won the U.S. Open. Coupled with his victory in an elevated event at the Wells Fargo Championship, Clark moved past Koepka to No. 2 and is all but assured of his Ryder Cup debut in Rome.

And then Keegan Bradley battled the internal pressure of playing before a home crowd in New England and won the Travelers Championship for his second victory of the year. That big yell he let loose on the 18th green brought back images of his Ryder Cup debut in 2012.

He moved to No. 7 in the standings.

Bradley hasn’t played in a Ryder Cup since 2014, an unhappy memory in Scotland from Captain Tom Watson benching him in three of the five sessions and Europe celebrating on home soil.

The thought of playing in another Ryder Cup meant every bit as much as the $3.6 million he won.

“It is the first thing I said to my wife walking up to sign my card,” Bradley said Sunday. “This is a pretty big step towards doing that. I’m 37 years old. I hope to play in multiple more. I don’t know how many more with everybody so good and the young kids, just the team is incredible.

“I would love to go to Rome and be a part of that team.”

Right when it looks as though the American team has a core of Ryder Cup stars who finally can swing the pendulum in its favor, someone new — or something new — comes along.

From that ’21 team that gave Europe its worst loss ever in the Ryder Cup, three players defected to something new (LIV Golf). Among the potential newcomers to the big stage are Max Homa and Cameron Young, Clark and Sam Burns, the latter narrowly left off the last Ryder Cup team.

The core from Whistling Straits included Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth and Collin Morikawa, all of them multiple major champions, none with a victory over the last 12 months.

The matches start Sept. 29 in Rome. The leading six players through the BMW Championship automatically qualify, and then Johnson says he will lean on those six players and his assistant captains to determine the six wild-card picks to give the team a sense of ownership.

Time on his side?

Eight weeks remain before qualifying ends. That includes a major (British Open) and a pair of $20 million events from the FedEx Cup playoffs. Most of the top players won’t be playing more than four of those eight weeks.

The leading six in the Ryder Cup standings going into the Rocket Mortgage Classic are Scottie Scheffler, Clark, Koepka, Xander Schauffele, Patrick Cantlay and Homa.

Next in line are Bradley, Spieth, Young, Burns, Thomas and Morikawa.

Still to be determined? Plenty.

The resurgent Rickie Fowler and Tony Finau, who has played on the last four U.S. teams and has two wins this season, are part of the conversation.

Dustin Johnson is probably too far back that even a claret jug won’t allow him to qualify, but he will be hard to ignore if he were to win the final major of the year. The last (healthy) American to win a major and get left off the Ryder Cup team was Todd Hamilton in 2004.

Turnover is nothing new for the Americans.

When they manhandled Europe at Hazeltine in 2016 to end a three-match losing streak, only six of them were on the charter flight to France two years later (another loss).

Five players from the dominant Ryder Cup team at Whistling Straits didn’t make it to the next U.S. team 12 months later in the Presidents Cup — three because of LIV, two because of injury (Harris English, Daniel Berger).

But the way golf has gone over the last few months must make Zach Johnson wonder how the next two months will play out. Six players qualify. Twelve players go to Rome. Someone always gets squeezed out, and that will be the case again. Johnson knew that when he accepted the job.

Now it’s a matter of waiting for the music to stop to find out who doesn’t have a seat.

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As part of the deal, the sides immediately are dropping all lawsuits involving LIV Golf.

From the golf side, still to be determined is how players like Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson can rejoin the PGA Tour after defecting last year for signing bonuses reported to be in the $150 million range.

From the commercial side, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund joins the PGA Tour board of directors and leads the new business venture as chairman, though the PGA Tour will have a majority stake.

News of the deal came as a surprise to many watchers of the lawsuits and Saudi Arabia’s inroads into U.S. politics, sports and culture.

“This is a huge development and obviously upends a world of golf, which has been perhaps more tradition-bound in the past,” said Kristian Ulrichsen, a Middle East fellow at Houston’s Baker Institute.

Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has made a point of seeking out investments, like LIV, where it could shake up existing industries, Ulrichsen said.

“That’s sort of one of their mantras, is to try to be disruptive and to take on the status quo,” she said. “And in this case, they seem to have succeeded.”

As for PGA Tour players, most were bewildered by the shocking turnaround. It didn’t help that a news outlet broke the embargoed announcement before PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan could send a memo to the players. Most learned of the development on social media.

“I love finding out about morning news on Twitter,” two-time major champion Collin Morikawa tweeted.

Many were not happy. Wesley Bryan tweeted, “I feel betrayed, and will not … be able to trust anyone within the corporate structure of the PGA Tour for a very long time.”

Byeong Hun An added on Twitter: “I’m guessing the liv teams were struggling to get sponsors and PGA tour couldn’t turn down the money. Win-win for both tours but it’s a big lose for who defended the tour for last two years.”

The announcement comes a year after LIV Golf began. Monahan was at the Canadian Open that week and said pointedly about any player who joined LIV or was thinking about it: “Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?”

Now they are partners, giving Saudi Arabia a commercial voice in golf’s premier organization.

“They were going down their path, we were going down ours, and after a lot of introspection you realize all this tension in the game is not a good thing,” Monahan said in a phone interview with The Associated Press.

“We have a responsibility to our tour and to the game, and we felt like the time was right to have that conversation.”

Monahan was headed to Toronto to meet with players at the Canadian Open, though most top players are not there. And while this likely will only lead to greater riches in golf, there still was explaining to do on why the tour would merge with a group that tried to take away some of the PGA Tour’s best players and was seen as the latest example of “sportswashing.”

“I understand the criticism,” Monahan said. “For me, you take the information you have at the time and make decisions in the best interests. Things have changed. This was the right time to have this conversation.”

The deal was in the works for the last seven weeks, when Monahan first met with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the Public Investment Fund. Players typically approve changes to the schedule and other competition matters. On this one, they were left out.

“No one had word of this,” Monahan said. “Our players expect us to operate in the best interests of the tour.”

Instead, he cited guidance from corporate members of the PGA Tour board.

Still, Monahan has his toughest work ahead of him.

He sought loyalty from his players against a league accused of taking part in sportswashing, an attempt by Saudi Arabia to shift focus away from its human rights abuses, such as the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Now the very group that posed such a threat is now the PGA Tour’s commercial partner.

Along the way, PGA Tour players also got rich. The tour raised prize money at elite events to $20 million, the same purse for LIV’s individual competition. The 2024 schedule has been reshaped for roughly 16 tournaments like that.

“In the short term, I expect a lot of questions and criticism,” Monahan said. “In the long run, players who stayed with the PGA Tour will see they benefited in many ways.”

The agreement combines the Public Investment Fund’s golf-related commercial businesses and rights — including LIV Golf — with those of the PGA and European tours. The new entity has not been named.

Al-Rumayyan will join the board of the PGA Tour, which continues to operates its tournaments. The PIF will invest in the commercial venture.

“From the very beginning, the whole initiative was how to grow the game of golf,” Al-Rumayyan said. “And I think what was achieved today was exactly that.”

Augusta National and the Royal & Ancient welcomed the news because it ends the bitter feud. Augusta National said the deal “represents a positive development in bringing harmony to men’s professional golf.” R&A CEO Martin Slumbers said it would help golf “move forward in a collaborative, constructive and innovative fashion.”

As for the new role of Greg Norman, Al-Rumayyan said only that Norman is LIV Golf’s commissioner and details of his future role would be announced in the coming weeks.

Monahan’s memo to players indicated a strong Saudi Arabian presence. He said PIF would make a financial investment to become a “premier corporate sponsor” of the PGA Tour, the European tour and other international tours.

The PIF initially will be the exclusive investor in the new entity and will have the exclusive right to further invest, including a right of first refusal on any capital that may be invested.

Al-Rumayyan has been spotted wearing a “MAGA” hat during LIV events at courses owned by former President Donald Trump.

Trump predicted last July that a merger was inevitable and said anyone not signing with the Saudi league would be losing out. He weighed in Tuesday and called it a “glamorous deal for the wonderful world of golf.”

Monahan said the merger came together the last seven weeks, with PGA Tour board member Jimmy Dunne responsible for bringing together Monahan and Al-Rumayyan. Dunne and Ed Herlihy, chairman of the PGA Tour’s board, will serve on the board of the commercial venture.

Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau were among 11 players who filed an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour last August. LIV joined as plaintiffs, and the PGA Tour countersued.

The concern for PIF was whether its leaders could be deposed, which Saudi Arabia wanted to avoid. Being open to depositions would leave the kingdom’s leaders more vulnerable to legal action, including lawsuits demanding they reveal business deals in the United States.

A federal judge had ruled the PIF could not claim immunity from the Foreign Service Immunity Act because of its commercial work with LIV Golf in the U.S.

The PIF appealed the ruling to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which was likely to extend the lawsuit deep into 2024 if not longer.

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That appears to be true. Much to the chagrin of the PGA Tour, there is no indication the Saudi-funded league is about to fold.

But is it going anywhere?

LIV Golf in just one year has managed to fit into the golf landscape, even if it remains on an island. The majors have played the most significant role in this process by doing what’s best for them — and for golf — and leaving their criteria alone.

Otherwise, LIV Golf marches on to its own beat, a legitimate league with top players that doesn’t look like any of the other tours except for 14 clubs in the bag. It’s appealing to some, unappetizing to others, and the decision to watch is open to all.

There have been LIV events in Arizona and Oklahoma, Florida and Virginia, the same group of 48 players (with occasional withdrawals for injury and capable substitutes) playing for a $4 million winner’s check, sparkling wine sprayed for the winning team, music blaring and then it’s on to the next town.

Golf as a whole only suffers because a small group of the best players at LIV — such as Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Cameron Smith — don’t get to compete more than four times a year against the much larger group of the best on the PGA Tour.

Koepka winning the PGA Championship — and leading after 54 holes at the Masters — was more about the return of Koepka to good health and major mojo than it was the viability and validation of LIV Golf.

Smith said it best at Oak Hill: “We haven’t forgotten how to play golf. We’re all great golfers out there, and we know what we can do, and I think that’s what we’re trying to do.”

It was one year ago on Tuesday that an email from LIV Golf announced its initial roster of players, with Johnson being the biggest shock because he was (is) among golf’s biggest talent, who only a few months earlier said he was fully committed to the PGA Tour.

The inaugural event was a week later outside London. More defections followed (Koepka, DeChambeau), and then came the antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour by 11 players — all of whom have removed themselves as plaintiffs and turned it over to LIV.

The lawsuit and the tour’s countersuit are caught up in discovery disputes in federal court. Any trial is more than a year away. To no one’s surprise, attorneys might be making more money than the combined LIV Golf earnings of Danny Lee and Pat Perez. It’s a lot.

Another thing that surprised no one: PGA Tour players are benefitting as much as anyone.

The Memorial was an elite tournament with a $12 million purse last year. Now it’s one of eight elevated events that offer $20 million in prize money, and that doesn’t include $20 million prize funds at the FedEx Cup playoff events or a bump to $25 million at The Players Championship.

Jordan Spieth was among those who saw this coming, even if he didn’t know the details.

It was at Kapalua in January 2022 when Spieth said, “For us players … it’s been something that has kind of helped the PGA Tour sit and say, ’Hey, where can we look to satisfy our membership and potentially make some changes going forward?”

The tour returns to a traditional calendar schedule in 2024 — January to August, with a choice to play the rest of the year without the risk of starting too far behind. There will be eight elevated events (not including the majors or postseason) with smaller fields that are still determined by performance, keeping the crucial meritocracy in golf.

None of this would have happened without LIV.

Golf is a force for good, all right. With three months left in the season, Scottie Scheffler ($14.9 million) and Jon Rahm ($14.5 million) already have set the record for single-season earnings.

The issue for LIV Golf is measuring its relevance beyond money.

The problem is not a 48-man field. The Tour Championship only has 30 players, and the BMW Championship this year will have a 50-man field. But on the PGA Tour, those fields are derived from a membership of more than 150 players who start each year with no guarantees.

Sports Illustrated reported LIV’s plans for relegation in which the top 24 and all the captains are safe. The next batch of players through the 44th on the points list can switch teams or leave if they don’t have a contract. The others have to earn their way back through a qualifier.

And then they start all over again, 14 tournaments with the same fields, $4 million payoffs for the winner, sparkling wine showers, music.

LIV Golf is not going anywhere.

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As for how long he keeps playing Augusta National? That’s a little harder to foresee.

Woods conceded that each trip to the Masters — at his age (47) and with surgeries on both legs and his back over the last decade — makes him wonder if it’s going to be the last one.

“I don’t know how many more I have in me,” Woods said Tuesday.

This will be his 25th time playing the Masters, and Woods still is surprised there was a 24th. He was still recovering last year from crashing his car off a suburban Los Angeles road at over 85 mph, crushing bones in his right leg so badly he said doctors contemplated amputation.

“I didn’t know if I was going to play again at that time,” Woods said. “For some reason, everything kind of came together and I pushed it a little bit and I was able to make the cut, which was nice.”

Woods has an enormous presence at Augusta National because of his impact on the game, not to mention the five green jackets he has won, the last one in 2019. A year ago, the internet lit up with aviation tracking sites that followed his flight plan to the club for a pre-Masters scouting report.

And yet now he gives this Masters a sense of normalcy.

Golf has been consumed by the great divide between the establishment and Saudi-funded LIV Golf, which has 18 players at the Masters who are suspended from playing regular PGA Tour events. There is speculation about how players on both sides will get along.

And then there is Woods at the Masters. Azaleas and dogwoods are in bloom. Thousands follow him in practice rounds. And Thursday will bring a familiar refrain from the first tee: “Fore please, Tiger Woods driving.”

From there, no one is sure what to expect, Woods included.

“He looks good,” said Rory McIlroy, who played Monday with Woods, 63-year-old Fred Couples and 20-year-old Tom Kim. “You know, if he didn’t have to walk up these hills and have all of that, I’d say he’d be one of the favorites. He’s got all of the shots. It’s just that physical limitation of walking 72 holes, especially on a golf course as hilly as this.”

Woods has matured, through time and too many surgeries, from the relentless champion to a guardian willing to pass along some of the local knowledge he picked up as a younger man from Couples and Raymond Floyd, from Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal.

He still wants to compete. There would be no point in staying after the Masters Club dinner Tuesday night if that were not the case. And he still thinks he can find a little magic.

He has said everywhere he has played over the last year — a total of 11 rounds in four tournaments, one of them a 36-hole exhibition in a cart with his son — that hitting shots isn’t the problem. It’s getting to the next one.

“Yeah, mobility, it’s not where I would like it,” Woods said. “I’ve said to you guys before, I’m very lucky to have this leg — it’s mine. Yes, it has been altered and there’s some hardware in there, but it’s still mine. It has been tough and will always be tough. The ability and endurance of what my leg will do going forward will never be the same. I understand that.

“That’s why I can’t prepare and play as many tournaments as I like, but that’s my future, and that’s OK. I’m OK with that.”

Woods found a small victory in just playing last year, and making the cut was a bonus. He has never missed the cut at the Masters as a pro, and that streak is on the line again. Then again, he showed up at Riviera in February for his first PGA Tour event in seven months and played all four rounds.

“I think my game is better than it was last year at this particular time,” he said. “I think my endurance is better. But it aches a little bit more than it did last year just because at that particular time when I came back, I really had not pushed it that often. And I had a little window in which I did push it and was able to come back.

“I just have to be cognizant of how much I can push it,” he said. “Like Rory was saying, I can hit a lot of shots but the difficulty for me is going to be the walking going forward. I wish it could be easier.”

So why bother showing up?

Woods long has said there’s no point in showing up if he didn’t think he could win. He teased with a 67 in the third round at Riviera. The shots are still in there. And he knows Augusta National better than any championship course he plays.

He pointed to Couples, who swings freely and walks casually, and still can hold his own. Couples shares the record with Gary Player for most consecutive cuts made at the Masters with 23. Woods can tie them if he makes it to the weekend.

Woods was asked if he felt the younger players to whom he passes along some of his knowledge perceive him as any kind of a threat. In his 13 PGA Tour events since he won his record-tying 82nd title on the PGA Tour, his best finish is a tie for ninth. That was before the car crash.

“Whether I’m a threat to them or not, who knows?” he said. “People probably didn’t think I was a threat in 2019, either, but kind of turned out OK.”

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Woods and his limp back at Masters, but for how much longer?

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Kuchar had an easy time at Austin Country Club with a 7-and-6 victory over Si Woo Kim to win his 36th match in tournament history, matching the mark held by Woods.

“I still find it hard to comprehend that I’m saying that, that I tied one of his records,” Kuchar said. “So I’m hugely proud, please. There’s 300 more records, I’m sure, to go. But it’s a fun one to be able say you’ve got something you tied Tiger with.”

The final session of group play was all about getting to the knockout stage on the weekend, and a record number of top seeds survived.

Defending champion Scottie Scheffler (1), Rory McIlroy (3), Patrick Cantlay (4), Max Homa (5) and Xander Schauffele (6) each won their groups. That’s the highest number advancing among the top eight seeds since the Match Play switched to group play in 2015.

McIlroy had no trouble against Keegan Bradley in a rematch of their Sunday singles match in the 2012 Ryder Cup at Medinah.

Scheffler won his eighth consecutive match dating to last year. He lost the opening two holes to Tom Kim and then won four of the next five holes to pull away in a 3-and-2 victory. Scheffler also had a chance to join Woods in the record book. Woods is the only player to have won golf’s most fickle tournament two years in a row.

“I’m not overthinking things,” Scheffler said. “I haven’t thought about last year once this week. Just glad to get through my group and focus on tomorrow.”

Next up for Scheffler is J.T. Poston, one of 12 players who won all three of their matches in stroke play.

That list includes J.J. Spaun, who has played only 46 holes in three days. Spaun’s last test was his toughest, against Min Woo Lee. He was 1 down with five holes to play when Spaun ran off four straight birdies for a 2-and-1 win. He is the No. 61 seed, the lowest to advance.

“My caddie said, ‘Let’s birdie every hole starting on 14.’ That’s kind of … well, that’s exactly what we did,” said Spaun, whose next match is against Schauffele.

Some players had an extremely short day when their opponents withdrew. Hideki Matsuyama was on the range for about 20 minutes when neck soreness forced him to concede. That sent Max Homa through to the weekend.

“It’s nice for me — bogey-free round,” Homa said. “Would have rather played, but I’ll take it as a quasi-win.”

The highest seed headed home was Jon Rahm. Even with a loss on Wednesday, he still had control of getting to the weekend if he beat Billy Horschel. Instead, Rahm took double bogey on the second hole and trailed the rest of the way.

The match got away from him when Rahm hit into the water on the par-3 11th to fall 4 down. He was in good shape to win the 12th until he set his wedge behind the ball in the rough to the right of the green, and the ball slightly rolled out of a divot. That was a one-shot penalty, he halved the hole with a par and then he missed a birdie chance on the next.

Horschel, who won the Match Play two years ago, beat him in 14 holes.

Cantlay, who lost in a playoff to Brian Harman two years ago, beat him with a short birdie putt on the 17th hole to advance for the first time in Match Play. Another newcomer to the weekend was Schauffele, who rallied to beat Tom Hoge.

Mackenzie Hughes and Kurt Kitayama were the only players to lose matches on Wednesday and make it to the weekend. It wasn’t easy for either of them.

Hughes throttled Taylor Montgomery, 6 and 4, and then had to wait about two hours to face him in a sudden-death playoff. On the first hole, Montgomery hit a chunk pop-up into the trees, sailed the green and Hughes won with a 5-foot birdie.

Kitayama was in a three-way playoff with Tony Finau, whom he beat 4 and 3, and Adrian Meronk of Poland. Finau was eliminated on the first playoff hole. Kitayama won on the next one with a 20-foot birdie putt.

Other group winners: Jason Day, Sam Burns, Lucas Herbert and Cameron Young, who has 19 birdies and two eagles in 48 holes this week.

Kuchar is 44, the oldest player in the field, and he is leaning big on his experience. He won in 2013, lost in the championship match in 2019 and two other times reached the semifinals.

The first match he won was in 2010, against Anthony Kim.

Kuchar wouldn’t have been in the 64-man field if not for nine players being ineligible for signing with Saudi-funded LIV Golf. He wasn’t ever aware he was in range of Woods’ record until he won his first match Wednesday.

He had a chance to tie Woods on Thursday until missing a 5-foot putt and halving his match, and he said the record crossed his mind that night.

“The point of this tournament is to keep winning matches, and I wanted to win this match to be able to move on to the 16s,” Kuchar said. “So that was the main focus. Certainly getting a chance to tie any record of Tiger’s is an amazing thing.”

Along with being solid in match play, Kuchar’s needle is among the sharpest on tour. He said he has yet to send Woods a text about tying his record.

“Maybe tomorrow,” he said.

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