Jimmy Dunne Opens Up On PGA Tour Resignation And Casts Doubt Over PIF Deal

Former PGA Tour Policy Board member Jimmy Dunne says the worst day for those who want the PGA Tour and the Saudi PIF to come to a deal was when he and PGA Tour chairman Ed Herlihy resigned last year.

The pair were influential in the now infamous June 6th 'merger' announcement when Jay Monahan and Yasir Al-Rumayyan announced the framework agreement between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Saudi PIF, which backs LIV Golf.

Over two years on and there still has been no deal reached as the likes of Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith and other big name LIV Golfers remain suspended by the PGA Tour or ineligible due to resigning their memberships.

In that time the Tour has received $1.5bn investment from the Sports Strategic Group and its players have become shareholders of the new PGA Tour Enterprises.

From the outside, it does not seem like a deal appears to be in the pipeline - and Dunne seems to think the same way.

Dunne, who is vice chairman at investment bank Piper Sandler, was speaking on CNBC about how he left the Tour, which saw him immediately resign in 2024 due to "no meaningful progress" made on the deal and his role being "utterly superfluous."

"It's been a long time. What I said in the letter, I was superfluous which I was and that was fine," Dunne told CNBC on why he resigned in May 2024.

"If you wanted to see a deal done probably the worst day was when the chairman Ed Herlihy and I resigned at different times because we could have gotten the deal done."

Rory McIlroy is a supporter of Dunne's and admitted at the time that his departure was a "huge loss for the PGA Tour" in terms of its hopes of reunifying the game, which he described as "concerning."

"Maybe they shouldn't get a deal done and right now the tour is in pretty good shape," Dunne said.

"LIV seem to be doing what they want to do so I think it's just gonna go on like this for a while and I think at this point it probably should.

"I think if there was a time to get a deal done it should have been before the British Open in '23, which is what we set out to do.

"It wasn't received well [the merger announcement], it was shocking to me how it was received because all we did was really settle the lawsuits and begin discussion, but that's what it was.

"I think now the tour is in very good shape, the boys on LIV seem like they're fine. I just think that'll go on for a while.

"I don't know. As I said when I did resign and got a lot of criticism that there didn't seem to be any progress made at that point in time and that got everybody very upset.

"Well, that was a year and a half ago, I don't see any progress but maybe there shouldn't be at this time. Let's see how it all works out."

The PGA Tour has a new CEO in Brian Rolapp, who replaced the outgoing Jay Monahan this summer from the NFL.

Rolapp has spoken publicly a few times since his move into the golf world but has remained fairly coy on his views over reunifying the sport.

"I think my primary focus is going to be on strengthening the Tour, and blank sheet of paper means blank sheet of paper. Whatever does that, I'll pursue aggressively. That's how I view it," he told media at last month's Tour Championship.

"Look, I think I'm going to focus on what I can control. I would offer to you that the best collection of golfers in the world are on the PGA Tour.

"I think there's a bunch of metrics that demonstrate that, from rankings to viewership to whatever you want to pick. I'm going to lean into that and strengthen that.

"I will also say that to the extent we can do anything that's going to further strengthen the PGA Tour, we'll do that, and I'm interested in exploring whatever strengthens the PGA Tour."