New DP World Tour boss reckons unity in golf likely still a long way away

Almost 11 months since the announcement of a Framework Agreement between the DP World Tour, PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), Kinnings revealed that the leaders of the key parties in golf's civil war had surprisingly yet to all meet around the same table.

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and members of private equity investors Strategic Sports Group met PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan in Saudi Arabia in January, while Tiger Woods and other player directors did similarly in the Bahamas after the Players Championship.

"While I'm all for looking forward rather than looking back, we all know that after the framework agreement was announced, there wasn't a lot of progress or obvious progress," Kinnings, who recently succeeded Keith Pelley, said.

"Has there been a big negotiation where all the parties have sat round and talked about the future product? I don't think that meeting's happened yet.

"I can't explain in detail or fix what's gone before, now looking forward we've just got to make sure that happens as soon as possible.

"All I know now, because I have actually directly been involved in it, is there's a lot of work going on in terms of looking at a working plan, so there is significantly more momentum than there was.

"There is an intent to get the right people in the room. And it's no different from what you need to do in business – don't leave until you've got a deal done."

Asked to suggest a possible timeframe for golf's rival factions to come together, Kinnings added: "I don't see any Tour's schedules changing in '25.

"If you could get a resolution now, maybe you could do some stuff towards the end of '25, but the reality is the '26 season needs to be the one where there are significant changes.

"To do that you've got to have that [agreed] towards the end of '24 to give yourself all of '25 to prepare and roll it out. But at the end of the day I don't want to be setting any deadlines.

"The truth is everyone is having to do things they probably never expected to do and they've got to be flexible, they've got to be willing to compromise so there may be ways that we can do things."

Kinnings insists the DP World Tour does not feel like "a third wheel" with headlines tending to focus on the PGA Tour and the PIF, and believes the Tour's expertise in staging tournaments around the world will prove vital.

He also welcomed Rory McIlroy's likely return to the PGA Tour's policy board and believes there is merit in the world number two's vision for a "World Tour".

"I can see a lot of sense in what Rory said," he added.

"The fans want to see the best players, playing together as often as they can as well as the majors. That's a model I can see being very appealing but it's only part of the picture.

"Self evidently, if we're going to find a solution we need to be thinking how you integrate team golf in some way and that's to satisfy what's been done with LIV, but also the recognition that we all love team golf and when it happens every two years in the Ryder Cup and Solheim Cup it's brilliant.

"There's lots of ways of doing it. Would that be feeding in as two separate tours or a single tour? I don't know. Until we're in the negotiating room and we know what people want to get from it, you will not be able to tell.

"But finding a pathway to bring the players back, make it global, make it united, has got to be the mantra we all want to get."