The Shark will be fish food if the PGA Tour-LIV Golf merger goes through, the pro golf circuit’s chief operating officer told senators on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

Ron Price admitted to Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chairman Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that if the rivals “are able to move to a definitive agreement … the LIV Golf assets, for which Greg Norman’s currently the commissioner, will move into a new subsidiary — PGA Tour subsidiary — controlled by the PGA Tour, and those events will be managed by the PGA Tour.”

“It would make no sense to bring in that type of executive to manage what is now a 14-series of events,” Price added.

“So just to be clear, he’s out of a job,” Blumenthal said of the two-time major winner and face of the Saudi-backed rebel tour. 

“If we reach a definitive agreement, we would not have a requirement for that type of position,” Price confirmed. 

In a report made public prior to the hearing, the committee said PGA Tour officials had insisted on a side agreement which called for Norman to be booted from his post as LIV CEO no later than one month after the deal was finalized, though Price told Blumenthal under oath Tuesday that any such deal had never come into force.

As of June 4, two days before Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) managing director Yasir Al-Rumayyan announced the framework agreement on live television, Monahan’s draft talking points announcing the deal to the PGA Tour’s policy board said that Norman would be “reassigned to an advisory role determined by PIF when the PGA TOUR becomes the manager of the LIV Tour.”

The scheming to take Norman’s place, however, had begun long before that.  In one email exchange cited by the subcommittee, PGA Tour board members Jimmy Dunne and Ed Herlihy mused about replacing Norman.

“Jimmy, I raised the idea with Jay [Monahan] of you overseeing LIV going forward. He really liked it,” Herlihy said in a May 15 message.

“You and me,” Dunne answered.

Other details of negotiations mentioned in the report included suggestions that stars Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy each be awarded a four-member LIV “team” and participate in at least 10 events for the breakaway circuit, as well as an idea that two “PGA high-profile events” be sponsored by Saudi Aramco and the PIF, with one of those events to be held in the kingdom. LIV also proposed that al-Rumayyan receive membership to both the prestigious Augusta National Golf Club — home of the Masters Tournament — and the R&A, which stages The Open Championship. It is unclear whether any of those proposals moved beyond the opening stage of negotiations.

So far, Norman remains the CEO of LIV, though he has largely been sidelined since the announcement of the initial framework last month. Both he and Al-Rumayyan were invited to appear before the committee; both declined. Monahan also did not appear, citing an unspecified medical issue that has kept him out of work for a month.

LIV’s creation and its poaching of golf’s biggest names — including major winners Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau — ignited a civil war in the sport and drew fierce condemnation from family members of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attack victims, given many of the Al Qaeda hijackers’ ties to Saudi Arabia. The PIF’s management by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, believed by US intelligence to have ordered the murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018, have also triggered outrage.

In his opening statement, Blumenthal said Tuesday’s hearing, where Dunne and Price appeared as witnesses, was about “much more than the game of golf,” but about “what it means for an authoritarian government to use its wealth to capture an American institution.”

“We’re here about questions that go to the core of what the future of this sport and other sports will be in the United States, what happened that led the PGA Tour to change its position,” Blumenthal added.

“Was it only the hope of ending litigation or was it also the unspecified amount of Saudi investment that would come of it? Just how much money did PIF offer the PGA Tour and what other sources of money were sought as an alternative?”

Everything to know about the PGA Tour-LIV Golf merger

PGA Tour and LIV Golf are ending a war — by joining forces.

The two golf leagues, along with the European DP World Tour, are merging into one company after a period of fierce rivalry, one where LIV Golf defectors were banned from competing on the Tour.

LIV, financed by the Saudi Public Investment Fund and led by legendary golfer Greg Norman, lured some of the top names in golf last year with reported nine-figure contracts, including Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau.

Other huge golf names, however, like Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, stayed loyal to the Tour, despite being offered a massive amount of money.

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Norman said last year Woods turned down a payday in the range of $700 million-$800 million to stick with the PGA Tour.

With the merger, the Saudi-backed LIV and the Tour are ending an antitrust battle and agreed to end all litigation between the two sides.

“After two years of disruption and distraction, this is a historic day for the game we all know and love,” PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in a statement. “This transformational partnership recognizes the immeasurable strength of the PGA TOUR’s history, legacy and pro-competitive model.”

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Price and Dunne said going into business with outside investors would not prevent LIV Golf and the PIF from continuing to compete with the tour and using its vast resources to sign top players.

“If they take five players a year, in five years they can gut us,” Dunne said at one point.

Under questioning from Blumenthal, Price said the amount of Saudi investment in the new golf tour had not been determined, but estimated it was “north of $1 billion.”

Dunne, a key negotiator of the framework agreement, conceded that the hasty announcement by Monahan and al-Rumayyan was “misleading and inaccurate, which is everyone’s fault.

“There is no merger,” he added. “There is no deal. There is simply an agreement to try to get to an agreement and settle the lawsuits.

The PGA Tour and the Saudis agreed on June 6 to drop all lawsuits against each other and combine their commercial interests into a new for-profit company while maintaining the tour’s nonprofit status.

Emails included with the report suggest the timing of the announcement was pushed by Michael Klein, an investment banker and LIV adviser, who emailed Dunne on June 2 to say: “The announcement is too big to wait till the definitive [agreement]. If we don’t put the messages out others will fill in.”

“The worst thing we can do,” Klein added, “is have naysayers lead the chorus.”

With Post wires.