Golf fans have been very excited this week because of how busy it has been.

After a thrilling three-hole playoff against J.J. Spaun on Monday, Rory McIlroy won his second Players Championship. It was the perfect end to five exciting days at TPC Sawgrass. This is the Northern Irishman’s second win on the PGA Tour this season. He also won at Pebble Beach, and the famous Masters is coming up soon.

The first major of the year starts on April 7, and McIlroy is already working on a number of projects to try and finish the career grand slam.

Behind the scenes, talks between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour about merging continue. The goal is to end the four-year civil war in golf. We look at all of the most important golf news stories from the last 24 hours that you may have missed.

The good luck of Justin Thomas shocks Rory McIlroy

The first-ever best-of-three TGL Finals Series second semi-final match on Tuesday was filled with breathtaking scenes. Thomas led his Atlanta Drive Golf Club to a 9-3 win over Shane Lowry’s Bay Golf Club. Next week, Thomas will play Xander Schauffele’s New York team in an exciting match.

Atlanta was ahead 4-2 after nine holes, but Thomas had a huge stroke of luck when his iron shot at the par-5 10th moved the ball away from a hazard to the right of the green. With just two putts, he beat Lowry.

McIlroy, who helped create TGL, couldn’t hide his shock and could be seen yelling “no” as he watched. He went on to say, “I don’t want to sound biassed, but that is the luckiest bounce I’ve ever seen.” Before that, his Boston Common team had lost to New York 10–6 and missed out on the playoff spots.

What does Rory McIlroy plan to do next?
McIlroy is getting ready for the Texas Children’s Houston Open after his win at the Players Championship. The Northern Irishman said after the event that he planned to play in one more tournament before going to Augusta to try to end his 10-year majors drought.

The second-ranked player in the world has now chosen to play in The Houston Open for the first time. The tournament starts on Thursday, March 27. McIlroy will have a week off before he tries to win his first green jacket.

Donald Trump’s $175 million problem

Reports say that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) is about to get in the way of talks that are supposed to end golf’s long-running internal conflict. Supporters of LIV Golf have been talking with the PGA Tour about merging with it. They have met with President Trump twice at the White House to do this.

But those talks that looked like they would be helpful may not have been worth it after The Mail reported this week that the PIF is stepping up their efforts to buy the Wentworth Golf Club in England. Every year, the DP World Tour’s main event, the BMW PGA Championship, is held at Wentworth. If LIV took over, it would probably upset both the European Tour (which used to be called the European Tour) and the PGA Tour, which is one of their friends.

According to the story, the Chinese investment firm the Reignwood Group, which owns Wentworth, told the Mail that the club, which they bought for $175 million in 2014, is not for sale and that talks with the Saudis have not happened yet. However, the PIF wants to grow their role in British golf, which could dash the initial excitement about Trump’s engagement in merger talks.

Adam Scott, who was on the PGA Tour group that went to the White House last month, thinks that disagreements about how LIV and the PGA Tour should work together are making it harder to reach an agreement. According to the Mail, sources also think that Saudi Arabia’s desire to buy Wentworth could be a way to force the PGA Tour to make a deal.

News about the PGA Tour

But the PGA Tour would have been very happy with how many people watched last weekend. With a ratio of 100-1, their final round of the Players Championship on NBC did much better than the final round of LIV Golf’s Singapore game on FS1.

Six million people watched McIlroy beat Spaun on NBC, which is about three percent more than Scottie Scheffler’s win the year before. LIV Golf’s event, which ran from Saturday night until early Sunday morning, had Joaquin Niemann win, but only an average of 34,000 people watched. This is because the Saudi-funded golf tour recently signed a new media rights deal with FOX Sports.

Member of the PGA Tour can vote until April 14 to choose two co-chairmen for the Player Advisory Council. The player directors chose Rickie Fowler, Maverick McNealy, and Keith Mitchell as candidates, and they were revealed on Tuesday. On January 1, 2026, the two people who got the most votes will take over as player directors, replacing Peter Malnati and Webb Simpson.