Money is apparently thicker than blood in the ongoing battle for golf supremacy between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf.
Three days after one top player said that those at Tuesday’s players-only meeting helmed by Tiger Woods at the Hotel Du Pont ahead of this week’s BMW Championship in Wilmington, Del., took a “blood oath” when it came to keeping details of the meeting secret, those details began to emerge on Saturday. Chief among them: A plan in which the Tour would hold 18 tournaments with 60 players and $20 million purses, according to Sports Illustrated and The Firepit Collective.
A source also confirmed the details of the meeting with The Post on Saturday.
It is just one step among many being discussed as the Tour tries to thwart the controversial Saudi-backed rival league that features $25 million purses and has already poached Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka for huge, reported nine-figure deals that are guaranteed just for joining.
Another detail to be revealed was talk of the Tour giving up its non-profit status, which, according to The Firepit Collective, Woods and Rory McIlroy, who was also at the meeting, would support. Doing so would cost the Tour roughly $20 million to $50 million annually, the report said, but that would also provide a financial freedom that it currently doesn’t have.
While the Tour can’t compete with the endlessly deep pockets of LIV, which is backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, valued at more than $600 billion, privatizing and thus top players could be paid handsomely as they have been with LIV.
Among other ideas discussed at the meeting, which lasted more than three hours, included an annual stipend for players and whether the Tour should meet with LIV.
“Everyone in the room left in a better spot and excited about what’s potentially to come,” one player who was at the meeting told The Post earlier in the week. “Any time you can get a group of guys like that together [in the same room], that doesn’t happen often. Maybe it should’ve happened a while ago.”
Woods’s presence — he flew up specifically for the meeting from his home in South Florida, bringing Rickie Fowler with him — also went a long way with those in the room, which totaled more than 20 players in all.
According to a source at the meeting, “the Tour has been maybe trying [with players] more than in the past, too, which is good to see.”
Meanwhile, the Tour’s postseason will conclude at next week’s Tour Championship at East Lake in Atlanta, where its FedEx Champion will be crowned, earning $18 million.
After that, however, at least a handful of players are expected to bolt for LIV to tee it up in that circuit’s next event, the following week outside Boston. Reportedly among them is reigning British Open camp Cameron Smith.
.