The most prevalent exercise of analysis on the stunning LIV-PGA Tour merger announcement was divvying up winners and losers. That is way too simplistic, even for this current moment when the biggest golf stories are never about action on the course. This is a tangled mess. No one really seems victorious.

The PGA Tour, to use Jay Monahan’s words, got a “competitor off the board.” Using Monahan’s words for anything at this point, though, is a dangerous exercise. It’s his mismanagement of these threats over the last three to four years that left the Tour cornered, a position where announcing this merger felt like the good way out. A “win.” To say nothing of his entire membership hating him and most of the free world thinking he’s an amoral, hypocritical dunce.

But costs of litigation were starting to mount against an opponent that could fund the courtroom fights to infinity. That seemed to play a major motivating role here, as well as the potential for some painful discovery about some of those mismanagement steps in the preceding years. That’s all going away, and billions of dollars they said were tainted are about to flow in. Monahan can claim he succeeded in making it happen, but it requires you to forget about his contradictory statements and years of misjudgments that put Phil Mickelson in the position to also take a big victory lap on Tuesday.

This feels like more of an acquisition by the Tour, with PIF getting a minority stake in the new global golf entity. But the word “merge” was doing a lot of lifting in the announcement and ensuing coverage. Mickelson and the LIV propagandists seized upon this as a momentous in-your-face moment. There is no doubt Phil’s conniving moves (and some of the changes forced by LIV) have had a massive influence here. But these diehard LIV fans do realize a likely result of this deal is LIV, the league they claim to love so dearly, being toast? The Saudis wanted their seat at the table, which they got thanks to the billions-burning LIV. But those losses and the league itself are most likely gone for good. The merger is with PIF, not LIV. Greg Norman is out. The PGA Tour will remain. Jay and his crew have a majority control of this new board. So are you happy? Did you win?

The only admirable aspect of Tuesday was how truly secretive this process was, with the entire golf world blindsided by the announcement. But even there, it seems like some blundering and an impending leak forced a premature public announcement via CNBC — the entity has no name, the full board is still TBD, and the two leaders had almost nothing in the way of details. Geoff Ogilvy said he got the impression from the players meeting with Monahan that this came out now because someone found out and it was going to blow up.

The Saudis have pushed their way into an official role in the game. That’s an apparent win. The players who stood for the Tour and took the arrows for Monahan while their colleagues took buckets of upfront cash look like they lost. But even that may start to level out somewhat via fines as this new order re-integrates the defectors, and “approved” new Saudi money flows into this “entity” that includes the loyalists. There are no clear-marked winners and losers. None of it seems palatable. The majors’ status seem intact, and they stand out even more now as the championships where, cash aside, the recent shields of “legacy” and “competition” might actually have some validity. The U.S. Open, where the golf shots start to matter again, can’t come soon enough.

This piece originally appeared in The Fried Egg newsletter. Subscribe for free and receive golf news and insight every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.