Miami (AFP) – Golfers who left the PGA Tour for LIV Golf should face consequences if they want to return, 2023 British Open champion Brian Harman said Thursday amid news that the breakaway league will lose its Saudi funding. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) confirmed Thursday it would cease backing LIV after the 2026 season, the announcement coming hours after LIV said it was seeking to secure “long-term financial partners”.
The twin announcements sparked speculation that golfers who jumped to LIV and lost their PGA Tour membership in an acrimonious split that spawned lawsuits and splintered the global game will be wanting to flood back. Harman, speaking at the PGA Tour’s Cadillac Championship at Trump National Doral in Miami, said he expected there would be a path back to the PGA Tour for LIV golfers, but said it was too soon to predict just what it might be.
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“I would think that the fans want everyone to be playing together, and, you know, time heals all wounds,” the 39-year-old American said, although he noted there was “still some sentiment out here, especially with all the lawsuit stuff. That stuff’s going to be tough to get past”. PGA Tour loyalists were angered when 11 golfers, including six-time champion Phil Mickelson, filed an antitrust lawsuit against the tour in 2022 challenging their suspensions by the tour after they signed big-money contracts with LIV when it was founded in 2021.
Five-time major-winner Brooks Koepka has returned to the PGA fold under a returning member program that includes substantial financial penalties. And Harman is in favor of continued consequences for possible future returnees. “I think there has to be something,” he said, saying it would help ease “bad blood and resentment”. But Harman noted that it was really too soon to say just how many golfers might be abandoning LIV. “I’m not sure that they’re closing shop. The funding’s drying up. They could secure funding from somewhere else and keep going. They have got a lot of big name players over there, guys that move the needle,” he said. “Until it’s all done, until you’ve got guys that are actually calling and trying to come back to the tour, it’s not really a problem that we’re dealing with currently.”
– Olive branches –
Three-time major winner Jordan Spieth said he was glad he wasn’t called on to make a decision after the tensions that erupted. “I know olive branches were given out, you know, a couple months ago. Brooks took ’em up on it. So I’m not sure what would now change,” Spieth said. Spieth indicated that even with the loss of Saudi funding “that doesn’t necessarily mean that LIV’s not going to still move on, too”. “I think there’s just too many unknowns for me to have a good gauge on what would happen there,” he added.
But Spieth did find the issue of golfers returning from LIV to be a freighted topic, and he was happy not to be among those deciding any terms for their returns. “There’s just a lot of different things that happened over the last four years,” he said. “I’m kind of glad I’m not in that room.” US President Donald Trump, a well-known fan of all things golf, said he would love to see top golfers like Masters champion and PGA Tour loyalist Rory McIlroy playing regularly against the likes of LIV golfers Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm.
“Now they’ll all be accepted by the tour …they’ll all be back on tour and it’ll be great,” Trump said, but also noted that LIV is still operational with its next event at his own Trump National in suburban Washington in May. “I’m not sure what’s happening with LIV, but they are playing at my course in two weeks, on the Potomac,” he noted.
© 2024 AFP
