LIV Golf war will drag on beyond 2023, according to leading players
4 min read
The division between golf’s establishment and Greg Norman’s LIV Golf tour is likely to drag on right through 2023, according to two leading players.
The sport has been split since LIV Golf launched its tour in June, with a host of big names banned from the PGA Tour.
They include world No.3 Cameron Smith and fellow major champions Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau.
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The DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour) has also moved to ban players who signed with LIV Golf. That matter is still before the courts.
Sports Illustrated estimated LIV Golf’s debut season cost $1.17 billion.
Speaking to Wide World of Sports, world No.27 Ryan Fox, a two-time winner in 2022, forecast another year of acrimony.
« As things stand, I don’t see it getting sorted out. They’re all suing each other, » he explained.
« I see it being pretty tough for them to sit down. If you’re in business and you’re suing each other, it makes it pretty hard to sit down at the table and have a conversation about how to work together.
« It’s pretty messy and there’s a lot of misinformation out there.
« At some level something needs to change, but what that is I don’t know.
« LIV coming along has unlocked a few things that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Competition is good in that regard, but the division in the game is not great, and I don’t see it disappearing in the short term. »
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Fox confirmed he remained committed to the DP World Tour and the PGA Tour in 2023, having secured a top-50 year-end ranking for the first time in his career.
That opens a myriad of doors, including direct entry to the Masters for the first time.
« I’m still committed to Europe, » he said.
« From how I’ve played this year I’ll get a chance to play in the majors and also some of the other events for top-50 players, and that’s just not an opportunity I could ever give up.
« They’re the tournaments I dreamed of playing in, and I don’t want to jeopardise that.
« I’m not saying I would never move to LIV. A lot has changed in the golf world in the last six months, but where I am now, I’ve worked my butt off to get there and I don’t want to give up on those dreams just yet. »
Fox’s pessimism is shared by 2006 US Open champion Geoff Ogilvy, who also believes the dispute is likely to drag on beyond 2023, although he also conceded there have been some positives from LIV Golf’s arrival.
« At some point there’ll be a sit down and some sort of friendly-ish compromise. I don’t know if it will happen next year, » he told Wide World of Sports.
« I think two entities competing for the best players in the world is great in a lot of aspects, the prizemoney is soaring in the USA and in Europe, the money is crazy. It’s a good time to be a professional golfer, there’s a lot more choice, more places to play.
« There’s a lot of good aspects to this, but long term it would make more sense if there was some sort of truce and the two could co-exist. »
One of the criticisms of the PGA Tour is that it has attempted to steamroll other tours into submission.
The move to a wraparound schedule more than a decade ago all but killed off the Australasian Tour, although the PGA Tour will revert to a calendar-year schedule in 2024.
Ogilvy agreed that there’s room for a more collaborative approach from the various tours.
« The PGA Tour is absolutely right to defend their territory, but I think they’ve probably grabbed a little too much of the calendar, » he said.
« It’s clearly the best tour in the world. They do an unbelievable job, their tournaments are incredible, the fields are nuts, the prizemoney is crazy. But I think they probably don’t need to have so many weeks a year.
« It would be nice to have a bit more room on the calendar for the schedule to breath and let the worldwide scene have a bit of a chance, absolutely.
« It’s obviously complicated, because they’ve got more sponsors than they have tournaments, if one drops out they’ve got another one ready to go, » he added.
« They can put on that many tournaments, which is not true of most places. It’s not as simple as it sounds, but it would be nice if the PGA Tour had a robust tour with a relatively long season, but with a lot of room for everyone else around the world. »
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