TUCSON, Ariz. — While player movement at the top level of men’s professional golf usually involves LIV recruiting yet another PGA Tour player, Steve Stricker said he knows that some LIV golfers want to return to the PGA Tour.
“I know that for a fact,” he said Thursday after his pro-am round ahead of the 2024 Cologuard Classic at La Paloma Country Club. “And so it’s kind of a wait and see game.”
With much of the golf conversation dominated by the rift, there doesn’t see to be much oxygen left to talk about the other tours but players on the PGA Tour Champions are paying attention to the goings-on in the world of professional golf.
“Of course I’m very interested in what happens,” said Stewart Cink, who turned 50 last year but still plays on both PGA Tour circuits. “I hope that we can get back together as like one sport in golf, but it’s a complex situation.”
With the PGA Tour holding a big-money signature event at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and LIV Golf playing for a fourth time in 2024 in Hong Kong, the Champions circuit is about to stage the first of three straight West Coast events.
“Ultimately, I hope someday we all can play nice together again and have the best players in the world playing and competing against one another,” said Stricker. “I think that day will come and I think there will be some circumstances, you know, where those guys that left are going to have to do something, I don’t know, a penalty of some sort, I don’t know what that means. I hope some day it all comes back together and the guys are playing all together again.”
Whether the rival tours coexist, merge or simply allow some crossover, many feel that there should be no easy path back to the PGA Tour for those who left.
“I wouldn’t let the LIV guys come right back, I don’t think. I think there needs to be some way of, you know, just another way to say thanks for the guys that didn’t leave and just kind of abandon our standards and rules,” Cink said. “I think there needs to be some form of like delayed, I don’t know if it’s delaying some of their performance bonuses or if it’s some kind of a suspension that maintains itself, I don’t know exactly, but something.”
Big names on the PGA Tour leaving for LIV Golf is having a ripple effect on the Champions tour.
“It’s unfortunate, because when [Phil] Mickelson came out, it was a jolt for our tour and it was great,” David Toms, the defending champion of the Cologuard Classic, said during a media day Monday at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, California, for the upcoming Galleri Classic.
Mickelson won his first two – and four of his first six – starts on the PGA Tour Champions in 2021 but seven months after rolling in a birdie putt on the 18th hole at Phoenix Country Club to end that season, he was off to London for the first-ever LIV Golf event.
“And so then all of the sudden he’s not a part of us anymore. So that’s unfortunate,” Toms said.
The drain of veteran golfers with name recognition means the Champions circuit also lost out on Lee Westwood, who turned 50 in April of 2023 and it won’t be able to welcome Ian Poulter, who turned 48 in January 2024, nor Henrik Stenson, who turns 48 this April, in the coming years. The PGA Tour losing a bit of name recognition eventually means a weakened Champions tour.
As long as the PGA Tour and LIV exist, perhaps there’s some middle ground that can be found.
“I’m not against, you know, some sort of a transfer back and forth. I played (Mexico Open) there on the PGA Tour a couple weeks ago, and I’m sure they would have loved to have Abraham Ancer play. So I’m not against having a small amount of invites, and that cuts both ways,” said Padraig Harrington, who compared the situation to the rivalry the PGA Tour used to have with the European Tour. “When the European Tour is in Spain this year, we would love to have Jon Rahm play the Spanish Open. I’m not against a small amount of transfer of players playing events and maybe a couple of invites going each direction. Maybe an outside team playing every week in LIV, why not.
“But again, not too sure how they’re going to come together as one tour, so why not have an agreeable two tours where there’s a bit of rivalry.”