PGA Tour can dictate what reunification looks like and it doesn't have to include everyone

USA Today

25-05-2025

PGA Tour can dictate what reunification looks like and it doesn't have to include everyone
The most tediously unshakable assumption about the division in men's professional golf is that responsibility for resolving it falls to those who didn't create it, while those who did just keep dealing from a seemingly inexhaustible deck of victim cards. The Framework Agreement was announced 719 days ago and the expectation ever since has been that the PGA Tour must engineer the reunification of a game it didn't fracture, and that its members must make concessions to facilitate the return of guys who split to LIV of their own accord.
Count Scottie Scheffler among those finally pushing back publicly against that ersatz sentiment.
A few days ago, he was asked about the state of negotiations, in which he isn't involved. "If you wanna figure out what's going to happen to the game of golf, go to the other tour and ask those guys," he replied. "We had a tour where we all played together, and the guys that left, it's their responsibility I think to bring the tours back together. So go see where they're playing this week and ask them.'
Scheffler's comment generously grants LIV players agency they don't actually enjoy. Having sold their services, they are hostages of Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the chief of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund. What they want is irrelevant and what Al-Rumayyan wants is unclear since he hasn't engaged with the Tour since a fractious meeting at the White House on February 20. And that's why the Tour should forget about any onus to build bridges and focus exclusively on what will help its business.
There are three potential fields to be plowed in any reunification effort—one verdant, one barren, one finite. They are, respectively, pocketbook, product and players.
Golf executives have spent years deliberating how to share in Saudi riches without upending the entire structure of the sport. A PIF-PGA Tour deal would be driven by money, regardless of any grandiloquent waffle about unity and a shared future. But the Tour doesn't need their conditional investment—it hasn't yet spent a dime of the $1.5 billion infusion it obtained 16 months ago from Strategic Sports Group. Nor does it need any component of the LIV product. There's no market of scale for team golf to exploit, no broadcast audience to co-opt, no revenue to redirect, no sponsors to covet (unless Jay Monahan has an undisclosed craving for Freddy's Frozen Custard). There's literally nothing that should entice the Tour to jettison its current model or commercial partners to make space.
Which leaves players as the only thing LIV owns that the Tour does want. Just not all of 'em.
Most of the 50-odd guys on LIV used to compete on the PGA Tour. How many of them are missed? Jilted loyalists might insist on none, but that's untrue. A handful are clearly missed, though the reasons why vary. Take Patrick Reed. Every entertainment product could use a villain who needs a slab of bacon strapped to his face to get a dog to lick him. Or Sergio Garcia, since it's always useful to have a reminder that age and maturity are mutually exclusive. Only a few players left a real void because they competed at a high standard and had obvious commercial value. Should the Tour be presented with an opportunity to welcome them back—whether via a deal, a defection, the demise of LIV or a contract expiration—it should do so.
That needn't mean the Tour alienating its loyal members (beyond the unavoidable) since the only guys it would want back could be argued to have status that didn't expire during their LIV sojourn. Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Cameron Smith have all won major championships since 2022. The only other unquestionable status belongs to Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson, lifetime members with more than 20 wins. Beyond that, it's a grey area. For example, being top 50 or top 25 on the career money list is good for a one-time season pass; Garcia and Reed were deleted from that list when they split but would still rank 14th and 30th, respectively.
The rest of the LIV roster are discards for the PGA Tour but not without utility for the DP World Tour, which likely sees value in Messrs. Hatton, Kaymer, McDowell, Stenson, Westwood and Poulter. Perhaps too for the Aussie contingent. But if any of them want status in the States, go earn it back.
Johnson's LIV servitude expires this year, but he seems happily checked out from career ambition. DeChambeau and Koepka can walk away in '26 if they wish. Only Rahm has a lengthy term ahead as Al-Rumayyan's asset. LIV told its stars that any contract renewals won't repeat the huge upfront payments that first lured them to the Saudi teat, so the earnings gap between the circuits has narrowed significantly, at least for those who are competitively relevant. If all that the PGA Tour wants by way of reunification is the return of the few men who matter, then it can simply wait until they're contractually free and do what Scottie suggested, go ask 'em.