For 37-year-old pro Hudson Swafford, leaving the PGA Tour to join LIV Golf was not a decision he took lightly. The former Georgia Bulldog won three times on the PGA Tour between 2017 and 2022.
“It was definitely a tough decision,” Swafford said on this week’s episode of Subpar. “I was intrigued by it.”
The allure of a shorter playing schedule and team golf was appealing to Swafford, and he mulled his options while taking time off for the birth of his second child during the winter and spring of 2022. During that time, he also became more aware of lingering discomfort in his right hip. After struggling with pain when he returned to the PGA Tour at the 2022 Byron Nelson and 2022 PGA Championship, Swafford said he started to think more seriously about LIV.
“They were giving out a bunch of money, it was pretty enticing. I’ve never had anything guaranteed in my life,” Swafford told hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz. “The decision was not an easy one. I knew I was gonna take some heat for doing this. I didn’t know how much heat I was actually gonna take. It was definitely some tough times for sure.”
Unfortunately for Swafford, his hip injury ended up derailing his playing career, and he missed the entire 2023 LIV Golf season after having surgery. Last year, after competing as a wild card, Swafford was relegated from LIV Golf. He’s currently working in real estate while in the midst of a PGA Tour suspension, which he says will end in 2027.
With a PGA Tour/LIV deal remaining elusive at this point, Knost and Stoltz wanted to know: How would Swafford handle LIV stars like Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau if they wanted to return to the PGA Tour when their LIV contracts are up?
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“Man, I don’t know. That is a good question,” Swafford said. “You gotta look at it on this side: all these tour guys got equity in the Tour, right? So how would you not want Bryson and Brooks and the likes of Dustin and Jon Rahm, Joaquin Niemann, all these good players to come back?
“That’s gonna increase your value, right?” he continued. “Like, your Tour is gonna get better with them coming back, but are you really gonna stick up your nose and be like, we don’t need them because of a decision that they made? I don’t know.”
For more from Swafford, including additional discussion on LIV and the PGA Tour, check out the full episode of Subpar below.
