The world of men’s professional golf has been fractured ever since LIV Golf’s arrival in 2022.
The PGA Tour and LIV Golf have been working to iron out a deal to bring the game back together for over 18 months. But there hasn’t been much movement on the merger front in some time.
Adam Scott, who is part of the PGA Tour Enterprises transaction subcommittee with Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, which is negotiating with LIV’s Saudi backers, says there’s a reason things have ground to a halt.
“Same as always. It sucks,” Scott told the Associated Press’ Doug Ferguson this week at the Sony Open. “It’s not worth talking about. Obviously, it’s so complex and when the [U.S Department of Justice] is involved, I think we sit and just wait for them.”
Scott told Ferguson there should be some movement “soon.” But what that will look like is still anyone’s guess.
The potential end of the PGA Tour-LIV battle was a topic on the latest episode of “Kostis & McCord: Off Their Rockers,” a GOLF production, with both co-hosts giving their crystal ball prediction for the state of golf in 2025.
“I predict there will be a resolution to the LIV-PGA Tour conflict in 2025,” Kostis said. “It will not go on any longer past 2025. What that solution is going to be remains open.”
Kostis went on to speculate that the PGA Tour will have to give up its desire to be the lone home for elite men’s professional golf in 2025.
“There’s a bunch of reasons why we are where we are in professional golf,” Kostis said. “Not the least of which is the PGA Tour’s desire to have a monopoly on professional golf. They want to be the end-all and be-all for professional golf. That’s going to go away in 2025. They are going to have to learn to exist in an ecosystem that includes more worldwide golf whether that’s LIV or the DP World Tour or whatever the case may be.”
McCord believes the two tours will end up not merging in 2025, and that LIV’s rumored interest to buy the DP World Tour will play a role.
“The whole thing is LIV vs. PGA Tour. That’s it. Everything else resides around that. Are they going to get together? Or are they going to exist apart? I think they will exist apart,” McCord said. “From what we are hearing, [LIV] are going to go buy the DP World Tour. It’s already there. They already get [Official World Golf Ranking] points. They can go get their 20 events that they are going to play there. Now these guys get world rankings points, so they can literally go and play in the majors and do what they want to do. [They can] be in these big tournaments now that they get world-rankings points.”
McCord added that having two tours might not necessarily be a negative for golf.
“Now, you got two tours. Is that bad?” McCord said. “I don’t know if that’s bad. Because as I see it, if you’re trying to market this and get your T.V. ratings up, there’s nothing better than to have two distinct entities that hate each other. I mean hate each other. Look at the Ryder Cup, those guys don’t necessarily hate each other. They are neighbors in Florida. But that particular week they get pissed off at each other and go on tirades. What if we had that as a constant? And you would have these guys playing against each other. There’s benefits to it.”
For more on the topic, or to watch the entire episode, click on the video below.
