In the twisty and turny saga that has been the PGA Tour vs. LIV Golf, it wasn’t that long ago that it seemed as though the formerly Saudi-backed breakaway league would end up in the driver’s seat.
However, as LIV attempts to cobble together a patchwork of funding in the wake of the Public Investment Fund’s withdrawal, its rival has made it clear they’re not coming to the rescue.
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“There’s no merger, no conversations; we’ve been really concentrated on the PGA Tour,” PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp told Bloomberg TV in a recent sit-down interview. “We’ve been mainly focused on where we’re going and improving our product.”
It’s quite the turnaround from June 2023, when the PGA Tour and DP World Tour agreed to merge with LIV Golf in what seemed to many a waving of the white flag in the war between the two golf factions.
The two tours moved in very different directions in the years since. As those merger talks stalled, the PGA Tour regrouped, drawing lessons from LIV’s defectors and reshaping the structure of its tournaments and prize money. Meanwhile, LIV languished without a decent TV deal, often drawing paltry ratings against its rival. As the losses mounted, those massive contracts the PIF paid out for names like Bryson DeChambeau, Phil Mickelson, and Brooks Koepka turned into albatrosses. Several defectors started returning to the PGA Tour, though not without repercussions. Reports swirled a few months back that the PIF was pulling out, which it eventually announced, leaving LIV scrambling to find new investors, though questions remain about how that new arrangement will work in the long term.
For all its faults, LIV woke the PGA Tour up to many of its outdated practices and the need to revise how it conducts business, especially around player compensation. Now, it no longer has much use for the failing league, and for better or worse, seems more than happy to let nature take its course from here on out.
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