Scottie Scheffler, Justin Thomas Weigh in on Welcoming LIV Players Back to PGA Tour
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — There are a lot of questions in men’s professional golf, and at the moment hardly any of them can be answered. But that hasn’t stopped players from weighing in on one fascinating hypothetical: Should LIV golfers be offered a pathway back to the PGA Tour?
Last week the PGA Tour signed a landmark $3 billion deal with Strategic Sports Group (SSG) to give players equity in the Tour’s new for-profit venture, PGA Tour Enterprises. But the door is still open for an eventual deal with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF)—the "framework agreement" that was originally announced on June 6. Negotiations with the PIF have been ongoing since then.
So, without knowing what the future of the two tours might look like, and in the midst of the Tour’s latest private equity developments, the question of LIV players “coming back” has been posed to several top players. Should LIV players be able to come back and play on the PGA Tour at all? Should their return have any particular consequences?
The inquiry was first launched when Rory McIlroy reversed his opinion on the subject at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am. McIlroy, who had long maintained a staunch anti-LIV position, now believes the PGA Tour must eventually let LIV players return and play the Tour if they are eligible.
“If people still have eligibility on this Tour and they want to come back and play or you want to try and do something, let them come back,” he said. “I think it’s hard to punish people ... obviously I've changed my tune on that because I see where golf is and I see that having a diminished PGA Tour and having a diminished LIV Tour or anything else is bad for both parties. It would be much better being together and moving forward together for the good of the game.”
McIlroy’s remarks opened the floodgates.
Rickie Fowler was next in making his perspective known, and it differed from McIlroy’s. At Pebble Beach he shared that he doesn’t think LIV players should have a “direct road” back to the Tour.
Speaking from this week’s WM Phoenix Open, world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler seemingly felt the same way as Fowler. In a Golf Channel interview, Scheffler explained his stance.
“That’s definitely a complicated issue that I’m not sitting too far on one side of the fence with that,” Scheffler said Wednesday. “I think there’s a different level of player that left—you had some guys that left our Tour and then sued our Tour, that wasn’t really in great taste; and then you had some other guys that just left and they wanted to do something different, and everybody made their decision, and I have no bad blood toward the guys that left.
"But a path toward coming back, it wouldn’t be a very popular decision, I think, if they just came back like nothing ever happened. They did kind of leave and—they left our Tour, that’s just part of it. There should be a pathway back for them, but they definitely shouldn’t be able to come back without any sort of contribution to the Tour.”
Earlier in the week, Justin Thomas shared a similar sentiment, which also pushed back on McIlroy’s initial comments.
The two-time PGA champion argued that LIV players shouldn’t be able to return “that easily,” implying some sort of penalty for those who departed to join the Saudi-funded league. What that penalty might look like is a mystery, but it certainly wouldn’t align with McIlroy’s current thinking.
“I would say that there's a handful of players on LIV that would make the Tour a better place, but I'm definitely not in the agreement that they should just be able to come back that easily,” Thomas said.
“I think there's a lot of us that made sacrifices and were very— whether it's true to our word or what we believe in or just didn't make that decision, and I totally understand that things are changing and things are getting better, but it just would—I would have a hard time with it, and I think a lot of guys would have a hard time with it, and I'm sure we don't need to convince you why we would have a hard time with it."
