'They’re All Coming Back': Major Winners Commend PGA Tour for Reinstating Ex-LIV Players

“I think that eventually they’re all coming back.”

That was Paul Azinger, the lead TV analyst for the PGA Tour Champions, discussing the possibility of LIV Golf players returning to the PGA Tour.

Of course, this past week, the golf world was rocked when the PGA Tour reinstated five-time major winner Brooks Koepka after he departed LIV following four years on the Saudi-backed circuit.

However, Koepka’s not the only former Tour and LIV player looking to return to their PGA Tour roots. Three-time Tour winner Pat Perez, who defected to LIV in 2022, had his Tour membership restored this week, but he’s still not eligible to compete. Perez turns 50 in March and he eyes starts on the PGA Tour Champions. He even gave up his LIV broadcasting job, which he began in 2024, to make that a possibility.

It seems his colleagues will welcome him back.

“The fact that [Koepka] wants back on the PGA Tour, I can certainly appreciate, and Pat Perez, as well,” Justin Leonard, the 1997 British Open champion, said in a media appearance with Azinger on Thursday, promoting the senior tour’s Chubb Classic. “He went out there [on LIV] playing, stopped playing the last couple years and has been doing television as an analyst for LIV Golf.

“I’m sure that his, whatever you will, I don’t know, suspension or whatever you want to call it, I don’t think he's going to be playing here early in the season from what I understand. But when he is ready to play, he brings viewers and eyes and some interest to our tour because of his experience with LIV, his personality. He’s very outspoken. He’ll be a great addition to the PGA TOUR Champions.”

The Tour’s disciplinary action for Perez will not be publicly disclosed. Former LIV players are typically suspended for a year since their last LIV event. Koepka, though, qualified for a newly created Returning Member Program that allowed those on LIV who have won a major since 2022 a one-time path back to the Tour.

Brooks Koepka will return to the PGA Tour later this month. | Bill Streicher-Imagn Images

“Players that do not qualify for the Returning Member Program can only be reinstated in accordance with the nonmember policy and any applicable disciplinary process,” the Tour said in a statement. “At his request, Pat Perez was reinstated as a member but is not eligible to participate in PGA Tour-affiliated tournaments at this time.”

Azinger was surprised that Koepka was brought back so rapidly, and believes more action like that under the leadership of new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp will cool off the strife men’s golf has endured since LIV’s inception in 2022.

“There was a major divide in the sport ushered in by LIV and [former LIV CEO] Greg Norman,” the 1993 PGA champion said, “and tennis experienced it 50 years ago. It took golf 50 years to get this great divide where the players split off like that.

“I think really the players, aside from the money, probably regret [leaving the Tour for LIV] because they all had enough for the most part. But I’d like to think I would have said no to that money, but I can’t guarantee you that I would have.

“There’s a real understanding here, and at the same time a real big surprise. It’s costing [Koepka] a lot of money to come back and play competitive golf again, and I feel like that the direction the Tour is going now is based mostly on the fact that it’s a for-profit business. They think that Brooks is a real commodity.”

Therefore, getting all the best players in the world competing against each other regularly again—on both the PGA Tour and PGA Tour Champions—is a priority.

“It doesn’t hurt to have the greatest players on the PGA Tour,” Azinger said. “That’s mostly where they’ve always been. I’m going to say I accept whatever the new leadership provides at this point and wish them the best of luck because I think that eventually they’re all coming back.”

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