After a year-plus of controversy the PGA TOUR and LIV Golf have agreed to a merger that would have the sport’s two largest competitions form a single enterprise under a new name.
The deal will effectively end any pending anti-trust litigation between the two sides, and players who had been banned from the PGA TOUR or the European DP World Tour will be allowed to reapply for membership as early as 2024.
The controversy began to bubble up in winter of 2022 when rumors intensified of a new golf tour supported by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund to rival the established PGA TOUR, golf’s preeminent tour since 1968. LIV Golf, as the new tour was to be named, was successful in attracting several big name players such as Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka and Bryson Dechambeau with guaranteed money up front that exceeded $100 million USD in some cases. All players joining LIV Golf were promptly banned from the PGA TOUR and DP World Tour, effectively creating a chasm where the sport’s best players only competed against one another at the four major championships. The new announcement creates a roadmap back towards reunification of the sport at an elite professional level.
Said PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan: “This transformational partnership recognizes the immeasurable strength of the PGA TOUR’s history, legacy and pro-competitive model and combines with it the DP World Tour and LIV – including the team golf concept – to create an organization that will benefit golf’s players, commercial and charitable partners and fans.”
Stay tuned for more details on this developing story and what this means for professional golf.
Elsewhere in sports, former Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema is joining Saudi Arabia’s Al-Ittihad.
