If You Can’t Beat Em’, Join Em’ | PGA Tour Merges With LIV Golf

Less than a year after LIV Golf hosted their first ever tournament, which caused a war between two worlds of golf, the PGA Tour bends the knee and merges with the Saudi backed golf organization. There’s a lot of questions surrounding this merger, especially when you consider the amount of discourse that has brewed between the two leagues.

Golf purist won’t like what I’m about to say, but this is arguably the most embarrassing outcome for the PGA Tour and every single player that spoke out about their disdain for LIV golfers. In case you forgot how chippy things got, here’s a couple quotes that members of the PGA Tour had to say this time last year:

“Any decision that you make in your life that’s purely for money, doesn’t usually end up going the right way… But for me, I want to play on the PGA Tour against the best players in the world.” — Rory Mcllroy

“They decided to go play on a tour, and they should go play that tour. They shouldn’t be coming back over here to play the DP World Tour or the PGA Tour.” — Billy Horschel

Almost immediately after LIV Golf announced their roster of star studded PGA Tour players, the PGA banned those golfers from playing on the PGA Tour. There was already a media melee of controversy surrounding LIV, but the PGA ban was like pouring an entire oil rig worth of gasoline onto the fire.

Since last summer, the tensions between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour have simmered down to almost nothing. Due to exemptions, most of the big names in LIV Golf have been able to play in Majors even while the ban was put in place. They’ve responded by absolutely dominating PGA Tour players at these events.

Brooks Koepka was 18 holes away from winning the Masters earlier this year. He carried that momentum with him into the PGA Championship, where he took home his fifth major. With LIV golfers consistently performing well at these events, it begs the question — Does LIV Golf have a better product than the PGA Tour?

In terms of television and marketability, the PGA Tour will always produce the best of the best. But if we just take a look at how the LIV Tour is set up compared to the PGA Tour, they are two completely different circuits. I have to assume that the easier workload that comes with LIV Golf is a huge reason why we’re seeing their golfers find so much success at the Majors.

It’s pretty clear that both of these organizations have something to offer the other one in this merger. But there’s a part of me that thinks this was nothing more than the PGA Tour taking the easy way out. They saw how successful LIV golfers have been, and they knew that their model of golf would soon become irrelevant if they didn’t make a change.