PGA Tour Needs Temporary Solution to LIV Problem

The following two developments took place in the world of professional golf over the past week, so I want you to read very carefully and see if you can flag the hypocrisies:

• Eugenio Chacarra, formerly a LIV Golf regular, renounced his allegiance to that league, stating a desire to play on the PGA Tour following a lengthy suspension – even though he’d never previously been a member of any PGA Tour-sanctioned circuit.

• Tyrrell Hatton, currently a LIV Golf regular, triumphed on the DP World Tour, his second victory and sixth top-10 in six DP World Tour starts since the end of last year’s LIV season.

There’s probably a bit more you need to know before forming a full opinion on these matters. The PGA Tour and DP World Tour have a partnership, even if the relationship is more parasitic than symbiotic. The PGA Tour announced plans to form a partnership with LIV Golf more than a year and a half ago, but the so-called alliance remains more framework than agreement. Oh, and no LIV player has competed on the PGA Tour, their suspensions remaining intact, while it’s a routine scenario on the DP World Tour.

If this all sounds ridiculous, well, congratulations. I think you’ve planted that flag.

Look, I’ve spent the last two decades watching people play golf for a living, so I’m unqualified for intelligence on most issues of any relevance. That includes the United States government, specifically the Department of Justice, which is reportedly keeping a keen eye on the PGA Tour/LIV negotiations to ensure antitrust laws aren’t violated.

It’s simple for any observer of professional golf to wail, “Why don’t they just get this deal done already?!” while laying on the nearest couch, but it’s not much more difficult to understand that there are plenty of cooks in this kitchen and, as those involved in the talks have stated publicly, none of this is going to move quickly.

I get that. We should all get that.

What I don’t get is how and why one faction of professional golf has figured out a way to slap a band-aid over the current situation and find a temporary solution to benefit all parties while another has stubbornly committed to punishing treason by simultaneously punishing its own product.

I recently asked a colleague who’s done a lot more digging into this issue to explain it to me like I’m a 5-year-old. His response: “The players who are competing on the DP World Tour are subject to fines and suspensions whenever they play LIV events. But those have been appealed and are simply being kicked down the road. The DP World Tour has essentially told the PGA Tour, ‘We need these guys, because you’re bleeding us of our top-10 every year.’”

Once again, a very digestible piece of info there.

The DP World Tour is cultivating talent, then rewarding the best of the best by giving them a ticket to the PGA Tour and sending them off in search of greater riches abroad. The tour needs those LIV stars to create some public interest in the product – and it’s working, as Hatton’s most recent victory in Dubai was hailed less as some monumental triumph for LIV Golf and more as one for golf fans in general, who were treated to a sublime performance from one of the game’s most entertaining players.

Well, you know who else could use some LIV players to help create a similar public interest in the product? That’s right, the PGA Tour.

This week’s Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, once the backyard playground of such stars as Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, will be without Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa, Wyndham Clark, Patrick Cantlay, Viktor Hovland, Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth for various reasons.

The biggest names in the field are Hideki Matsuyama, a legitimate superstar who doesn’t have nearly the Q-rating, at least domestically, of some of the players listed above, and Ludvig Aberg, an up-and-coming game-changer who most casual fans couldn’t have picked out of a lineup before his first TGL appearance a few weeks ago.

After that, Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley is popular. So, too, is Tony Finau. Sungjae Im could be on the verge of big things. Max Greyserman is starting to get there.

None of those, however, are anything close to the Tiger and Phil types who used to annually compete in this event.

Perhaps there would be some intrigue in watching Jon Rahm, who won his first PGA Tour title at Torrey Pines, won the U.S. Open here and in between those wins got engaged to his future wife right nearby, that’s how much it means to him. It wouldn’t hurt to have Brooks Koepka, who posted a top-five when Rahm won that U.S. Open. Or Bryson DeChambeau, whose raw power would be on display at the vicious South Course.

Or, you know, Hatton, who proved once again this past weekend that his wear-his-emotions-on-his-sleeves demeanor is often must-see TV.

None of them will be there, though – and none will be anywhere near a non-major, PGA Tour-sanctioned event anytime soon, despite the fact that the two factions have been exploring a partnership for so long and despite another fact that a different global world tour has already figured out a way to include these players in current tournaments.

This should be the biggest gripe amongst those who want to witness all of the world’s best players competing against each other more than four times each year.

Our collective resentment in the lack of a PGA Tour/LIV agreement is too often being misplaced. That was always going to take time. Instead, we should be more frustrated that all parties involved haven’t consulted the DP World Tour blueprint and figured out a way to fix it in the meantime.