The fight between the PGA and LIV tours have existed since the foundation of the later in 2021, with the introduction of guaranteed money, limited fields, and no cuts, LIV received heavy criticism.
Although this wasn’t enough to deter Cheltenham’s own Paul Casey who joined the tour in the July of 2022.
Casey was third in last year’s players championship before jumping tours. Defending champion Cameron Smith also made the switch after winning The Open at St. Andrews later in the year.
Casey has already earned over $6,000,000 (£5m) in under a year at LIV, proving that the tour provides major finical benefit to the players which is what has put sponsors and the PGA tour under pressure.
The strain on the PGA has become evident this week with PGA board member and golfer Rory McIlroy changing his tone regarding the Saudi Arabian backed entity ahead of The Player’s Championship at TPC Sawgrass this weekend.
“I’m not going to sit here and lie; I think the emergence of LIV, or the emergence of a competitor to the PGA Tour, has benefited everyone that plays elite professional golf,” said the four-time major winner.
Reflecting on his own tour’s path recently “I think when you’ve been the biggest golf league in the biggest market in the world for the last 60 years, there’s not a lot of incentive to innovate,” referring the PGA Tour as “antiquated” while being aware of how the tour needs to adapt to a changing media landscape.
“The PGA Tour isn’t just competing with LIV Golf or other sports. It’s competing with Instagram and TikTok and everything else that’s trying to take eyeballs away from the PGA Tour as a product.
“LIV coming along has definitely had a massive impact on the game, but I think everyone who’s a professional golfer is going to benefit from it going forward.”
The innovations hinted at by the former world number one is that the PGA tour will be introducing reduced field sizes of 70-78 players, no cuts across the weekend at designated events in 2024, as well as, the top players will be required to be in attendance at said events.
Something that a vocal group of players have claimed to take away from “their freedom”.
Although these changes won’t affect the majors, it still takes away from the chances for players outside the stars to make headlines, which is where it has received further criticism.
The changes are being made in hopes to attract more sponsorship attention as the stars such as McIlroy, Jon Rahm, and of course Tiger Woods would be guaranteed for all four days of competition.
World number one Rahm hasn’t been fully supportive of the changes proposed by the tour, yet is aware why the changes have been made, “Without LIV Golf this wouldn’t have happened, so to an extent, we should be thankful this threat has made the PGA Tour want to change things”
