PGA Tour-LIV Merger: Tour Players ‘Shocked,’ ‘Disgusted’ By Stunning News

The PGA Tour has always been touted as a “player-run organization,” but the Tour’s landmark merger with LIV Golf makes that distinction questionable.

The PGA Tour, DP World Tour and the Saudi Arabian-backed Public Investment Fund announced a landscape-altering agreement Tuesday morning, shaking the professional golf world to its core.

And, apparently, Tour players were caught completely off-guard by the news.

Longtime golf media personality Shane Bacon tweeted shortly after the news broke that he heard from multiple players on Tour who had “absolutely zero heads up on this before the announcement was made on social.”

To that point, a supposedly confidential letter was sent to the players from Tour commissioner Jay Monahan outlining the new deal. In the letter, Monahan indicated he’d be on site Tuesday afternoon in Toronto at this week’s RBC Canadian Open for a player meeting at 4 p.m. ET. While there’s undoubtedly a remote option to join that meeting, the announcement and meeting come in a week where most of the Tour’s top stars are resting after last week’s designated event at the Memorial ahead of next week’s U.S. Open in California.

“Nothing like finding out through Twitter that we’re merging with a tour that we said we’d never do that with,” two-time Tour winner Mackenzie Hughes tweeted Tuesday morning.

As for the agreement itself, early reports indicate Tour players are not happy.

Barstool Sports’ Dan Rapoport spoke to players who told him they were “shocked and confused,” with another saying they were “disgusted,” noting the Tour “didn’t tell us anything.” Betting and DFS content creator Rick Gehman, who also does work for CBS Sports, said he spoke to players and the feeling he gets is that they are “not happy.”

It’s easy to see why Tour players are irked not only by how this all went down but what it all means for those involved. It certainly feels like this was all done under a cloak of darkness among decision-makers at the very top of their respective organizations, and it’s quite clear most if not all of the Tour membership (the players) was unaware this was going down.

Additionally, there’s probably going to be some resentment among the players who stayed on the Tour out of loyalty, especially the game’s elite. There undoubtedly were eight- or nine-figure deals on the table for the Tour’s best remaining players — Hideki Matsuyama reportedly turned down at least $300 million — and they stayed.

Presumably, those decisions were made to keep playing the Tour’s more historic tournaments, not to mention keep major status. Because LIV Golf events weren’t getting world ranking points, it was going to be difficult for the players who left the Tour for LIV’s money to get into those tournaments. Now, those players presumably will be allowed to return. According to Rapoport, LIV players who want to come back to the Tour will likely have to pay a fine in order to do so, but that might not do much to ease any ill will from players who never left.