By Alan M. Watson, President, GOLF+ PCB 

The past two weeks have been rife with announcements, controversy, speculation, and more. While Matthew Fitzpatrick has been tearing up the PGA Tour over on the LIV Tour ominous announcements about the PIF pulling its funding from LIV at the end of this season or maybe sooner are causing sound bites from around the golf world and speculation as to where super star golfers will play next with no tour to host them. 

Even Rory Mcilroy is changing his tune and saying basically that he would welcome back LIV tour players to make the PGA Tour the most dominant tour out there. Ok, that’s not exactly what he said but he has substantially softened his view on LIV and let’s face it, if the tour does fall apart, and I think it certainly will, then stars like Rahm, Smith, and DeChambeau will need to find a home sandbox to play in. 

The PGA Tour could certainly use more star power. While Rory and Scottie dominate there aren’t enough other big names to draw from in some people’s opinion. Having major winners like John Rahm and Bryson, who also has a huge online following, would bolster the roster for all events that they appear in. Right now though, as long as LIV is alive then the contracts these players signed are in play and the window to rejoin the PGA Tour closed a few weeks ago however there has to be a path back as the tour would be ignorant if they didn’t at least try to get stars back rather than let them go to the DP World Tour. 

Another sticking point beyond contracts is media rights. Bryson DeChampbeau has already said repeatedly that without some time of name, image, likeness program similar to college football then he might not want to be a full time member of the PGA Tour. His media following, Youtube viewship, and all around stardom could allow him to make a living outside of the tour if he so chose. 

The PGA Tour owns all rights to its media and that includes video footage or the players when they are at tournaments. This was a real problem for Phil Mickelson several years ago and that fight led to the creation of a slush fund that was distributed to top players who garnered social media attention. This was a way for the tour to reward those who were promoting the tour by promoting themselves. Ultimately it must not have been enough as Phil left for LIV. Regardless, the PGA Tour is now softening its rules most likely in order to entice a Bryson comeback to the tour. After all, other tour stars like Ben Griffin and Joel Dahmen are heavy on social media and have not gotten in trouble with the tours policies. 

My prediction is that LIV barely makes it through 2026, cancels more events, and ultimately is gone by Christmas leaving lots of good golfers out in the cold. Bryson has stated that he thinks LIV will find new financial backing but if the PIF doesn’t want to fund the tour why would anyone else? As of yesterday at least a dozen LIV golfers said they would rather quit the sport then rejoin the PGA Tour however they most likely are not the players that the tour would be going after anyway so unfortunately for them their words are more bark than bite. 

In a related note, Youtube superstar golfers Grant Horvat, Wesley and George Bryan, and Brad Dalke have started their own tour for Youtube stars called Your Golf Tour. So maybe this is the future of alternative golf for fans to go see live. Certainly golfers that have bigger combined online followings than the tour might have a claim to be able to draw fans, sell merchandise, and at the very least replace LIV as a secondary option. 

Me, I want to see the best players in the world ALL competing week in and week out together. So I would love to see about six of the best LIV guys go back to the PGA Tour. Ultimately, time will tell. And that time is coming soon.