Professional golf takes the money and runs as PGA Tour and LIV Golf merge

As callow and money-hungry as you can get.

Golf’s uncivil war is over, less than two years after it started, as the PGA and DP World Tours have agreed to merge with breakaway entity, LIV Golf.

A joint press release has, this afternoon, confirmed the PGA and DP World tours had reached ‘a landmark agreement to unify the game of golf’. PIF, funded by Saudi Arabia, started up LIV Golf in 2021 and coaxed over many of golf’s top stars, including Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Cameron Smith.

While no name has been settled on the new entity, after this merger, there is already a huge dollop of media spin on how this will benefit the golfing world.

The same PGA Tour that claimed LIV Golf was setting out to destroy everything it had built, and was all about, is now behind a hideous press release declaring LIV as “groundbreaking”. Importantly, too, all litigation that had been flying around between rival tours and players is now to cease. All parties, we are told, ‘will work together to best feature and grow team golf going forward’.

In short, and in my opinion, the PGA and DP World Tours have put their outrage and sense of morals to one side and chose to bow down to those in control of the PIF purse-strings. In return, the PGA and DP tours will now get the likes of Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood and Pat Perez back in the fold.