LIV Golf burst onto the scene in June 2022, but the truth of the matter is that it hasn’t yet taken off like many expected it to.
Numerous high-profile players left the PGA Tour to join LIV Golf three years ago, and there is still an ongoing power struggle between the two tours.
As things stand, there is a standoff between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour regarding a potential merger, with neither side willing to back down with their demands.
LIV have been backed to potentially take even more players from the PGA Tour during the upcoming off-season.
Whatever happens in the future, golf fans deserve to see the very best players competing against one another outside of the four major championships.
That does seem to be a long way off from happening right now, and if the two tours are going to remain completely separate for the time being, there are improvements that need to be made on either side.
LIV Golf claimed to have made a mistake which makes no sense
Hudson Swafford has been opening up on all things LIV Golf over the past couple of days.
Having lost his LIV card at the end of the 2024 season, Swafford is now without a tour to play regularly on.
Swafford spoke about his own situation on GOLF’s Subpar Podcast, but he also opened up on one area in particular where LIV has gone wrong.
He said: “That was a question I brought up to numerous LIV workers, I was like what is your goal and your main goal? The main consensus was that it was a big US TV deal.
“I was like okay why aren’t why disrupting the US TV market? Why aren’t we playing in the US more? We are leaving the country more and playing in time zones which are far away from the actual US.
I go like it or not people do not watch tape delayed sports. You go to your phone and get the results. You are not watching that.
“I enjoyed the world travel and I like the world travel but if this is your main goal of getting the US TV deal then you have got to play around that time zone. Whether we go to South America or Central America more, I don’t know. But you have got to have live action. Tape delayed sports, I can’t wrap my head around it and I don’t think anybody else can.“
Swafford makes a great point here. If the main goal of the LIV hierarchy is to secure a huge US TV deal, then they simply need to host more tournaments in America.
It’s all well and good traveling around the world, and there are undoubtedly real upsides to that kind of schedule, but it makes zero sense if conquering the US market is the main goal at play.
Hudson Swafford on whether the PGA Tour should take back LIV players
Swafford’s recent interview was an absolute goldmine for golf journalists.
And he made a great point about certain players potentially leaving LIV Golf to return to the PGA Tour at some point in the future.
Swafford explained: “You have to look at on this side, that all these Tour guys have equity on the Tour. So how would you not want Bryson, Brooks and the likes of Dustin, Jon Rahm and Joaquin Niemann? All these good players to come back, that is going to increase your value.
“Your Tour is going to get better with them coming back but are you really going to stick up your nose and be like we don’t need them, because of a decision they made? I don’t know! It’s tough.“
The PGA Tour would be crazy to reject the likes of Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and others purely because they left to join LIV in the past.
The future of the professional game should consist of the best golfers in the world competing against one another on a regular basis.
Quite how the framework will enable that to come to fruition remains to be seen, though.
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