Golf is in uncharted territory right now, with Brooks Koepka recently becoming the first LIV Golf star to leave the league and return to the PGA Tour.
It is going to be fascinating to see how Brooks Koepka performs upon his return to the PGA Tour. It certainly appears to be a huge boost for those at Ponte Vedra to have the five-time major champion back.
Of course, the PGA Tour created the Returning Member Program to set the stage for Koepka to return.
Not everyone is happy with the PGA Tour following Brooks Koepka’s return
The tour announced that anyone who had won a major or The Players Championship since 2022 would have until early February to return under certain conditions.
It looked to be an inspired way to justify Koepka’s comeback. But not everyone seemed happy with the decision, with the tour not making it particularly difficult for the 35-year-old.
Wyndham Clark expressed his mixed emotions about the news. Clark suggested that Koepka has barely paid the price for his decision to jump to LIV.
But speaking on the Golf Channel Podcast, Rex Hoggard believes that the 2023 US Open champion was really kicking himself about not making the same decision.
“To be fair, the way this story was framed, this sounds more like Wyndham is upset with his choice more so than Brooks, because in retrospect, he’s looking back saying, ‘I could have taken the bag, gone to LIV Golf for a year or two and all would have been forgiven’. I don’t know if that would have been the case,” he said.
“Clearly, this is going to be a la carte situation when it comes to different players. This was specific to four players this time around.”
Wyndham Clark’s words do come with a warning for the PGA Tour
Clark would have qualified for the program after his victory at LACC nearly three years ago now. But clearly, no one could have known how the PGA Tour would have dealt with Koepka’s situation.
It appears to be such a smart move from the PGA Tour. Obviously, you could argue that Koepka has been let off with a slap on the wrist – he did have to pay $30 million to get out of his LIV contract – but the tour is right to let him back.
The PGA Tour will benefit from having Koepka back. And it would have been a further boost if Cameron Smith, Jon Rahm, and Bryson DeChambeau followed him.
There are no guarantees that the window will open up again. And Hoggard suggested that he agreed with Clark’s view that this opportunity cannot be on the table again in the future.
“I will say the one thing he pointed out that did resonate with me was the idea that this has to be a one-time offer. This does have to be an offer where, ‘nope, you had this one-time window to take advantage of it’, because if it’s not, I started to fast forward and think about the impact that could have. That could lead to a very dangerous decision,” he said.
“If players start to see time and time again that the PGA Tour is willing to circumvent their own rules for the good of the tour – you and I spend a lot of time talking about how this was a very elegant solution that Brian Rolapp and the rest of the tour came up with to a very complicated issue, but if they circle back around, let’s say the deadline on February 2nd comes and goes, and then a year from now we’re in this exact same situation where Bryson this time around, and it makes sense that it possibly would be, I can see how that could create a scenario where you’re almost enticing players now to take the money.
“Let’s put it in this context: if you’re a young player who’s gotten a contract, and you and I talked about the Akshay Bhatia situation where he was offered a contract in the off-season to go to LIV Golf, fast forward a year and let’s say LIV Golf does get world ranking points and now the tour has circled back around and opened up this window again, what’s to keep a young player like Akshay from going? Taking the bag now, competing for a year or two on LIV Golf and then just knowing I can always circle back around and they’ll welcome me back. That is a very, very slippery slope.
“I think that was the bigger concern that Wyndham voiced where I was like yeah, I could see that being a problem.”
Ultimately, the PGA Tour have probably made the right decision not ruling anything out at this stage.
If Rahm or DeChambeau make themselves available at some stage in the future, it would be ridiculous to shut the door on them.
That is clearly far from fair, particularly on those who stayed. But fairness is, unfortunately, just one of the considerations which has to be taken into account in this new era of the game.
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