As much as some people might believe (or even wish) that LIV Golf will just disappear once a deal gets made with the PGA and DP World tours, it’s pretty clear that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has every intention of moving forward with its breakaway team circuit. The Saudis have invested – and continue to supplement with personnel and office space – too much into it simply to let it disappear. Plus, some of LIV’s player contracts run through 2028 and ’29.
That said, any deal for a peaceful coexistence will require some compromise and adjustment for all pieces to fit together in golf’s ecosystem. And if Yasir Al-Rumayyan and the PIF want a team component, there’ll be a team component.
“They’re big on team golf, and they want to see team golf survive in some way in the calendar,” Rory McIlroy said in March. “I don’t think it has to necessarily look like LIV. I think in my mind you should leave the individual golf the individual golf, and then you play your team golf on the sort of periphery of that.”
There’s certainly room in the fall to play around with different ideas for cooperative team competition.
Any sort of team golf element is likely going to be handled by LIV. The PGA Tour, which already has an annual team event in New Orleans, is not going to create any more in-season team events whose results don’t get recognized by the Official World Golf Ranking. But as part of a deal, it could allow PGA Tour players to create teams and participate in crossover LIV events in a designated off-season window.
For its part, LIV will need to adjust its schedule, reducing its number of regular-season events from February to September to perhaps 10 to accommodate any fall cooperative series while also making room for its players potentially to compete in a few OWGR points events on the PGA and DP World tours.
If the PGA Tour concludes by Labor Day and the DP World Tour’s Race to Dubai wraps up by the end of October, that could leave November for a couple of LIV-style events. The legacy tours could appoint three “captains” to select four-man teams consisting of PGA and DP World tour players to compete against the top 10 LIV franchises.
A more intriguing idea – and likely more lucrative – would be creating a Ryder Cup-style competition that pits players from the PGA and DP World tours against a team of LIV stars. Unlike LIV Golf’s model, those kinds of team events are proven ratings and money generators, which could help foster a return on investments in PGA Tour Enterprises.
There’s certainly room in the fall to play around with different ideas for cooperative team competition. But the key element that needs to be addressed first is creating space in which all tours can coexist in the same world on the same calendar.
Scott Michaux