The British Open champion has already committed to playing the Australian Open in Melbourne and the PGA Championship in Brisbane.
Erskine believes the rebel tour is bad for golf because it fails to support the development of the game, but understands why professional players want to join.
“He’s a bloody good bloke, Cameron Smith is a really nice chap. There’s nothing malicious about it [the decision to join LIV]said Erskine.
“I’m sure he’s been tormented by the decision, and all the things that have happened.
“To people that do criticize it [the decision]I’d ask, if your son was offered 100 million US dollars to play for three years what would you do?”
While banned from the highly lucrative US PGA Tour which dominates golf, Smith will still be able to play in the four majors.
James Erskine has dismissed comparisons between Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket and Greg Norman’s LIV Golf.Credit:Getty, Michel A Bunn
“I personally can’t see how the players who have been loyal to the PGA Tour are going to basically welcome everybody back with open arms,” Erskine said. “I just don’t know how that would work.
He dismissed any comparison with World Series Cricket, which split the game for two years in the 1970s, when Kerry Packer was denied television rights for Channel Nine and bought most of the world’s best cricketers.
“Here it stemmed from a sort of winter of discontent that has been going on for a long time between certain players who think that the PGA tour in America is a monolith,” Erskine said.