LIV Golf’s founder and a tour member are criticizing the PGA Tour for introducing a format they feel is quite similar to the Saudi-funded circuit’s concept.
Founder Greg Norman went on Instagram to offer his thoughts about PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan this week.
LIV Golf member Lee Westwood called what the PGA Tour is doing a “copy” in an interview with Golf Digest.
“I laugh at what the PGA Tour players have come up with,” he says. “It’s just a copy of what LIV is doing. There are a lot of hypocrites out there. They all say LIV is ‘not competitive.’ They all point at the no-cut aspect of LIV and the short fields. Now, funnily enough, they are proposing 20 events that look a lot like LIV. Hopefully, at some point they will all choke on their words. And hopefully, they will be held to account as we were in the early days.”
The PGA Tour made its boldest response yet to the rival Saudi-funded league Wednesday with a plan for the best players to commit to a 20-tournament schedule in which they will compete against each other up to 17 times for average purses of $20 million.
The tour also is doubling the bonus pool of its Player Impact Program to $100 million spread across 20 players, and it’s changing the criteria so it’s geared more towards media exposure.
Players starting out their careers will get $500,000 at the start of the year that will count against their earnings until the number is surpassed.
Of the sweeping changes Monahan laid out, the most significant was what came out of a private meeting of 23 top players last week: a new model that ensures the best play in the same tournaments more often.
LIV Golf, backed by the Public Investment Fund in Saudi Arabia, has been paying big names — such as Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka — massive signing fees said to be worth $150 million or higher.
Each event has a $25 million purse for a 48-man field over 54 holes. The individual winner of the LIV event gets $4 million. The money has been appealing in attracting some two dozen PGA Tour players.
— With files from AP