LIV Golf’s threat to the PGA Tour is significant enough that two of the game’s biggest stars flew to Delaware on their own on Tuesday to meet with fellow players in advance of this week’s BMW Championship at Wilmington Country Club.
Tiger Woods and Rickie Fowler touched down in Woods’ private jet shortly after 3 pm Both players — neither of whom qualified for this week’s FedEx Cup Playoffs event — showed up to rally support for the PGA Tour.
There were two meetings on the day, including a previously scheduled one involving the Tour’s Player Advisory Council that took place at 3 pm, which Woods was not in attendance for and where LIV Golf was not discussed, a member of the PAC who was in attendance told The Post. It lasted around 90 minutes and involved usual end-of-year business with little drama, a source said.
The second meeting took place in the early evening off-site and did involve Woods and Fowler, however, as well as a number of the game’s other stars — including Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas, among others who haven’t bolted for LIV, sources confirmed to The Post.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan was also scheduled to meet with players in another meeting on Wednesday.
Tuesday’s meeting with Woods and others came on the heels of a federal judge last week ruling against three LIV players — Talor Gooch, Matt Jones and Hudson Swafford — who were seeking a temporary restraining order to compete in the playoffs. It also took place in the wake of the news last week that British Open champ Cameron Smith — who withdrew from this week’s BMW with a sore hip — has also reportedly signed on with LIV and will make his debut there after the PGA Tour season concludes later this month.
Although details from the meeting had yet to emerge as of early Tuesday evening, Woods has been staunchly opposed to LIV and spoke out against the Saudi-backed outfit during last month’s British Open.
“I disagree with it,” Woods said at St. Andrews. “I think that what they’ve done is they’ve turned their back on what has allowed them to get to this position.
“Some players have never got a chance to even experience it — they’ve gone right from the amateur ranks right into that organization and never really got a chance to play out here and what it feels like to play a Tour schedule or to play in some big events. And who knows what’s going to happen in the near future with world ranking points, the criteria for entering major championships? The governing bodies are going to have to figure that out. Some of these players may not ever get a chance to play in major championships. … That, to me, I just don’t understand it.”
LIV Golf has applied with the Official World Golf Ranking for its events to receive points, but that process is usually a long one — at least a year, if not more.
Still, LIV — which is bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund (valued at more than $600 billion) and already slated to increase from eight tournaments this year to 14 in 2023 — isn’t going away anytime soon. Already, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka, among others, have ditched the PGA Tour for LIV despite being suspended indefinitely by the more established tour and still more players are expected to defect after the Tour season concludes.
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