As Koepka Leaves for LIV Golf, the PGA Tour Mulls Changes

Since March, Brooks Koepka has emphatically denied he would take into account becoming a member of the breakaway, Saudi-backed LIV Golf collection.

“Money isn’t going to change my life,” Koepka mentioned at the time with a disdainful sneer. As lately as two weeks in the past, Koepka was nonetheless telling fellow gamers he was not thinking about leaving the PGA Tour.

On Tuesday, he defected to the rival LIV Golf circuit, which is able to maintain its second occasion, outdoors Portland, Ore., beginning on June 30.

What modified for Koepka? It could be straightforward to say there have been almost certainly greater than 100 million causes for him to reverse course since different former PGA Tour gamers reminiscent of Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau have reportedly obtained nine-figure contracts to align with LIV Golf. The new circuit guarantees a restricted, shortened schedule that offers golfers extra flexibility and hosts no-cut tournaments wherein each participant is assured a hefty payday.

But each participant who entered the inaugural LIV Golf occasion outdoors London earlier this month was suspended by the PGA Tour, and future entrants to imminent LIV Golf tournaments will be treated similarly.

Koepka’s choice isn’t a shock — he telegraphed it with a scornful news conference eventually week’s U.S. Open outdoors Boston — however it’s one other victory for LIV Golf in its battle for credibility towards the established PGA Tour. Abraham Ancer of Mexico, who’s 31 years outdated and ranked twentieth in the males’s world rankings, additionally dedicated to the LIV Golf collection on Tuesday.

Koepka, 32, who gained 4 main championships between 2017 and 2019, has been injured and struggling for years. His world rating has slipped to No. 19 this week from No. 1 in 2019. In a little bit of irony, Koepka is becoming a member of LIV Golf about 10 days after DeChambeau, his longtime antagonist, switched his allegiance. DeChambeau has additionally been dogged by well being points. Once seen as a hard-swinging, bulked up game-changing phenomenon who captivated youthful followers together with his audacious size off the tee, DeChambeau has tumbled from fourth in the rankings to thirtieth. He was an afterthought eventually week’s U.S. Open, ending tied for 56th. Koepka missed the minimize at this 12 months’s Masters Tournament and completed outdoors the prime 50 eventually month’s P.G.A. Championship and eventually week’s U.S. Open.

But Koepka’s exit nonetheless gives one other noteworthy little bit of surprising momentum for LIV Golf, whose main shareholder is the Private Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. Only six weeks in the past, there was almost common solidarity amongst the PGA Tour’s participant ranks.

Each reversal of opinion sends little tremors via the close-knit neighborhood of PGA Tour gamers and has that means. A concern of getting left behind can pervade the group, as with all different, particularly when gamers maintain going again on their phrase. Their colleagues might ponder: Should I leap ship now, earlier than it’s too late and the prime LIV Golf contracts are gone?

Some perspective is important. A substantial majority of the finest younger gamers have remained loyal to the PGA Tour. Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Collin Morikawa and Justin Thomas — ranked first via fifth — affirm their dedication to the PGA Tour weekly. Morikawa did it once more Tuesday when he tweeted: “To state for the record, once again, you all are absolutely wrong. I’ve said it since February at Riviera that I’m here to stay on the PGA Tour and nothing has changed.”

But it’s straightforward to surprise what number of extra new faces there is perhaps in the subject by June 30, when LIV Golf makes its first look in the United States. The full listing of entrants is predicted this week.

How many shall be in the subject when the upstart tour arrives at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., on July 29? That event shall be held after the mid-July British Open, the final of this 12 months’s main males’s golf championships.

What is understood is that the strain continues to ramp up on the PGA Tour to reply to the credible menace LIV Golf is posing. And Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, has the framework of a plan to no less than partially appease gamers interested in a shorter schedule and higher earnings. (Hint: It seems to be an terrible lot like the LIV Golf schedule and prize cash.)

In a gamers’ assembly on Tuesday, based on a number of individuals who have been in attendance, Monahan outlined a considerably revised PGA Tour schedule for subsequent 12 months that can characteristic eight occasions with restricted fields and no cuts, and elevated purses of no less than $20 million for the prime 50 gamers from this 12 months’s season-long FedEx Cup standings. The folks spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t licensed to reveal the particulars mentioned.

LIV Golf gamers would clearly be excluded. The payouts for this 12 months’s PGA Tour occasions range broadly, however a median complete could be about $8.5 million.

The tour can also be planning a contraction of the season that will give gamers extra day without work in the fall months, which in 2013-14 had a considerable enlargement of tournaments. That improve has been broadly unpopular with many gamers.

The PGA Tour’s newest proposal might stem the tide of rebels leaving its as soon as placid nest. Or, the tour might take in the lack of some gamers, and with all the company sponsors and custom it has in its nook, prosper with a majority of golfers who stay. It nonetheless holds the most advantageous playing cards, not the least of which being that the LIV Golf circuit nonetheless has no mainstream TV contract for its occasions. It is nearly unimaginable to be a viable sports activities leisure choice with out one.

Maybe the two golf excursions will coexist, no less than for some time. Golf is one in every of our extra unpredictable sports activities. Perhaps extra change is coming. Nothing appears a continuing recently in golf.

At his information convention on the eve of the U.S. Open final week, Koepka was requested if he had made a “permanent decision” on whether or not he’ll bolt to the LIV Golf collection.

He answered: “As of last week. That’s it.”