The sport of professional golf has been fractured for two years since the inception of LIV Golf. The Saudi-backed tour has peeled off a number of stars from the PGA Tour, including reigning Masters champion Jon Rahm.
A number of golfers on the rival circuit have expressed disinterest in ever returning. But Bryson DeChambeau has a very different take.
The former U.S. Open winner is reading the tea leaves and feels strongly that unification is a must. He went into great detail ahead of LIV Golf’s event at Trump National Doral in Miami.
⛳️ #DEAL OR NO DEAL? — Bryson DeChambeau says people are ‘losing interest’ in golf and a deal ‘needs to happen fast’ for the good of the sport: “Well there’s multiple ways that you can solve this problem. I think that from a player’s perspective, it needs to come back… pic.twitter.com/QWbFymXYni
— NUCLR GOLF (@NUCLRGOLF) April 3, 2024
“…From a player’s perspective, it needs to come back together for the fans, No. 1. The fans are what drive this sport. If we don’t have fans, we don’t have golf… There’s got to be a way to come together. How that comes together, that’s above all of us out here.”
Not only did he express the desire and necessity for change, but stressed the immediacy.
“It’s up to the guys up top to figure it out and figure it out quickly because we can’t keep going this direction. It’s not sustainable,” DeChambeau said.
“It’s great to have the majors where we come together, but we want to be competing, at least I want to be competing every week, with all of the best players in the world for sure… And it needs to happen fast. It’s not a two-year thing. Like it needs to happen quicker rather than later just for the good of the sport. Too many people are losing interest.”
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Bryson DeChambeau, LIV Golf Hong Kong
Indeed, television ratings for most of this year’s PGA Tour tournaments are down, some considerably. It hasn’t helped that this has been the season of first-time winners on Tour.
LIV Golf, of course, has never gained any traction on that front either.
Golf fans are simply tired of hearing all about the money players are making. They are tired of wondering if the LIV Golf merger with the PGA Tour will ever happen.
Nevertheless, talks between the two sides appeared to have stalled. That is until Tiger Woods finally met with Yasir Al-Rummayan, the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s governor.
One can only hope that DeChambeau is correct and something is done and done soon. Or professional golf might wake up and find itself looking eerily similar to tennis, where only four weeks a year truly matter.
Kendall Capps is the Senior Editor of SB Nation’s Playing Through. For more golf coverage, follow us @_PlayingThrough on all major social media platforms.
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