Xander Schauffele’s snub and Scottie Scheffler warning as LIV Golf stars given green light
All golfers who play on the LIV Golf tour will now be allowed to compete in the United States Ryder Cup team and at the PGA Championship.
The decision to allow LIV Golf players to qualify for the USA’s Ryder Cup team may draw a mixed reaction from PGA Tour loyalists. Members of the Saudi-backed tour, which triggered a civil war in golf after launching in 2022, will now be eligible for the Ryder Cup and PGA Championship, tournament officials have announced.
The PGA of America has added LIV Golf to its list of “approved tours” and therefore given LIV players membership of the organisation, which is required to be eligible for the biennial contest against Europe. Brooks Koepka was the only LIV player on the US team at the 2023 event in Italy but only after receiving a wildcard pick from captain Zach Johnson.
The PGA Tour’s decision to open up the eligibility process will open the door to the likes of US Open champion Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson. The latter’s involvement would presumably be welcomed by Xander Schauffele, who surprisingly named Johnson as his dream pairs partner at last year’s Ryder Cup, snubbing his teammates, including close pal Patrick Cantlay.
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However, Scottie Scheffler may not be as welcoming to those LIV players. The world number one and Masters champion suggested earlier this year that LIV defectors must face some sort of sanction for ditching the PGA Tour.
“That’s definitely a complicated issue that I’m not sitting too far on one side of the fence with that,” Scheffler told Golf Channel. “I think there’s a different level of player that left – you had some guys that left our tour and then sued our tour, that wasn’t really in great taste.
“And then you had some other guys that just left and they wanted to do something different, and everybody made their decision, and I have no bad blood toward the guys that left.
“But a path toward coming back, it wouldn’t be a very popular decision, I think, if they just came back like nothing ever happened. They did kind of leave and – they left our tour, that’s just part of it.
“There should be a pathway back for them, but they definitely shouldn’t be able to come back without any sort of contribution to the tour.”
As they announced the change of stance, the PGA Tour said: “Going forward, all LIV Golf players are eligible for the PGA Championship and any American player who qualifies for the Ryder Cup on points or is added to the US team as a captain’s pick is eligible to compete.
“This is consistent with LIV Golf players competing in the PGA Championship the past two years. Brooks Koepka was a member of the US Ryder Cup team last year.”
Talks over reuniting men’s golf remain ongoing more than a year since the PGA and Europe’s DP World Tour announced a "framework agreement" for a merger with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, the financial backing behind LIV.
