How does professional golf work? How can you make a living out of being a pro golfer? The answer is simple: the better golf you play, the more you earn. I wish I knew what this feels like, other than playing for school pride in high school tournaments.. This is how it has been done for decades, and not just on the PGA Tour. Other professional golfing tours around the world work the same way. If you win a tournament, you get the biggest prize: The most money out of everyone in that tournament.
Golfing legend Tiger Woods has a good feeling of what it is like to win a tournament or two, 82 to be exact. So does Brooks Koepka. He has won nine PGA Tour events in his career, including three PGA Championships, and two U.S. Opens. From 2017 to 2019, he was often regarded as the best golfer in the world. Post COVID, he regressed due to injury. He was still favored to win some of the major championships here and there, but he wasn’t getting the results he expected. In 2022, Koepka made a parallel shifting decision that would change the golfing world forever.
The Saudi funded LIV Golf League was established in 2021, leading to its inaugural season the following year. Koepka was one of the first big names to join. Many of the aging PGA Tour regulars followed suit, looking to earn good money without all of the stress of preparing for weekly events. This, however, is where the controversy starts.
The biggest reason why LIV was able to secure some of the biggest names in golf completely contradicts everything that the PGA Tour believes in. LIV Golf works like the professional sports leagues we all know and love. Golfers signed a player contract, for big money, for a set amount of time. Not to mention that the LIV events are full of constant club music playing around the golf course, even when the golfers are trying to putt. Fast forward to now, and Koepka has made the historic choice to return to the PGA Tour.
I wanted to get some input on this from one of my good friends and fellow Seawolf, George Simpkins, a former scholarship golfer at Southern Virginia University. When asked about his thoughts on Koepka’s return, Simpkins said, “I think it makes sense why he got banned and honestly, I think he needs to pick one or the other. He returned to the PGA Tour for a less demanding schedule, and I just feel like if you’re given an opportunity to play golf at a high level, you can’t keep switching between the two organizations. So I think he shouldn’t have been let back after making his decision to leave.”
As for what I think about this still evolving LIV Golf/PGA Tour situation, I believe it’s still too early to tell. There are still some current LIV golfers who are considering coming back to the traditionalist way of golf that the PGA Tour provides, but as long as there is still a rift in the professional golfing world, we may never see golf played the same way again.
