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Despite early meetings at the White House involving high-ranking members of LIV Golf and the PGA Tour, a potential PGA-LIV merger seems as far away as ever. I say that in the context of a recent report from golf industry insider ‘FlushingItGolf’ who claims the PGA Tour threatened golf creators with sanctions and ‘potential future suspensions’ if they collaborated with LIV Golf.
This report came in the wake of LIV Golf announcing ‘The Duels’ on April 5th here in my home state of Florida. ‘The Duels’ will have a $250K prize pool with two ‘Kings of Miami’ crowned. There will be six teams of 2 players including some of the biggest ‘creators’ in golf, names like Grant Horvat who just won the Creator Classic at TPC Sawgrass, George Bryan, Fat Perez, Rick Shiels, Luke Kwon, and Wesley Bryan.
This will be an amazing event, no doubt. And if the report from Tom Hobbs at FlushingItGolf is true, the PGA Tour felt threatened by LIV Golf cozying up to the biggest creators/social media stars in golf. The report was shared on X (née Twitter) and started with:
“The PGA Tour reached out to creators involved with LIV Golf’s “The Duels” and threatened them with potential future suspensions if they participated in the unsanctioned event, inline with the rules for non members who play full LIV Golf League tournaments. The creators pushed back however and now the threats of sanctions have been dropped.”
The PGA Tour reached out to creators involved with LIV Golf’s “The Duels” and threatened them with potential future suspensions if they participated in the unsanctioned event, inline with the rules for non members who play full LIV Golf League tournaments. The creators pushed… https://t.co/EDffD8jvxQ
— Flushing It (@flushingitgolf) March 31, 2025
It goes on to say point out that this is a bad look for the PGA Tour… The report makes mention of Eugenio Chacarra and Laurie Canter who are currently banned from the PGA Tour for 12 months despite never having been members of the PGA Tour, all because those two played in an unsanctioned event.
Where the report sort of loses me is when it says the PGA Tour “has made significant efforts recently to control players and the media.” It goes on to highlight the Barstool Sports/Fore Play merchandise deals at various events and the partnerships with with Pro Shop Holdings who own Skratch… Has anyone ever read Barstool Sports or looked at their social media and thought ‘wow, this is really subdued and almost as if someone is telling them not to say certain things?’ because my experience with Barstool is the exact opposite. To their credit, they are about as unfiltered as any outlet you will find in sports media.
All that said, if this report is true then it is a bad look for the PGA Tour. Trying to exert control over independent creators is bad news for golf media. There always needs to be independence in journalism and while that line might be blurry with golf’s biggest creators who often own their own brands that they’re promoting on streams, they should 100% be left free to work with whoever they please and not face repercussions from the PGA Tour who only benefits from working with them.
Grant Horvat alone has over 2M followers which is more than the vast majority of PGA Tour members. The PGA Tour needs him more than he needs the PGA Tour.