PGA Tour golfer Billy Horschel has had no problem talking out against the Saudi-backed LIV Golf series and the players who took the money to join them. He’s certainly not going to stay quiet now that some of them are accusing the PGA of piggybacking off of their ideas
After PGA Tour chairman Jay Monahan announced certain enhancements, including “elevated” tour events, and a revised Player Impact Program (PIP), which will expand pay for top golfers, various people in the LIV Golf world lashed out, saying they were just copying what the upstart league was doing.
Lee Westwood said, “it’s just a copy of what LIV is doing. There are a lot of hypocrites out there.” Meanwhile, LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman posted a meme inferring that the PGA Tour was copying LIV’s “homework.”
Horschel, who has called LIV Golf players “hypocrites” who are “brainwashed” in the recent past, came out strong once more, citing that LIV Golf hadn’t invented any of these features and was themselves merely copying what had come before them.
“They’re saying we copied them; we’ve had a $20 million purse before, we’ve had small fields before, we’ve had no-cut events before,” Horschel said from the Tour Championship. “Are they doing anything different than we’ve done in the past? No, they’ve got a 54-hole shotgun start and there’s teams. That’s what’s different.
“The problem I have is they’re saying we’re copying them, the LIV tour, we’re not copying them. They stole a concept from Andy Gardner and PGL and pawned it off as their own. The Saudis had teamed up with the PGL to do a deal and get their tour off the ground and that didn’t happen.
“It’s funny when they say we copied them, and we didn’t, but when you look at their concept they literally copied someone else and stole it from them. Who is copying who?”
Let the war of words continue…
